Linhai and the Light Oxygen Hotel

We caught the Very Fast Train yesterday and arrived in Linhai in three hours. It would have taken about ten hours were it not for being able to whizz along at 250kmh.  It didn't feel that fast from inside the train but I noticed anything interesting spotted from the window went by in a flash. Travelling this way is not as gentle and ruminative as old fashioned train journeys can be.

We are staying in the Anman Light Oxygen Hotel and it is funny. Our room is 999 and Fredi and Finn have 899.  They are obviously the honeymoon suites with sex toys by the beds and candelabras with little lamps instead of candles.  The furniture is imitation French regency with ornate legs and a plush buttoned sofa. There is a gracious modern bath and only glass separates the bathroom fro the rest of the room  which makes using the toilet disconcertingly public. I wonder what a shy honeymooner would feel about it.  On the glass is written something in Chinese and then in English "Dream Love Memory". The heavy window curtains swish open by themselves when you enter the room.

The panorama that the window looks out on to is rather cheerless. Shabby old four storey units crowd each other and their windows are black squares. In the distance are some mountains veiled in smog. Spiking up in the middle distance are seven groups of tower blocks and maybe because I've been living in one they seem more optimistic than the rest of this still scene.

Breakfast is unexpected but quite nice. Hot orange juice and a hard boiled egg with a choice of stir fried vegetables, not totally meat free however. I realise how hard it must be for Fredi to get anything Vegan in a public eating place.She let us eat alone last night and went and played on games in glass boxes where you try to catch a soft toy with a little crane. It is cheap but very difficult to win and rouses all the gambling instincts pertaining to poker machines. "I want that cat," says Fredi, "the one with the curly tail. Its mine"  But she didn't get it.

We went to the old town yesterday where there is an ancient city wall.  There was a very discouraging flight of steps stretching  up to a pagoda and at its foot a musician and a singer producing amplified songs.  An old man and his friend were swinging a heavy red rope for two kids to skip.  He was laughing at us so I took one end of the rope and swung for the children too.  It was a nice feeling, the heaviness of the rope and seeing the pleasure the kids took in their competence at this old fashioned game.

We wandered the lanes that made up the old town and saw gleaming orange bits of pork and duck and baskets of cooked egg yolks (What happened to the whites, I wondered) So many strange foods amidst stalls selling jade and pearls.  I bought a little green teapot. We found a little bar with a hipster ambiance and craft beers called after the Beatles.  I had a gin and tonic with an everlasting steel ice cube in it.  It was expensive and against his better judgment Finn asked the barman for a restaurant .suggestion. With lots of swapping of phones for interpretation purposes the needful knowledge was transferred and we got a Didi (the same as an Uber) which took us a long way to a huge hotel with a vast empty dining hall laid out as though for a conference.  Several kind waitresses tried to help us understand the menu even though we were a rather shabby looking bunch, very out of place there. Fredi and Finn were getting uneasy about leaping into the gastronomic dark. Eventually we escaped because they didn't accept credit cards but only used the ubiquitous phone pay system.  They urged us to come back with cash next day and gave us some snacks and insisted on paying for our taxi. Such kindness.

Money is both amazingly difficult and extraordinarily easy here. Locals (including F and F) have an app on their phones which allows them to tap the funny little cardboard squares with black and white barcodes on them that all businesses have.  You just kiss the square with your phone and pow - the transaction is complete.  Street traders and even beggars, I am told, have these squares thus effectively sidestepping the banking system.  Credit cards, however work hardly anywhere.  Cash is OK but its a palaver o get out of banks so we are clocking up a debt to Finn with his magic open sesame phone.

We went back to the old town which has been tenderly resurrected with paving now covering the open sewer that used to run there.  There are quite a lot of old people here. I saw a quartet playing cards and one cheeky old lady poked Grant in the tummy and cackled merrily.  Apart from the people manning the little shops that lined the narrow streets there were few people there.  Grant likened it to a theme park not yet open to the public and I know what he meant.  But three acts of kindness made us feel good.
1) We rang the bell to the police station by accident because the English translation above the door said "Information Centre" and we wanted a map. The door opened and we saw wall of screens showing different views of the town and several uniformed policemen. Clearly they expected us to have information for them rather than the other way round and once this was cleared up we turned and headed away.  In just a few seconds though a policeman rushed up behind us with a brown envelope containing a lovely map and three postcards which he'd found for us.
2) Grant was hellbent on finding a "bubble drink", some kind of liquid sago pudding drunk through a fat straw. Someone gave him an orange to console him when he couldn't.
3. F and F wanted to walk on the wall round the town but G and I were tired and wanted to stay put.  We found a hotel and though we could perhaps have tea and a place to rest. The hotel didn't do tea but encouraged us to rest in their nice outdoor lobby and provided cups of hot water. They were very solicitous and sent Fredi in our direction when she came to pick us up.

One other moment was good too. I caught the attention of a grandmother with her little grandson and went over to him and made him smile while she spoke Chinese which Fredi told me meant "Nice grandma, nice grandma".

This whistlestop tour is good in many ways - no emotional investment - pure observation but I am beginning to crave being able to understand more and being able to penetrate the strange script and the mindset that gives rise to its images. But I think I've learnt an awful lot about being an outsider and have huge sympathy for anyone Chinese who lands untutored in out space.