We are victims of the hutong vampire that haunts the narrowed laneways inside the second ring of old Beijing.
Some say she was once a bright girl named Jenny, who worked in her father’s fruit shop in south Gulou in the 1920’s. Yet another tale says she was called Holly (now called Jenny), and Dongsi was where she was a cleaner in the 1940’s.
There seem to be many tales, but they’ve been obfuscated and lost, like her original face, through changes to hide her predatory essence behind the the deft hands of plastic surgery.
She charges exorbitant amounts for her many homes, and though they may be decent, other agents are at least cheaper, provide a television, and have heard rumours of her dark nature.
She tries to charge us 10,000 per month even though there was a dreadful drain smell permeating from the bathroom shower, and her ghouls came not once but thrice to fix it, yet blaming the odious stench on other things.
We managed to negotiate it down 25 per cent, which made us feel like this person in question was of a decent nature, and not filled with avarice.
We were decieved. She seemed to have an excuse for many things or evaded an issue.
In fairness to the vampire, she seemed to once remember her human self, and sent her ghouls to fix minor things but whenever a problem arose, she would send a picture of her on a drip saying she was ill.
However, these pictures were originating from her plastic laboratory, an expensive penchant she has for hiding her identity, just as she had changed her name after multiple legal debacles.
Her team of ghouls would also waste our time, say they’d come Monday at noon, not arrive all day, and I’d light the beacons to again request their aid, and again, I’d wait Tuesday during my free time and work time, and they’d not come, and Wednesday again, and then they’d appear on a Thursday when we weren’t there.
And the ghouls were argumentative and kept saying they were coming. This proved to be a particular problem when the vampire changed our Wi-Fi without our consent or informing us, and though it was faster, it became prone to continuous instability, requiring several more weekly waits for the ghouls to appear and repair.
The house also sustained water damage during the summer, and we’ve sent numerous pictures attest this fact to our vampiric liege.
She also forgot we lived in the house at one point asking who I was, and this makes perfect sense for what I’m about to say now:
We got a text from her two weeks ago asking us to hide. I called her and asked why? She said the landlord and “an official” (love the opaque answer) would be there to inspect the house at 4pm. She explained we weren’t meant to be there and had to hide.
This house wasn’t meant to be rented to foreigners but it turns put she does it anyway, because it’s more profitable, even if she’s caught, then not doing it. We are under the impression the landlord doesn’t know.
We grabbed everything foreign: booked, magnets, plugs, pictures, passports, animals, eeeeeverything, and dragged it out into two suitcases and waited by our canal.
She called us and then said we had to leave in two weeks, which was 12 days ago, the house was being taken, we weren’t meant to be living there so she lied. We learned she has fake contracts for the Chinese landlords, they don’t meet their tenants who aren’t Chinese, charges too much, and she knew this was happening because she thought we’d already vacated this house but our contract wasn’t up until the end of October because she’s perpetrating this illicit scam with many foreigners.
We’ve spent 12 days in a flurry trying to secure a new place, and other human agents have heard of this vampire and detest her.
I even saw her trying to sell cats for thousands and thousands of yuan. She’s a money-grubbing vampire and best avoid her grasp lest ye get screwed.
She wants us to leave the house tomorrow so her workers can inspect before she gives back the deposit… I don’t think so.
Yours sincerely,