Fawlty Towers comes to Xi'an

Friday night, 11pm, a young man in China, what do you do? I could go to the city centre to sample the nightlife where my friend is going tonight but I have a cold at the moment, my nose is redder than the flag of China and my lips are dry and white like a Hovis crust.

So I'm doing what seemingly a lot of young guys do in Xi'an - go to the Internet bar. Personally, I find it quite strange that this is their activity of choice on a weekend evening. But they are not alone. There are lots of Pakistani guys here as well. They all study medicine at university in Xi'an, and the only time I see them is at night, when I'm on my way home and they are on their way to the 'wang ba' (netbar). Joining them is a contingent of Kazakhs, both groups playing 'Counter Strike', one of these games involving guns, bombs, randomly placed wooden pallets and really interestings things like that. Actually, it's probably good the Kazakhs are here, because last week 30 of them got in a huge fight with some Chinese guys, and the police came along and gave them enormous fines. I just hope the Chinese yuan / Kazakh tenge exchange rate is favourable. The Chinese guys like Counter Strike as well, but they also play this dancing game, which just must have been designed for girls under 10.

The best part is when you come in after 10pm, the receptionist will ask you if you're here for the whole night or just a few hours. Surfing a whole night's internet is a perfectly acceptable activity, indeed, it's considered 'cool'. If you go to a netbar early in the morning, maybe 8 or 9, you'll see the remnants of last night's Counter Strike battle strewn across three chairs, sleeping soundly now they have killed their friend over 400 times repeatedly.

So what do the girls do? Attractive girls will take advantage of the huge demand for attractive girls, and work in bars and nightclubs, drinking with guys and earning money for the bar. Others will work in nightclubs or KTV (karaoke places), where you pay for the privilege of having someone sit with you. In my hotel - in every large hotel in China - you'll have one of these KTV places, and a sauna/massage place on another floor, where you can get a little something extra for the gentleman customer. I don't really know what to say when these American guests ask me if we have a massage place, because no-one is meant to know about this (although everyone, of course, does). Presumably the customers are mostly these moneyed, fat guys. I'm fairly ambivalent about it, but it does seem a rather sad way to live, for the girls as well as the men.

Speaking of my hotel, I had quite a difficult evening today - nothing but complaints. (And the for first 45 minutes I was looking for my laundry, which turned out to be lost). I had the "I've been travelling for over 30 years and have never experienced such appalling service" speech from several guests - all from the UK and Ireland, actually. Most of the problems are due to the formidable language barrier mentioned in a previous post. I think the English-speaking guests cheer up after finding a foreigner there and like chatting to me about China.

All our guests are are mostly middle-aged people, coming on package tours, seeing the big cities and shows and main sights, etc. It's interesting talking to them, because sometimes they have a completely different view on China. An Irish woman said to me today how hard-working Chinese people are, and how there was no litter. I don't know what country she was describing, it certainly wasn't the one I live in. In saying that, I'm hardly an expert myself, and I would be very suspicious of people calling themselves China experts, such is the nature of this beast.

The biggest benefit of working in the hotel is the Western buffet. I make generous use of the term 'buffet', and stuff in as much meat, fruit, and non-diced-to-smitherens vegetables as I can in 20 minutes. I then have 4-5 minutes to make short-work of the cheese platter and 3-4 minutes to make mincemeat of the fruit selection, followed by a minute or two for digestion. After all, I'll need all the calcium and protein I can get for an entire night of shooting rogue terrorists and perfecting my break-dancing.