EWWW!!!! Our first bad experiance with China's Plumbing

Ok. So we are currently having our first bout with China's plumbing. I don't know whether they have septic tanks or normal sewers like we have in the states, but what ever it is, its not working right now!!! So at 10:30 tonight (Saturday) I went to go get ready for bed, and went and used the bathroom and such, and I flushed the toilet and then started to leave, when I hear what I shouldn't be hearing of a "normal" toilet. I hear water NOT going down. I look over and see water rushing out onto the floor, but not from the toilet itself. I run and get my father, and where is he? IN the bathroom of course. So I run back ready to cry because I do not know what is going on! I put towels down (I do know that) and try and figure out where the water is coming from since it isn't the toilet. In the houses here in China, there are drains in the floors of the houses and such, and we put heavy duty tape over them so that the coch roaches do not come out of them. So I look over, and yup, there is sewage and water coming up THROUGH the tape. So I proceed to run around and put towels down, and while I am pulling up the shower curtain, I notice the same contents coming up from my shower drain. Great! So I am calling management, and of course, is there anyone there at 10:30 at night that speaks english? No. So I pull out my never been used English-Chinese dictionary and start looking up words for plumbing, pipes, flooding, and all sorts of things. The only thing I can rememer of the top of my head in the state I am in was "water" but that wasn't helping them! So I tell them just a minute (dung yi sha) and give the dictionary to my dad and said look up flood because I already had pipes looked up. So he looked it up and I said PIPES FLOOD! And then they were like OOOH (hao de) And so I am assuming they are sending someone but just to be on the safe side, my mom goes outside looking for one of the many guards that walks around Jing Shan. She brings him into our house and shows him. He is completely and utterly confused. I try and explain to him that "Wo men yao yi ge ren" which is "we want a person" (since I know want, but not need) and then look up the word for "fix" in Chinese and proceed to try and get the message across that we need someone to come and fix this. So he radios in something and proceeds to leave. Finally, we get a call from someone with JingShan that speaks ENGLISH!!! It was wonderful. We told him that we were having the pipes overflow, and so they sent someone. So the plummer man comes and he goes into the bathroom which has water and "other stuff" all over the floor. He turns on the water in the shower and sees that the water doesn't go down the shower drain and that stuff comes up through the other drain on the floor. He then flushes the toilet (which I knew was a bad idea) and that narrowly escapes over flowing. By now I am freaking out! Since I am the only one that uses that bathroom, mainly, I feel it is my fault that it is all blocked up. So the guy says something to me in Chinese, which I don't know what he says, picks up his tool box and leaves. I am like, great. So I go give the synopsis to my parents, and my dad says, well lets flush the master bath toilet and see what happens. I am like sure. So he flushes it while I watch to see if anything happens. And lots happens. So I say that is a very bad idea and no toilets should be used, and seeing that it is church tomorrow, we are going to need to take a shower! I should have taken one today like I felt like I should. Anyway. So we decide that no more toilets should be flushed. Then the plummer guy comes back with a plunger. I wasn't too sure what that was going to do since the water wasn't coming out the toilet, it was coming out the pipes! But I figured he knew what he was doing! So he starts out by flushing the toilet and then plunges it down, while he has his foot on the drain to keep the water from coming up (which while I couldn't see it, I bet just made it come up the bath tub). Then he needed to take off the...I don't know what it is called, but you know how in the bath tub, there is the stopper for if you want to take a bath? And it is attached to the little flippy thing that you push up or down to make it plug or unplug? You know that thing? Well anyway, he couldn't get it off, so he tried plunging over it but that didn't really work. So then he tries taking it all apart but it isn't working. In this point in time, he says something along the lines of blah blah blah ming tien (so something about tomorrow) I take it to mean that he will come back tomorrow. Which isn't good, since 1) we have church tomorrow and we all need to take showers and of course, you always have to use the bathroom in the morning and 2) you just can't live like this! So he says something else, and I think he was going to take dad down to the management office (that is what I got from his actions/chinese) but Dad wanted to check the other bathrooms and see what happened when you flushed and turned on the shower. So in the girls bathroom, nothing happened, and in the "maids bathroom" nothing happened to my bathroom, so we thing that we will be ok to use those bathrooms, but I don't want to use any!!!! I am so worried about waking up and having our house filled with water and "other things". But I know that is fesably (how ever you spell it) not possible. It wouldn't even over flow outside the bathroom. But anywho. I feel better now that I have told the whole world, but it still doesn't make my situation any better, and I still feel like it is my fault since I am really the only one that uses it. But maybe it was my parents fault too because like I said, when we flushed their toilet, the water and "other things" came out of my drain too. Well I hope you all have a good weekend. I am just glad that a plummber was able to come look at it tonight. If we were in the states and the same thing happened, I don't think it would have gotten fixed until monday!!

Love, The "pipe exploding house" of the Busaths