T A B L E_T A L K Traveling on a tight budget? Share your money-saving travel tips in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Check out barnesannoble.com's fabulous selection of travel book bargains! ___________________   R E C E N T L Y This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/08/99) Mother load By Tanya Shaffer An invitation to stay with a woman's family in West Africa opens the door to more than her home (01/07/99) The men who moil for gold By J. Kingston Pierce A century after the race for the Klondike gold fields, a hiker traces the argonauts' northward course (01/06/99) Vive la roller blade! By Susan Hack In Paris, Friday night has an all-new rite (01/05/99) Death in Antigua By Steve Kettmann A host family's tragedy tweaks the conscience of a traveler in Guatemala (01/04/99)   Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN | PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - Later, after settling into my room, I decided to repair to the wu ting -- the bar, I assumed -- for a cola. The stairway from the lobby echoed with "Ra-Ra-Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen!" and the Leader loitered near its head. "Going for a Coke," I said. "Hee-hee-hee!" I stopped. "Excuse me?" "Going to the wu ting for a Coke! Hee-hee-hee." The doors flew open and three red-vested, garlic-breathed waiters dragged me into a pitch-black dance hall. I fell forward -- there were steps -- and knocked my knees into a table, fumbling for the flashlight I had in my pocket. I turned it on, and my light danced over bottles of champagne, pyramids of peanuts, chintzy blouses and pancake-powdered faces, and then waned -- the batteries died. Shadows on the floor around me turned out to be couples slowly waltzing and pirouetting to the rapid-fire Swedish disco music. "Qing wen, yi ge Cola!" I shouted into the garlic stench bathing my left cheek. The waiters ignored my request but offered me a xiaojie, a girl, for 500 Yuan ($60 dollars) and started leading me toward a side room. I pulled away in search of the bar, stumbling into waltzers, stepping on sandaled toes, inhaling toilette water and sweat. I bounced from pirouetter to pirouetter with the waiters trailing after me, shouting about xiaojies. Finding no bar, I made for the crack of light that was the door, tripped my way back up the stairs and into the lobby. I retired Cokeless and fell into a fitful sleep. At 3 in the morning the phone bleated. I groped for it in the dark. "Hello?" The Bee Gees. A plaintive female squeal: "Wei! Wei!" "Wei?" "Xiaojie yao bu yao?" (You want a girl?) I slammed down the receiver. Within minutes jackhammering began on the street below, then buzz-sawing, then the unloading of bricks from the back of a truck. I lurched afoot and raced to the window: my room, it turned out, overlooked a night workshop. Just before dawn the buzz saws stopped. The Melon Hotel acquired, for the first time since midnight, an air of serenity, and I dozed off. But then outside my room there were giggles and coos, followed by the gurgling of sinuses being drained and hack-spits and the ker-plunks of sputum striking spittoons. Then ensued the whistles and honks of gases exiting private orifices. Keys rattled in doors all around me. The hall was filling with drunken men and their xiaojies, and over and over a singsong tintinnabulation reached my room: wu ting, wu ting. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The next day, remembering my sleepless night, I worked up enough spleen to demand a quieter room. I pounded the receptionist's bell. Inside the office behind the counter I saw a half-dozen female hotel functionaries applying eye shadow and lipstick in compact mirrors. I pounded again. A young woman peered from behind the doorjamb, adjusting her blue jacket and smiling meekly. She had a chiseled nose and a flowerbud mouth. Her teeth were porcelain white but with prominent incisors that lent her the alluring aspect of an Oriental vampiress. Ying was the name pinned to her jacket. "No way am I going to be bowled over by some charmer," I thought. "I have paid my money and I will demand service for it!" I steeled myself by conjuring up the past horrors of Communist rule around the world. In fact, I began my oration with a preamble on the Melon's status as the town's premier Communist accommodation (shouldn't they try to counter the image the West has?) and said that jackhammers and hookers and spittoons were a sad, sad reflection on the New China. Ying sighed. "There is much sadness in life, is there not?" "What?" I stuttered. I suddenly noticed she smelled of cinnamon. Ying caught her breath. "Grandpa fight with Chiang Kai-Shek and flee to Taiwan in 1949. Grandma so sad and we hear nothing of him, but Grandma wait year after year, alone in the village, watching the road for him. We cannot go to find him because of the political situation. Then in 1980 he write her a letter saying he married again. Grandma cries out and die of sadness holding his letter. Grandpa come back to China and cry on her grave for days and days and we cannot help and he say his life all sadness and pain." "Yes, well, look, I paid for this room and last night --" "The heart is like the sea, one day churning the next day calm. The way to be happy is to accept sadness and anger as the sea accept the storm." "Yes, but you see, I am outraged. I --" "Life pass like clouds over the moon. How old are you?" "Me? Thirty-seven." "Ahh, and no family! My heart is warm for my husband and my child. That is enough for me. To have my family warm. But you cannot have a warm heart without a family." "Is 37 so old?" "It is almost 40. We have a saying: At 40 a woman is dried grass but a man is a flower. You still have time for your life, happiness will come but you must be like the sea." I thanked her and went up to my room. The next time when the jackhammering started I slept through it. N E X T+P A G E | Come to the house