The Worst Locksmith in China--中国的最坏的锁匠

in #cn7 years ago (edited)

The Worst Locksmith in China--中国的最坏的锁匠

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For those of you who read my earlier post on The Haunted College, this story takes place in exactly the same place and is about exactly the same apartment. While it took place in 2004, in all fairness to Chinese locksmiths, I have to say they have dramatically improved since then.

I had to call a locksmith one night to open my apartment. I got locked out about 9:30 one night when I had to go to the office to conclude some paperwork and have a smoke (I won't smoke in my apartment). At first I thought it wouldn't be too much of a problem since I could get a duplicate key from the front desk. Emily was the girl in charge of that, the former resident of the haunted apartment, and since she lived right upstairs from me, I hailed her for assistance. But after a lot of searching around and urgent phone call making, we determined there was no duplicate and we had to call a locksmith.

Now where I come from locksmiths are a respected group of professionals with a high level of skill and trustworthiness. In many cases they must be bonded or licensed. You trust a lot to these people and they know it. The care and skill that goes into their work to give you piece of mind is admirable. But I am not "back where I come from," I am in China.

The guy arrived on a motor scooter in bare feet, no shirt, and without tools to "look at it." He tried several times to open the door by turning the knob and pushing on it, but it wouldn't go. He concluded that I must be locked out and that he would have to return with his tools.

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He looked something like this when he arrived

Now, I don't know why people call locksmiths in China. The reason I call a locksmith is for one of two: 1) I need a lock installed on something, or, 2) I’m locked out of something and need it opened. Perhaps the receptionist didn't make this clear when she called him.

I suggested we remove the security grate from the second bedroom with a socket wrench so I could crawl in and then unlock the door. You see, I had the best lock in the building, one of the original ones installed. I treated it with respect.

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My original lock was something like this Yale Lock with a solid steel housing (铁壳)

The other teachers, when locked out, would break their doors open and thus break the lock in progress, especially if they were Canadian for some reason.

Well, let me rephrase that. What they broke was the catch for the bolt. The lock itself usually remained intact and the required repair would be quite simple--replace the steel catch. But there's little profit in that. Replacing a whole lock is much more expensive and therefore better for the locksmith. One teacher had locked himself out three times and three times broke his door open, no doubt in a drunken stupor. Or rage. The next day he'd claim someone broke into his apartment, though nothing appeared stolen. These lies were very elaborate. He’d set them up by calling all the other teachers and asking if they got broken into and we'd all say no and get ready for another of his stories about delivery people or our own security guards. He didn’t work there very long.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that I wanted to keep the lock I had, but the locksmith said he didn't have a wrench, let alone a socket wrench. I found this to be rather surprising that a locksmith wouldn't have a wrench or be able to get one, but the fact of the matter is he didn't seem to have ANY TOOLS AT ALL!

Erich and up-all-night Stan came down to watch the goings on. They had their own experiences with locksmiths themselves and thought whatever was happening at my place was better than whatever was on TV. The locksmith left and Erich and Stan and I remained together outside my door telling stories of our experiences with Chinese "repairmen" and so forth and contemplated betting on what exactly would happen when he returned.

He came back with his tools piled on the running board of his scooter. He had a drill (钻), still in the box he bought it in, an angle grinder, and a canvas shoulder bag. He dumped them by my door, produced a screwdriver and hammer from the bag, and began destroying my door, much to the hysterical amusement of Erich and Stan.

"What the fuck is he doin’?" I asked quizzically.

"Tryin’ to your open door," offered Erich. "I guess."

It appeared that what he was doing, from a technical perspective, was remove the brass ring from around the lock cylinder. But what he was doing in actuality was enlarging the hole that'd been cut in my steel door for the lock cylinder. And where this was going was obvious—once he'd pried the hole wide enough to remove the cylinder (if he even could), the hole would be too damn big to put a new cylinder back into it. So I’d need a new door to boot. It must've been part of a fiendish plan to sell us a new door as well as a lock.

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He appeared to be trying to do something like this, but on a steel door

Oh he wailed and pried like a mad man. He was rushed as if a suffocating child were dying inside. Or he was missing the English Premiership match on ESPN Asia. One or the other.

And yet there was no grace or flow at all to his movements as a skilled professional might display under urgent circumstances. It rather reminded me of the orangutan in David Attenborough’s "Life of Mammals" that had a hobby of DIY. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the episode, see it here:

Enough jokes and laughter at this marvel. I had to stop him immediately or the damage would be irreparable. I told him to stop and took the drill out of the box and suggested he use it to drill out the cylinder so we could open the door. Then all he would have to do is replace the cylinder.

I’m sure you're all wondering: why didn't he just pick the lock? Wouldn’t a professional locksmith have an array of picks for various types of locks he could use according to the situation and merely open the door? My friends, you're asking too much. Things aren't done like that here. And in any case, it's not as much fun as bashing away at a steel door with a hammer and screwdriver.

