Good locals, bad locals

The other night the gas for my stove stopped working. Strange, because my hot water had gas. Also unfortunate, because I arrived home late from a long day of work, and I was eager to prepare myself a carb and protein fortified meal consisting of that classic, pasta and tomato sauce. I asked the security guard downstairs to call a repairperson, who arrived in 5 minutes with an assistant. In the meantime I arranged to dine with a similarly famished neighbor, who would bring an electric stove while I supplied the food and cooking.
The repairpeople disassembled the stove, and pointed out the area of the problem, saying that an important component would need to be replaced, at a cost of 160RMB. Lucky for me, they were prepared to complete the repair on the spot. But I was busy with dinner plans with my neighbor, so I told them I'd call the in the morning. Against my suggestion they closed up the nonfunctional stove.
Repairpeople having departed, I showed my neighbor the problem. There was electricity for the ignition spark, but no gas to light. She suggested changing the batteries in the stove.
"Stoves have batteries?". Sure enough, my stove is powered by two D batteries. I felt for sure it should have been connected into the apartment's electric network. (American readers: Do your gas stoves use batteries? I grew up with an electric stove, so unsure). My neighbor went on to suggest that the repairpeople might cheat me.
The next night, (last night) I purchased two batteries, 7RMB, replacing the old ones that turned out to power both the sparking function and a solenoid valve for the main gas line. The solenoid valve (or its controller) cuts out when the battery voltage falls below a certain level, although the batteries are still sufficient to generate the ignition sparks. Certainly intentionally, this is a safety measure to keep gas from flowing when batteries become so dead that the spark itself stops working and the manual gas valves (the knobs) are left on.
I replaced the batteries, and voila! . . . the stove still wasn't working. I remembered how eager the repairpeople were to put the stove together again the night before. I re-disassembled the stove, to find those crafty repairpeople had sabotaged the connector to the solenoid valve. ("Ah, Shenzhen . . . ") I reset it, and my stove was working fine again. (For you root-cause analysis people out there, to confirm my comprehension of the situation, I put in the old batteries again, and the stove was again non-functional). I wrote my neighbor to thank her profusely for her advice.
Moral: Choose good locals to make friends with, they counter the naughty ones who undoubtedly will find you.

My recollection of life in the north of China is that I would much less likely have this experience. Any northern readers care to comment?

Also, in writing this post, I'm concerned that Chinese grammatical structure is working its way into my written English use. Dissecting contract grammar in my last language session could be to blame. I'm a bit too close to the issue to be able to judge it from a distance, but I invite any appropriately bilingual reader to assess.