I arrived in Shanghai yesterday evening, and was picked up by a representative for the school, which I will be attending for a month to have Chinese browbeaten into me. He drove me to what is to be my hotel for the next 4 days before I move into student accommodation. I checked into my FAB-U-LOUS hotel, but found looks can be deceiving. I got one of the pre-renovation rooms... which means stained carpets and an air-conditioning unit on its last legs. I’ve got flip-flops to deal with carpet issues (hey, I’ve travelled NZ and Australia in hostels, been pissed on, shagged under... I’ve seen a few things to make me NEVER travel without my trusty sole-mates ever again). HOWEVER, when its 39C+ outside, double glazing is a myth and you’re on the “sunny side” of the hotel... you don’t want a doddering air-conditioning making it worse!
I called reception, they sent a maintenance guy and a bellman with about 5 words of English between them. So I gamely showed them my sweat stains, the supposed in-room air-con control set to 12C, pointed at the air-con grille and shook my head no while pretending to shiver. Maybe you had to be there, but thinking back they might also have interpreted my charades-like acting as “I am delirious with fever and the sound of the groaning machine is causing me to have convulsions”. Nonetheless, maintenance guy climbed into the ceiling, they chatted some more, they laughed some more... THIS is precisely why I want to learn to at least recognise rudimentary Chinese words...in this case the following might have been bandied about while I stood sweatily by: stupid, spoiled, foreigner, con-her-out-of-lots-of-money-for-5-star-hotel-with-crappy-room-in-building-that-looks-nice. The maintenance guy disappeared and came back with a room-thermometer and pointed out that, if he held it right in front of the lisping aircon grille, it was indeed a lovely temperature of 26.4 degrees. So, what exactly was I complaining about?Never mind. I gave up and thought – I’ll go to bed, drench their duvet, and then ask again to be moved in the morning when I’m most likely to run into some English-speaking personnel at the reception.
This morning, housekeeping arrived in the form of 2 kindly smiling ladies. They looked over the room, decided what they needed to do, and then made me sit down with 2 review forms for service pointing at their nametags and proffering a pen. I pointed out that they hadn’t actually done anything yet, it might look suspicious if I just wrote one sentence with their name in the last section of a 3 page review, moreover if I wrote 2 reviews on the same morning in the same manner... speaking no English beyond “clean now yes”, my argumentation met as-good-as-deaf ears and I figured I would have to write a sentence or two in order to bargain my way to clean towels. My educated guess (duh) would be that they get some kind of bonus for every favourable review with their name on it. Or maybe they just get to keep their jobs. Either way, I succumbed to the coercion cum blackmail and happily traded inane prose to the likes of “Luly Wang* was very efficient and helpful when I asked her to clean my room” for a re-stock of diet coke in my mini bar. After all, I need more icy cans to cuddle up to in my hot room! (*names have been altered to protect the identity of the perpetrators)
And to top it all off? I paid for a full day's Internet access at exhorbitant rates so I could be sure to catch up with all my e-mail, facebook notifications, oh and finally my blog... only to find that all of the aforementioned appears to be blocked / censored. I managed to get into the blog posts while not being able to view the website itself... but don't tell me if anything looks off, I can't read any e-mails! Gotta love it. :)
Or MAYBE that's just the Big Brother's way of ensuring I get off my lazy (non-reducing) arse and actually go see something of Shanghai instead of holing up behind a PC in a too-warm hotelroom. They might actually have a point you know...
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