When we lived in Tienmou many years ago, our neighbours upstairs were broken into just before Chinese New Year. Turns out they had stashed a lot of cash at home and then gone out.

They didn’t have any kind of home alarm, there was no security in the building, and it was mid-afternoon. I wasn’t that familiar with my neighbors that I recognized their voices. But I definitely heard something mid-afternoon that sounded like a lock being broken.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until much later. But what little I heard would not have helped much. I do believe that their apartment was targeted by someone who knew that they weren’t home. Otherwise other apartments in the building would also have been broken into. We weren’t then, even though we were on the lower floor. Weird.