I shall send along any pictures today. The metaphor in my previous email is about the long and arduous journey she might have undertaken and the underwhelming response that she might have received once in her desired position. It was amusing only, i’m sure it is not accurate.
I’m becoming rather bored of my daily descriptions, I do hope that they are doing something for you still. This morning we got up too early again, and they did not have eggs for breakfast. From my perspective, it is increasingly obvious that this is a very new hotel, with barely any organisational structures in place. That is not to say that this is acceptable, only that the exclamation “how does anyone still come here? You can see that they don’t have any prizes on the wall like other hotels do” is not very constructive, nor does it make any sense. I’m afraid that even this “seasonal” traveller remains unable to get his head around modern travel, or how one might look up the age of a hotel. Also “yeah and its so dark” AGAIN.
Once this trauma was over we were shuttled to Xi’an museum, which, to Xi’an’s credit, was actually a rather good museum. I’ll send you some pictures from this as well. It was a collection that led you through each Chinese dynasty, from the Neanderthals to the Tang’s. We were then driven to lunch on college street (a street selling calligraphy equipment from end to end) which was delicious. The villagers once again picked their way through the inferior Western Chinese food, filling their bowls with tea and washing the oil off each morsel. Another kaffufle as they realised that the choi they had ordered was cold. They will never ever willingly eat cold food. Similarly, if an egg yolk shows any sign of not being completely solid, it is untouchable in their eyes. In a land where nothing is necessarily sanitary, it is understandable. But that does not prevent the entire experience from being frustrating to witness. We had a fish which was covered in a sweet and sour sauce and filled with tiny tiny bones. What could have been a shame I took as a sport, dutifully making my way through an unreasonable amount of fish flesh and creating a mountain of bones.
After lunch we were to drive to “the parades” which I suspected might appear to function more as “promenades”, but I have truly given up. It rained and I only pottered around outside briefly.
We returned to the hotel at around 1pm, which I noted with exasperation. We really did not have to get up at 6. I left the hotel to go and see what the convenience stores offered without someone breathing down my neck. I promptly pissed off a store assistant by paying for a 10 yuan ice tea and cake with a 100 yuan note and made a hasty exit. I made my way down the street for as long as I had the guts to (would they check to see if I had left the lobby?), walking through a wet market in flip flops (a dumb idea – the dirt is all up the back of my legs even as I type this). I sat back down in the lobby. It was just gone 3. And back up again, off to see the pagoda which maps says is a 15 minute walk.
It was closed and I didn’t feel like scaling the fence to witness the gardens was worth getting shot over. China really does feel like a place where this could happen?
Yours,
Kirsten
A little bit of a Hou 