Shanghai'd

Sensitive.
Woke up this morning to the piercing beep of the gas detector going off in the kitchen. We had been warned before by Shiyuehua (the girl from the apartment complex office who speaks a little English, and has thus become our goto contact for any apartment-related questions) to turn the gas valve off when we're not using it. Problem with that plan is that it's freezing right now in Shanghai, and turning off the gas valve means no heat and no hot water. We tried to air the kitchen out, but the detector kept blaring away, so we called Shiyuehua and the maintenance man to come up. In what I'm finding is typical Chinese fashion, the maintenance man fiddles with the detector to get it to turn off, replaces the detector with a new one, then tests his work by holding his lighter up to it! At the site of that, I grabbed Laurel and headed out of the kitchen. Nothing like striking a match to check for a possible gas leak! The explanation we got from Shiyuehua is that the old detector was "hen mingan" or "very sensitive". Hopefully it was Laurel's cheap-comforter-defunkifying Victoria's Secret body spray that set it off and not a gas leak. We confirmed several times, in very slow, simple English, that it is indeed safe to keep the gas valve on at all times.