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Published: August 6th 2007
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Like most mornings, I woke-up on our second day in Xi’an before Gina and found myself craving a cup of coffee. Not wanting to stir
Sleeping Beauty, I pulled on some pants and wandered off to find my caffeine fix at our hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet. As I entered the banquet room a few minutes later, I scanned my surroundings to find most tables occupied by vacationing Chinese, who were loudly bantering away in Mandarin between open mouth chews of their food. A perfect trifecta of my pet peeves, I quickly found myself annoyed at the tactless bunch and wanted nothing more than to grab my coffee and return to our room. Unfortunately, the waitress had other plans.
Unable to locate a self-service beverage station, I approached the woman standing by the coffee pot and politely inquired, “May I have a cup of coffee?”
She replied through broken English, “Sit down,” while motioning towards an empty table.
“No, I’d like to take the coffee to my room,” I countered while pointing towards the door.
“No room!” she snapped in response.
Confused as to why I couldn’t take a cup of complimentary coffee to my room, I
persisted, “I’d like to take the coffee to my room and I’ll bring back the cup when I’m done.”
Having spoken too swiftly for the woman to comprehend, she instead repeated her earlier instruction, “No room!”
Now thoroughly peeved, and in no mood to deal with insubordinate wait staff, I simply reverted to the mentality of a toddler while raising my voice, “Why?”
Unable to fully articulate the reasons behind her silly regulation, the woman grew flustered before rambling off in Mandarin to a nearby coworker. Growing more irritated by her blatant mocking, I raised my voice yet again while repeating her malformed directive, “Why,
No Room?”
Finally at her wits end, she poured a cup of coffee and handed it over to me. The silence in the room was deafening as the previously engaged tourists now focused on the brouhaha transpiring at the coffee station. Satisfied with myself, I simply walked past the approaching manager and ignored her attempt to engage me in conversation.
All of that for a cup of coffee. Returning to the room with the spoils of battle, I couldn’t wait to share the ordeal with Gina. Having encountered several ridiculous
situations in Asia herself, I hoped she would commiserate to calm me down - she couldn’t have been more indifferent as she struggled to pull herself from a slumber.
Unsure of our plan for the day, I nursed my 4 ounces of energy while perusing the Internet for activities in Xi’an, while Gina showered. When she emerged from the bathroom twenty minutes later, I shared my discovery with her - Xi’an unsurprisingly lacks attractions outside of the terracotta soldier museum and a few random pagodas. It didn’t take long before we exchanged a look:
down day. Not satiated by the meager cup of coffee I had nursed, I somehow persuaded Gina to accompany me back to the buffet as she clothed herself. “Do I have to fight the Chinese woman for you?” she asked playfully as we left the hotel room.
The woman from my earlier encounter did her best to avoid us throughout breakfast.
Wanting to wrap-up my unfinished blog before venturing out into the smoggy chaos of downtown Xi’an, we returned to the room. Two hours passed before I finally stirred Gina from her relapsed slumber and insisted we do
something with the remainder
of our day. Having spotted a post office on our way back from the Muslim Quarter the previous evening, I suggested we mail home some items we’d been lugging around since Japan before exploring the surrounding area. Now easily past noon, we concurred that lunch took a precedent to errands and decided to eschew Chinese food in favor of the Golden Arches.
Gina was relieved when she spotted the
English Assistance badge next to the woman’s nametag at the near capacity McDonalds. Having not eaten beef at a McDonalds in over 10 years, I reluctantly ordered a Big Mac mainly out of concern that my cryptic condiment desires would be lost in translation for any of the other items. As we sat eating the less than nutritious fare, I declared, “I know it’s sad, but I’m happy.”
Keen on accomplishing our errands, Gina and I didn’t dally long at lunch. We emerged into the Golden Week mass that packed the city center sidewalk and made a beeline for the post office, where to our surprise, we found the process of packing and shipping a package unbelievably efficient. The uniformed men behind the
Packing counter took our unwrapped items
and within a matter of minutes fashioned customized packaging for each - for a total of $15 Yuan ($2 US). Dumbfounded by the efficiency, Gina and I struggled to reason why such services aren’t offered in the States. The chore I had originally budgeted an hour for took less than 20 minutes.
Impressed by the ease with which we completed our souvenir shipping, we turned our attention to procuring a calling card. After parading around several cell phone shops, convenience stores and kiosks, we found ourselves back in the lobby of the post office scanning a beat up display case selling pork rinds, candy and what appeared to be calling cards. Unfortunately, the woman manning the counter was less than helpful once Gina and I started asking questions. We surmised the woman could not speak English, but that didn’t stop Gina from getting her panties in a bunch when the attendant shoed us away with a wave of her hand. Engaged in a stare-down, it took some coaxing to finally pry my livid wife from the counter.
Finally locating an electronics shop that advertised calling cards a short while later, I stood in puzzlement as the man behind
the counter fished into a fanny pack and produced a wad of cards. The shiftiness of the character and unease of the transaction should have been an obvious warning, but I willingly handed over 200 Yuan to pacify Gina, who by this point had lost her patience. It should have come as no surprise when we later tried the cards at our hotel and the pin numbers didn’t work - counterfeits.
Not wanting to repeat the previous evening’s ordeal with the
T.V. Dinner Chinese food at the hotel’s Cantonese restaurant, we instead decided to roll-the-dice with the buffet. We order a bottle of wine at extremely inflated prices and began to graze on the unexpectedly enjoyable fare. Winding down the gorge after three courses each, Gina and I finally noticed the different sized wine glasses populating other tables around us. Scanning the room a bit further, I sighted several patrons pouring wine from a glass decanter tucked away behind one of the food stations.
I’ll be damned. Dismayed by the waitress’ failure to mention the gratis wine when I ordered the ridiculously priced bottle earlier, Gina and I took it upon ourselves to indulge before calling it an
evening - we got our money’s worth.
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darby
non-member comment
you think...
the wine in that carafe was perhaps fermented from pork blood or something exotic? i doubt it was drinkable.