我第二次来凤凰玩儿

The neon light was shining like the star over Bethlehem.  The Yin Pin Lou Bing Guan was going to be our saving grace.  We had followed it from the East and were prepared to bring gifts of great worth.  I was as wet as I could be when I entered the346^th (ish), and hopefully last, hotel to ask if they had any vacancies.  The drops fell heavily outside; the air was thick with their ­­­­menace.  It was either this hotel or a sleepless night on the street.  We'd already been rejected by most of the hotels in Fenghuang because, well, great minds run on the same track.  Evidently our unquestionably ingenious idea to spend the weekend in a touristy town was shared by everyone within a 3-province radius.  I made a small note to myself to stay home for the tomb-sweeping festival in the future—which will be easy to follow through on since I will be in a place where no-one knows what tomb-sweeping day is.

The woman working at the desk diligently ignored me until I turned on my inner Chinese person and claimed her attention.  Gone was the polite foreigner standing around waiting to be helped.  She'd been replaced by a demanding and aggressive customer.  To my delight the manager told me she had a room downstairs and even offered a reasonable price (so I thought before I saw the room).  Rejoicing about having a bed, we descended ever lower into a cavernous basement, filled with broken furniture and spider webs and I'm sure a few friendly ghosts.  I tried not to let the stink of the toilets choke me as I entered the black hole that was to become our room.  Water spurted up from the floor tiles as I stepped on them but the bed looked clean and inviting.  I turned to thank the boss and ask her for our key.

"Key?  We'll watch your stuff, no problem."

"No, I really need a key.  We want to lock our room."

"Why?  I'll watch it.  You don't need a key."

"Really I do…pretty please with sugar on top?" (well I can translate that phrase into Chinese but I'm not sure anyone understands it).

"Ugh.  Fine.  I'll bring you your key."

She returned to the burrow we'd claimed with our key and the promise of a new and less-flooded room the next night.  Satisfied, I jumped under the covers and faded away to the land where hotel rooms do not smell like urine and I can occasionally fly.  Throughout the night I was aware of a dripping sound, but since the entire floor was enveloped with water I assumed it was a normal occurrence and not worth my attention.  Until.  I woke before seven with the realization that my left side was sopping wet and getting wetter.  The drips landed close enough to my head to jar me awake one by one.

Robbed of the option of sleeping, I ventured out to shop and explore.  The sky was dull and flat like all the life had been taken out of it, but the rays of the blooming youcai beamed up from the ground as though light is supposed to come from below in this place where everything seems upside down.

I stumbled on a café overlooking the river and spent the next part of the day bonding with a latte and a heaven-sent book.  It was almost too good for words.  (almost—because a word-lover like me could never fully commit to that sentence).  After the 9 hours worth of hungry-to-the-point-of-almost-passing-out, spitting, smoking, smashed up against people train ride to get here, the moment crystallized in my mind as near perfection.  I appreciated the coffee and book so much more because of the hours spent uncomfortably leading up to that oasis.  I wonder if sometimes we need to experience things we hate in order to be grateful for the blessings.

Later that evening, when I returned to the hotel to inquire about the new room we'd been promised I was met by a shrewd and argumentative manager.  Her eyes shifted from left to right and back again as she struggled to make up excuses for why we couldn't move after all.  She was trying to condemn us to the flooded stink hole again and I regretted, not for the first time, my too trusting nature.  First she told us she'd tell us if there was room.  Then she said there wouldn't be room and I asked for my money back—I'm slowly improving my manipulation skills these days.  Then she agreed to find us a room and we followed her up the stairs.  She said our new room would be on the fourth floor, which was only a half-lie.

Balanced in the doorway to the 4^th floor rooms was a shifty ladder leading up to a cubby.  Built into the ceiling, our new room was the exact opposite of our former underground dwelling.  The ladder completely blocked entrance into the rest of the hall and rocked when we climbed it, but it led to a room I could breathe deeply in and a dry floor and bed.  I closed my eyes and thanked the cloud-covered stars for those small blessings.

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine."
-Caskie Stinnett