Going downtown was easy, you caught a trishaw. This was a three wheeler bicycle with a settee between the rear wheels. As long as you driver didn’t break wind you were OK. We would catch one just outside the airport and it was about 2 yuan to Longwan, a small town between the airport and Wenzhou proper. He would drop us off at the bridge leading into the town and in this area were a few stalls telling bits and pieces. I had an interpreter with me for the first time and I noticed an old man in a stall that was shaped like a sentry box. Just room for him with the bottom closed and a small shelf in front of him. It what was on the shelf that stopped me. I had seen it before when I visited the Singapore CID when I was stationed in Singapore……
It was cut ball of raw opium.
I asked my interpreter to confirm it. He only replied that it was bad stuff. I went over to the box; the interpreter was having nothing to do with it; you can get a sudden headache being caught with opium. I knew that before the Revolution in 1949 opium use was widespread; they had a war named after it. Come 1949 it was banned but I also knew that because so many people were addicted to it, including a few very senior members of the politburo, a licence could be obtained to continue buying and using it. What I had stumbled on was the last of the old dope peddlers serving at that time a rapidly diminishing band of customers.. He was an old boy with the biggest smile I had seen on a Chinese man; so opium must be good for you. As I approached him he waved both palms of his hands to indicate that I could not buy any. I wasn’t interested so tactfully I turned away and proceeded towards the town. As an posrscrpt he wasn’t there three months later so he must have joined his customers in that big opium den in the sky.
The town centre was absolute bedlam. These were the days when all Chinese drove with one hand on the horn. The vehicles were small buses that followed a route but stopped anywhere to pick up and let down. Moving out onto the road again was merely a signal and a long blast on the horn, followed by a orchestral sounding of horns by all the others trying to stop him coming out. The were no modern shops, they had only just started in Wenzhou itself, so they looked exactly like they did a hundred years before. You could, however, get just about anything you wanted. Wenzhou wasn’t known as the counterfeit capital of China for nothing. There was a Philishave there which was, apart from the weight, identical to my own. What gave it away was a normal plug and wire to the 220 volt motor in the shaver as opposed to the transformer plug and 9 volt of the Philishave. You would find out the difference if you did a wet shave.
The task I had that day was to find a toaster. This was for the bread that we were being supplied with by the rig. I didn’t hold out much hope, it was bad enough trying to get one in Shenzhen, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. The interpreter wasn’t a lot of use; he didn’t know what a toaster was either so I had to draw pictures to show them how it worked. I went from electrical shop to electrical shop and was getting nowhere and then we came a second hand goods shop with old extractors, water heaters etc. I went through my spiel again with the same blank looks but on this occasion they called to the back of the shop and out came granddad.
He was like something out of a Chinese Opera without any makeup. He was old, incredibly old with a thin moustache and beard that drooped down to his waist. Behind him was a fully waxed pigtail that was just as long. He wore a full length black silk embroidered gown and it was topped off with a small silk bonnet. I couldn’t see his feet but it sounded as if he was walking with clogs or wooden sandals. I put my hands together and bowed to him as a sign of respect for his age and tried to explain as before. He thought for some time and then gave directions to his minions. They disappeared into the back, out again for more directions, in, out, in again and then they found it.
It was in a tatty brown box without any manufacturers name on it. I lifted it out and it weighed as if it had been made out of armour plate. It looked the part; two slots for bread with the elements inside and a variable control knob on the outside. It had an American flat pin plug which was normal for China but I didn’t try it out as it was full of dust and it would probably cause more harm than good. 10 yuan (70p) was all that they wanted so without further ado I bought it and returned to my hotel.
The next day I presented out engineers with the toaster. They took one look, took it outside and blew it out with a nitrogen bottle. There were no instructions so we set the dial to one quarter point and with careful use of a hacksaw, no breadknife, we cut two slices to fit. We didn’t do a dry run first; if we had we would have noticed the intensity of the elements. We dropped in the bread, gravity did it all so it wasn’t necessary to push down the handles and we plugged it in. Some thing was happening and in a short time came the aroma of toasting bread. The time reached zero, a buzzer sounded and we started collecting together the butter and jam. Our backs were turned for only a few seconds but that was enough for it to start turning it into charcoal biscuits. A panic stricken unplug before the Chinese called the fire brigade and we went to plan B.
This involved a strip down and circuit analysis. The first problem was finding a flat bladed screwdriver the correct size to unscrew the bottom. All the tools we have were cross head or small flats for instruments. Once that was done the detective work started:
There were no springs on the handles; they were there just to lift the bread out.
The timer had a push in/out function that switched it on/off and the rotating timer just rang a buzzer but did not switch it off.
The size of the wiring indicated that it was rated for 110 volts.
How it got to Wenzhou we had no idea. It was probably a 1940s American model but being Wenzhou it may well have been a counterfeit copy that wasn’t exported.
Once we had established this we did a dry run. This is when we noticed that the elements were almost incandescent. However, our greeny (aircraft electrics) stated that they would probably last until a replacement arrived. We phoned back to Shenzhen, declared TOS (Toaster Out of Service) and they promised that the next person going into Hong Kong would buy another and it would be dispatched tout suite………………………………………..