Home in Hangzhou, China
I am back in Hangzhou as happy as a clam in my room at the Xi Hu Hotel. This time I was very lucky and got room 2329, which overlooks West Lake. I’ve been told this hotel will eventually be torn down to make way for a modern, expensive hotel, but for now, it’s my home. The room is dirty, grungy, and ugly, to be sure, but the view is wonderful and I have everything I need. There are communal hot showers available most of the day in the next building. I think they’re actually for the staff, but they let me come in too.
The room has no toilet, and the walls are crumbling around the cobwebs, but it has the look of a once elegant lady now dilapidated from lack of care. Instead of wallpaper, a flower design is painted up and down the walls. The room is an odd, nondescript shape and was perhaps once the bridal suite because it has a double bed and the double happiness symbol of marriage decaying on the wall.
At night, the unmelodious attempts at karaoke intrude rudely and loudly into my room that sits above the speaker that is outside to attract customers. But somehow that seems to fit the overall atmosphere, and it’s bearable if I plug my radio into my ears. Plus, I have toasty warm hands and feet with a small electric blanket and non-leaking water bottle. And all this I can have for the affordable equivalent of $5 a night.
Anywhere else, I might consider living like this slum living, but I love it. I take walks along West Lake just across the street. Occasionally I get up early enough to watch the old people doing tai chi exercises at sunrise. I enjoy just looking out my window, which sits near the treetops. Strangely, I have sometimes imagined having a room like this in Montmartre in Paris where I could write and be creative. If I don’t find work, I can imagine staying here and writing my book while watching spring turn the tree branches outside my window to green.
This is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, taken from my travel journal on Feb. 11, 1992. The Xi Hu Hotel was eventually razed and a modern, much less charming and much more expensive hotel replaced it.
Tags: China; West Lake; Xi Hu Hotel in Hangzhou, Hangzhou, Travel
