This is your first trip into the bowels of China. You need a shower, having spent the last 24 hours on flights, in lines, waiting, eating bad airline food, and checking your watch. Are we there yet? Finally, you’ve arrived and have been delivered to your hotel.
You are very impressed upon entering the factory city’s best 3 Star Chinese hotel. You’re amazed at the marble… floor to ceiling… impeccably clean and polished to a high luster. The young bell boy struggles to carry your over-packed suitcase & briefcase as he leads you to your deluxe, $45 room. He knows that “westerners” may tip him 10-20 rmb which will double his wage for the day…. Who needs 9th grade, he thinks.
The first thing you notice upon entering your room is that the bell boy places your plastic entry card in a slot by the door and this effectively turns on the electricity in your room… a sort of master switch. As expected, you flip him 20 rmb, about $3.00 and he smiles from ear to ear and then disappears into the hallway.
Long trip… your both exhausted and elated to finally be here. You begin to turn lights on in your room via a series of toggle switches all wired to your night stand. The TV comes on when you flip the TV switch. You grab the remote thinking that you might be able to catch some CNN. A quick flip through the 20 or so channel reveals nothing remotely close to CNN or any other TV you’re familiar with. You find several Chinese news channels with scenes from hospitals, public works projects and what looks like government meetings. Several more channels reveal dramas set in historic dynasty periods… one channel looks like an infomercial in which application of a cream seems to magically make deep scars disappear before your eyes. There’s even a cartoon in which tweety bird says he saw a puddy tat in Chinese.
Your closer examination of your room reveals some pretty significant stains in the worn camel colored carpet. Your bed is made up with a dingy white blanket and four cheap foam pillows. You sit on the bed and find it to be extra, extra… rock-like firm. Across from your bed are two chairs with a small coffee table… nice. On the coffee table is a pot you can use to boil water. Soon you’ll learn how quickly water can boil, and plastic can melt… when you put 220 volts directly to it.
Your bathroom is all marble, there’s a drain in the floor. The reason for this will become apparent with your first shower. That shower will also teach you to appreciate a western luxury called “water pressure,” something you’ve taken for granted until now.
As you settle in, you open the hotel service guide to find what amenities the hotel has to offer. Must be a big place, you think. The hotel brochure boasts a health center, shopping arcade, laundry, billiard room… this place has it all. Little do you know now, that most of this doesn’t exist or is grossly exaggerated.
The shopping arcade is a 4 foot counter selling teapots near the business center, which is a Chinese girl, a fax machine and one old PC. The health club and billiard room don’t exist and you’ll feel like you’ve gone deaf and dumb when you ask about them.
You attempt to call home with the dialing instructions you wrote down before leaving home. With each attempt, you’re greeted by something in Chinese… what could be wrong? You might later learn that the hotel must physically turn on your long distance service so that you can call home.
Welcome to China.
(I wrote this in the 90’s before cell phones. Everything else is still the same!)
Untamed Traveler 