How to Pay your Utility Bill in China

We're going to make this as clear as possible, so that even you can do it:

Step 1: Open up your WeChat group chat for Room 2402 Building A to a message from Landlady--I did you a favor by already translating it for you:

(Side note: Tina is paid by LL to help her with her foreign customers.)

Here is the rest of the *translated* conversation:

Tina Tu: Okay, let me see how I can pay you, huh?

LL: Mmmmmm

Stella: I don't know.

Tina Tu: It's okay it's done.

Jacky: (I didn't know he was on this group chat??) Well, I confirmed this with Tom, Tom will link the water, electricity and coal together to his Alipay, later by Tom himself. The landlord paid this time, I'll pay the landlord.

Jacky: Thanks Tina, the landlord for helping. The cost I direct WeChat to you? In addition, how to open the invoice of hydropower coal?

Jacky: Tina, do you know that electricity, water and coal costs can open a company?

Tina: You can.

Tina: You can apply for electronic invoices online.

Tina: I'll ask how to turn on the water and gas this afternoon.

Tina: Electricity. I'm sending it to you now.

Jacky: Okay, Thank you.

End of conversation.

Step 2: When Tom gets home ask him about it. His reply? "I don't know what in the world is going on!" "I don't have any clue how to pay it!" (Clearly we need a translator for the translator!!)

Step 3: Just keep waiting until the end of July for your pay check to come so you can finally get paid so you can pay Jacky back for all of the times he's saved your bacon! Maybe by then we'll have figured things out a little bit more....

It works really well!

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Just one more mysterious translation from this same chat group:

LL: Maintenance master more than 1 pm clock in the past, home anyone?

We are hoping we can do things right most of the time and that people will be patient with us as we translate the translations! But yes, I was home at 1:00 for the maintenance man to come. In which I had another communication problem because I couldn't understand his sign language for 'hair dryer', which apparently was needed for fixing the bidet (?). Perhaps using a translator that needs translating works quite a bit better than sign language! In the end, Maintenance Man used a translator to say hair dryer and I could actually say "mei you" which means don't have! Thank you President Nelson, I learned that one in your book Insights. Go team.

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