The Hotel on the Roof of the World Read Free

maintained that the scariest person in China is the Chinese taxi driver.
    They spend their nights chewing garlic plants and practising malodorous grunts.
    Never, never, sit in the back of the car. Firstly this annoys the taxi driver intensely (and you want to keep him as relaxed as possible). Secondly, he will spend long periods of time driving at 80 mph down small roads, with his head completely turned to the back of the car so that he can grunt something incomprehensible to you and breathe garlic in your direction.
    So, instead, make a quick move for the front seat. If you are fumbling around in the dark for the seat belt, don’t bother. There isn’t one. It is with some trepidation that you must then prepare yourself for the drivers’ death race to the airport.
    With one hand on the horn and the other at three o’clock on the steering wheel, so that he could swerve violently to the left or right with the minimum of effort and control, our car broadsided out of the Jin Jiang hotel car park, scattering early- morning road sweepers in its wake.
    Grey-clad cyclists on lightless black bicycles appeared from nowhere out of the grey background mist. We swerved to the left to avoid a certain collision, to find ourselves head on with an approaching car; we swerved to the right to find a man with half a pig on the back of his bicycle staring aghast at us just a few feet in front of the windscreen; an oncoming truck swerved to the right, we swerved to the left onto the hard shoulder, the man with the half pig vanished behind us in the mist, a motorbike without lights appeared coming straight at us on the wrong side of the road… and so it continued until we reached the safety of the airport. The usual time for the airport run is thirty-five minutes but if you have one of the death-race team you can make it in as little as sixteen.

    Once at the airport you are faced with the crush of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of passengers cramped together in a small room, all shouting at the tops of their voices, waving yesterday’s boarding passes and ticket stubs at whoever they can. As there is practically permanent fog over Chengdu, flights can be delayed for days – with the consequence that if your flight actually does leave, you often find that it is packed with the passengers of the previous few days and you are left standing there to try again tomorrow.
    The only calm that can be seen at the airport is in the airport staff who happily sit in their uniforms behind their desks, reading newspapers and drinking from their jam-jars of tea apparently oblivious to the screaming and chaos all around them.
    It is here that you learn your first few words of Chinese. No such thing as mañana exists in the vocabulary of these people. Here it is simple may-oh which means no. It is a wonderful word which occurs with increasing regularity the more questions you ask. It means that there are none of what you are asking for, there never have been any, there never will be any and why did you bother to ask?
    Which brings us to the second word encountered: putchidao . This means don’t know. So after you have received the first negative answer may-oh and you politely enquire where you may find a better answer to your question you will then be told putchidao .
    It is very important not to lose your temper at this stage. I have often laughed at other foreign passengers hopping up and down from one foot to another, slamming the counter with their fists, doing facial impressions of beetroots as they contort themselves in rage. Of course it is a completely worthless exercise as the result is still a calm may-oh from the airline staff.
    I have to admit that I once sunk to these levels and even now it embarrasses me to think that I forgot the system and joined the ranks of the ignorant foreigners who push their blood pressures to the limits.

    I was coming back in after a long break. Cccccrrrrrggggkkkhhhpt all around me at the