What kind of hotel is this, anyway?
I responded to a topic with this title on another board, and somebody called by submission the post of the week.¬† It is a completely unofficial commendation, but still, I like any praise I get.¬† Here’s what I wrote.¬† It’s a true story, from my days in Shenzhen.
… the title of the post reminds me of a story: Once when I lived in Shenzhen I went to a blind massage parlor. I was being massaged when I heard this guy enter the room next to mine. Whenever the masseuse came in he started yelling at her to leave, and then started shouting to the other customer in the room with me, “Hey, are you from Harbin? I’m from Harbin,” etc., etc. The man with me was like, “Man, he’s drunk. This is really embarrassing,” so when the drunk kept talking, finally my masseuse yelled over the barrier that the other man in the room with me was sleeping. The drunk man went on shouting this and that, yelling whenever a masseuse entered the room. Then we heard snoring. Then we heard explosive vomiting noises, and the sound of puke splashing onto the ground from waist height (the height of the massage table). It was horrible enough for me with the sound and the stink of bai jiu, but even worse for the blind people who almost passed out from the smell. Then we heard the guy fall off the massage table, and go SPLAT down into his own vomit.
At that point, my masseuse was like, “Let’s get out of here,” and we went down the hall to another room. I heard the cleaning girl wail in disgust as she was sent into the room to clean up. Then I asked my massuse what exactly the the drunk man’s deal was, and what he was shouting about. She said he had wandered into the massage parlor believing it was a hotel, and that’s why he was yelling whenever anyone entered a room. I couldn’t understand him because his voice was too slurred, but she said he was yelling things like, “I don’t want a xiaojie. I just want to go to sleep! Get out of here! What kind of hotel is this, anyway!”