Eviction–part One

We most recently rented our ChaowaiMen apartment to a Turkish man who has since disappeared. He seemed like a nice enough man, nice enough that Yang invited him to join us for a few of our Friday night outs. Apparently he was quite handsome, on the first such night out a Chinese woman friend of ours immediately told Yang he was very handsome and pried for information about him. She then completely forgot the American man that had come along in part to flirt with her (as an aside, Chinese woman have an advantage when out with our with foreign men for they do not need to make a bathroom trip to share information, rather they can just speak their native tongue). Later at a club called Xiu our American friend was going to show the Turkish man the ropes, after all the American had been in China for five years and the Turkish man one week. The American would point out the good girls from the not yet so good girls and break the ice with a little flirting in Chinese. After an hour at the club, a young, well to do, stunning Chinese woman picked up our new Turkish friend and drove him home in  her Porsche Cyane while dropping off our American friend at the corner to call a taxi home.

We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had any trouble renting our place for the three years we’ve rented it and have easily covered our mortgage.  There has been a fair amount of turnover and things here seem squarely in the renters benefit. Renting the place goes something like this – you agree on the prices, sign the contract, change the locks, pay the first several months up front. At some point you move out and ignore any time left of the contract and it is too much of a hassle for the landlord to take you to court. Meanwhile, the agent who found the renter takes his commission for the full contract at the beginning and is often never heard from again when the tenant moves on. It’s not quite fair and I’m sure many would be filled with indignation. The fact is that is just the way it is, you deal with it. Or should I say Yang deals with it.

In this case, our tenant whose name is Kok Hao Kan (phonically correct and the interesting part is “hao kan” means “looks good” in Chinese) had some visa issues and had to leave China. Once he left China we could not reach him and he made no apparent effort to reach us. Yang had a couple of associate phone numbers and one of which promised to get back to her and resolve the manner. Subsequently all three phone numbers she had were out of service.

So missing two months rent, Yang wrote up the eviction notice and called a locksmith who then contacted the police so that we could evict the tenant and re-rent. We got there and all was looking good until the police showed up and said they have no authority and that we must get a court order of some sort. That we should not even enter the apartment because then the tenant could claim we took his valuable positions which seemed like a pretty good idea to me.

At the end of the day we still have a missing tenant and when we get back from vacation and Yang gets back from a business trip I guess we will get that court order and I can write Part II of this story.