A hospitable northerner

In 1995, I was chosen by my “work unit” to attend a short-term training course in Xi'an. Naturally, I was very excited about the windfall because I had never been a pet employee of my boss and attending a nationwide training course like that was still something of a rarity in those days. What was even nicer was that the nearly 4-week training was taking place in a city far away from where I was working. I liked the trip partly because I could take a short break from the daily grind and could have a chance to tour the city best known for its historical legacies.

After reluctantly waving goodbye to my wife, I got on an air-conditioned sleeper and started my 2-day railway journey. By the way, I need to point out that I hadn’t been very keen on travelling  and my job involved little travelling, so I was a bit apprehensive before the journey started. Unfortunately, the journey was worse than I expected, or simply unbearable. I could hardly sleep at night on my berth, the upper berth, because a bunch of salesmen were playing cards, smoking and chattering loudly all the time just below my berth, but nobody intervened or dared to intervene. Anyway, when the train finally arrived at the destination in more than 48 hours, I was really exhausted, though not without a sense of relief about the end of the ordeal.

With a street map in hand, I got on a bus (I wasn’t entitled to a reimbursement  for a taxi fare), walked a few blocks and managed to find the university where the training course was to take place. At that time, it was toward the evening and most of the university staff had gone home. In a small office, I was greeted warmly by a 50 something gentleman, Lao Qi (head of the logistic office) in a slightly worn dark blue coat. Lao Qi was very hospitable, in fact, so hospitable that he volunteered to give me a lift to the hotel where we were supposed to accommodate - on his 28-inch bicycle. Instinctively, I declined his sincere offer, thinking that my weight was too much a burden to an old man, not to mention the small suitcase I carried with me.

Furthermore, I was a bit concerned about the issues of my own safety and face. Just imagine on a busy street of a downtown area, a grey-haired old man carrying a young man with a suitcase on a big BIKE - not a BMW. What an interesting scene that could be in the eyes of the passers-by. However, Lao Qi insisted that I wouldn’t be able to find that little known hotel amid tiny zigzag confusing alleys as the darkness was falling. He also dismissed my idea of hailing a taxi by telling me how some greedy and cunning taxi drivers had ripped off their non-local clients in a “legitimate” way. Aware of the difficulty disguising my southern accent and the fact that Lao Qi looked  pretty fit despite his age, I decided to follow his advice and landed onto the rear rack of his big bike.

 After a roughly 15 minutes’ leg-numbing ride, thank God, we finally got to the destination - safe and sound, even though I was still feeling embarrassed by the passers-by’s scornful gazes at me all the way to the hotel, a somewhat outdated 3 star hotel. After saying a number of big thank-you to Lao Qi, who was immediately hurrying back home for the belated dinner, I dragged myself into the lobby and started my check-in at the reception desk.