ICE CUBES
March 2005
It was snowing when we arrived in Dalian on March 1st.
People from the school met us at the airport, and we took a taxi to a
hotel. The traffic didn’t seem too bad and the city seemed surprisingly
normal despite the incomprehensible Chinese characters that adorned the
buildings and billboards. We couldn’t move into our apartment until the
next day because it was being cleaned. So, for our first night in Dalian,
we stayed in the Yu Yuan Hotel. It cost $12 for the night. For that, we
got a diligent bell hop, a clean room with two beds, a TV with an
English-language news channel, a view of another building, a well-stocked
bathroom including shower caps, toothbrushes, combs, two packets labeled
“sex hygiene,” two “high quality condoms,” a bag of douche, plenty of
towels, little bottles of shampoo, and soaps the size of pats of butter.
The “Hotel Diractory” proclaimed that the Yu Yuan Hotel was the “Pearl of
Dalian” and included instructions that “Those who carry guns or swords
should register with the security department for the proper safeguard.” The
“diractory" also warned that there should be “no gambling, smuggle, drug
taking or gangster fighting in the hotel.” Furthermore, it made a very
clear rule that, “Except for the range of the swimming pool, please do not
walk naked or in clippers in the hotel.”
I needed to get some ice cubes while we were in the
hotel to keep our typhoid vaccination medicine cold. Armed only with the
word for “ice cubes” in the Chinese phrasebook, I went down to the desk
clerk in the lobby. I smiled and said, “Ni hao” which means “hello” and is
the only thing I can say in Chinese with any confidence. I pointed at the
word for ice cubes. She said many words. I stood there smiling. She
called over a manager-looking person. They said lots of words. I stood
there smiling. The manager-looking person got on the phone and said lots of
words. The bell hop appeared. He didn’t say lots of words, he just
listened to the manager-looking person, then went upstairs. I stood there
smiling. The desk clerk said lots of words to me, and smiled. After a few
minutes, the bell hop came down the stairs with a bowl of ice cubes for me.
I said, “xie xie” which means “thank-you” (the only other thing I know how
to say in Chinese), and triumphantly returned to the room wielding my ice
cubes.
We were hungry. We put on our coats, went down the
elevator, the bell hop opened the door for us, and we were on the streets of
Dalian looking for a restaurant. The problem with China is that all the
shops look like Chinese restaurants. They all have brightly colored signs
(usually red) with Chinese characters (usually yellow). So what appeared to
be a restaurant would turn out to be a shop selling PVC pipes or electrical
wire. We wandered around the snowy streets for a while until we eventually
found a shop with a paper sign taped outside that read, “English Menu.
American, Canadian Teachers Welcome.” A girl appeared at the door, smiled,
gestured, and said, “Come in” which was deceptive because it was soon
apparent that she couldn’t say anything else in
English. The menu was
indeed in English, but ordering food was still confusing. I ordered three
stir fried vegetables, and Zac ordered some boneless chicken. What we
received was a plate of chicken wings (with lots of bones) and a plate of
stir fried shredded carrots, celery, pea pods along with two bowls of rice.
We tried to order bottled water to drink. The waitress shook her head. We
ended up with Sprite. By the end of the meal, we’d finished off about half
of the vegetables, most of the rice and only two of the chicken wings. It
was hard to eat them with chop sticks. Zac got up and went to the register,
where they magically inferred that he wanted a take-away box. We walked
back to our hotel and said, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
We didn’t feel too jet-lagged, so we decided to try
and stay awake until bedtime. We felt it was appropriate to watch the “Lost
in Translation” DVD on our laptop. We stayed awake through the movie and
fell asleep to the sound of firecrackers. We never
did find the swimming pool.
