Membership of the WASP Club has its privileges. While the rank and file endure a chilly Lanzhou afternoon, we sit in grand style in the Lanzhou Legend Hotel. Ron Goodwin (is that the theme from High Chaparral?) is playing on the hotel-wide sound system. Above the lobby a huge, and I mean HUGE, chandelier hangs. The three-tiered entrance hall is decorated with tapestries and ivy, and populated with bellhops dressed in grey.
There seems to be an inordinate number of staff at work here. Earlier on, when we dined on cheeseburgers in the Tiffany Restaurant, we were waited on hand and foot by waiters and flunkies. There was even someone on hand to refill our coffee cups every time we took a mouthful. While we ate, we read through copies of last Sunday’s Morning Post, a Hong Kong daily. Not much of note seems to have happened in the world lately. America is still crusading in Haiti. A train crash in Kent killed five people. Wet, Wet, Wet are number three in the UK album charts, and Marlon Brando has published a memoir entitled Brando, Songs My Mother Taught Me.
*****
A brief description of yesterday’s events are in order. Although we went to sleep on Monday night, “…secure in the knowledge that Monday would find us at journey’s end…” we didn’t in fact reach Lanzhou until 4pm. We awoke to a landscape gripped in a freezing storm. Light, frozen snow sifted down from a slate-coloured sky and clung to the bare soil and to the clothes of the occasional huddled figure. Lanzhou smoked and steamed beside a long curve in the Yellow River as the train glided with irritating slowness towards the station. After disembarking and extracting ourselves from the crowds leaving the station, we walked for about half an hour to the Lanzhou Hotel, an imposing grey building opposite the hotel in which I now write this. We checked into a double room which, at ￥165, was quite a hefty outlay, but included in its tatty grandeur was a bath in which we wallowed like otters. Shiningly clean, we ventured out into the cold night air and dined on dumplings and beer, then walked back to the hotel amid flurries of snow.
From the information folder at the Lanzhou Hotel comes the following requests, or warnings.
3) NO ONE SHOULD REMOVE OR DISASSEMBLE THE EQUIPMENT PROVIDED BY THE HOTEL, NOR LEND IT OUT…
4) ACCORDING TO THE FIRE CONTROL REGULATIONS OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, THE FOLLOWING SHOULD BE OBSERVED:
1) NO DRUNKEN BRAWLS, GAMBLING, DRUG-TAKING, PROSTITUTION OR ADULLERY ARE ALLOWED IN THE HOTEL, NOR SHOULD ANY PORNOGRAPHIC OR SUPERSTITIOUS BOOKS AND PICTURES BE CIRCULATED.
2) NO WEAPONS, AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, POISONOUS OR RADIOACTIVE ARTICLES ARE ALLOWED IN.
3) DON’T MAKE LOUD NOISES THAT MAY DISTURB OTHER GUESTS AND PUBLIC ORDER.
4) DON’T USE ELECTRIC STOVES, PANS OR OVENS, OR ANY OTHER ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES.
5) PLEASE DON’T KEEP A LARGE QUANTITY OF INFLAMMALLES IN THE ROOM, OR WASH THINGS IN COMBUSTIBLE LIQUIDS, OR BURN THINGS IN THE BUILDINGS OR PARKING AREAS.
6) TO ENABLE GUESTS TO PROPERLY WORK AND REST, NO DANCES ARE TO BE HELD IN HOTEL ROOMS.
7) PLEASE LOOK AFTER YOUR CHILDREN CAREFULLY AND DON’T LET THEM RUN ABOUT CHASING EACH OTHER.
8) BIRDS, POULTRY OR ANIMALS ARE NOT ALLOWED IN THE ROOM.
YOUR OFFORTS IN OBSERVING THE ABOVE-MENTIONED RULES WILL BE APPRECIATED. THOSE WHO REFUSE TO COOPERATE AND VIOLATE THE RULES WILL BE FINED AND ORDERED TO LEAVE. SERIOUS CASES WILL BE MADE ANSWERABLE TO THE LAW.
*****
Over afternoon tea – chocolate cake, cream sponge, and real Lipton tea – we write letters and gradually relax. I feel a cold coming on, sore throat, and chills, which is no surprise, considering the amount of dreadful coughing and spitting that goes on in China. We retire to our separate dorm rooms at the Lanzhou Hotel for a couple of hours’ rest. I listen to the Manic Street Preachers for a while. Linda writes letters, seated alone at a large square table in her empty dorm.
Before we go out for something to eat, we arrange a change of rooms, as Linda, with some justification, feels uncomfortable in an empty room at the far end of a long corridor. For an extra ￥8 each, we get beds in a three-bed room with a TV and a basin. Out on the street, we fill up with delicious dumplings washed down with Pí jiù (beer). By the time we get back to the hotel, my sore throat is really biting, so I take a hot steamy shower, then go to bed, dosed up on aspirin, and with a hot orange juice which Linda has made for me.
Basically, however, we spent a sleepless night, me with my cold, Linda with a stomach upset, and the continuous noise from the street, the corridor, and the building site across the road.
CurseOfTheTraveller 