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He didn't even have the most basic lock pick set

He takes his drill out of the box, unravels the cord, and plugs it in over by the dryer right outside my door. Then produces his one bit (钻头), his one single drill bit, from the drill box, puts it in the chuck (夹头) and begins to drill. But the drill is so week, and the bit so dull, it keeps freezing and the chuck spins around the seized bit. He extracts the bit from the cylinder and tightens the chuck, but he still has the same problem.

Erich and Stan and I are reduced to hysterical and hopeless laughter because that is all we can do. It is all that is available to us as recourse for such hopelessness. Yet, mind you, this guy was acting as if he were a great and master locksmith. He had affected the air of a seasoned and knowledgeable professional, as if no one would notice the masquerade. This only compounded the irony and hopelessness. And if your situation is as desperate and lost as this, you might as well enjoy being desperate and lost.

I’ve only ever fiddled with a few locks in my life but it was clear that the average American or Canadian is a better locksmith than this "professional" from Shenzhen.

Well, he bangs and pries a little more and gets the lock lose enough that it’s moving. So now he's ready for the coup de gras. He takes out the angle grinder and lays into the cylinder with it.

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An angle grinder

Stan flees upstairs under a shower of sparks as Erich and I duck our heads and dash behind the staircase. It’s not so much the sparks themselves. If you really want to know why Stan ran upstairs and Erich and I dodged, try googling “angle grinder accident” sometime and see what you get. I’ll spare you the horrors.

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Note the safety glasses

Meanwhile our barefoot locksmith leans mightily on his grinder with such a fountain of sparks spraying him in the face, it's a wonder he has not gone blind from his work. He does not wear safety glasses.

Somehow this got the door open. Now he went inside my house to replace the lock with one of the new tin ones. I don't know if it is actually tin, but it seems that way, or at least the casing does. The innards are probably steel, but nevertheless it doesn't look like any kind of a match for my old one.

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Note thin, tinny housing (锡壳)

Eventually he gets the lock off. He matches the new lock to the space. Then he reveals the contents of his shoulder bag by dumping thousands of screws on my floor from it, and they go everywhere. I mean he had every kind of metal screw you could imagine. There were thousands of them scattered in my hallway and living room.

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What my whole floor looked like

Every one imaginable except the right one that is. Don’t locks usually come with the screws you need to replace them? Can’t you use the old screws if they don't? This also got me thinking that the ghost I wrote about in The Haunted College must have been the ghost of a locksmith.

As it turns out, the locks were different depths so I imagine the old screws might not have worked, but this guy was not your typical locksmith that has everything arranged in neat little drawers in the back of a van. He didn't even know what size screws or if he had them before he came back with his "tools".

He did have some screws that were the right diameter, but they were too long, so he held them with a pair of needle nose pliers and cut them to size with his angle grinder. But then the screws that go into the edge of the door he couldn't find. The holes didn't line up exactly so he gouged at it and twisted with his drill till he was satisfied and then tried to pick out some screws that would fit. He’d put one in, screw it, and then it wouldn't tighten. Whoops. Too small. But see, now he can't get them out because they're not biting and he has to wrestle them free with the needle nose. I pick one out and it fits. So he tries to find a couple of more just like it.

Finally he gets the new lock installed but it won't work and he has to fiddle some more with it. Then, before I know what’s happening, he grabs the expensive extra virgin olive oil from my kitchen and wants to use it to lubricate the lock and all the keys! I stop him and tell him to wait a minute. I get some very inexpensive WD-40 from a drawer and offer him that.

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When he's finally done, he washes his hands in my kitchen and grabs a handful of grapes from a bowl on the counter, holds them up to me and asks if it's OK if he takes them. Well, it is now that he handled them. He scraped up most of the screws, which means not all of them, and dumped them back in his bag. He only left a couple of dozen on the floor for me to step on or trip over, but a few screws lying around is always useful. Another thing the local "repairmen" are infamous for is not cleaning up after themselves.

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Pretty much what my floor looked like after he "cleaned up" his screws

Well that was it. I described the ordeal to my boss the following day and explained how relieved I was I didn't have to ask him for a new door. Apparently these locksmiths have left their reputation all over China, because the first thing everyone does when they move into a new apartment is change the lock. Themselves.

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Wow. That is an adventure just to ur your door. I would blasted that all over the net. Haha. Funny.

Good afternoon, a very interesting article, as an answer to it, I would like to share my experience with a locksmith. I needed to change the locks in my car once and I turned to locksmith services. Luckily, a locksmith from this company arrived pretty quickly and made me new keys. It's good that such a locksmith as you did not come to me, but a real professional and one more plus, he came right away with the tools)

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