Extravaganza!

May 21st, Saturday (continued)

Hotel interior showing the lift shafts

In the hope that this might expedite our check-in at the hotel in Hangzhou, I'd sent a photo of us to Jennifer, our contact there. What I hadn't anticipated was that not only Jennifer but practically all the other 600 or so staff members––from the general manager of IC hotels in Zhejiang province to the car park attendants and chambermaids––would also find us easy to recognise! The hotel being very new, the staff had been having regular training sessions, at one of which their future patrons Mr and Mrs Hobbs (generally pronounced Hobbies) must have been the focus of attention.

We were given an extraordinary reception which reminded me of the opening of John le Carré's novel, The Night Manager where the "worst man in the world" and his entourage check into a luxury hotel.

Chris and I, checking in for four weeks, weren't required to go to the reception desk on Level 5 but (leaving our luggage in the charge of a bellboy) were swept straight up to the 16th floor in one of the five great glass elevators with their vertiginous views. The golden ball is hollow within, with all the rooms built into its steel walls.

Hotel interior as seen from the 12th floor

Up in the club lounge we shook hands with the senior personnel––"If there's anything we can do for you, don't hesitate to ask!"––while lesser personnel almost tripped over one another in their eagerness to assist, pulling out our chairs so that we could sit down, bringing us juices and teas. After about half an hour of polite conversation, the Long Stay Agreement forms were finally brought across to our table to be discreetly laid down amid the orchids and the porcelain, for Chris to sign while our passports were being photocopied.

Finally, a posse of staff accompanied us to our room on the 12th floor, the luggage delivered there a few moments later during demonstrations of how to work the automatic blinds, how to turn on the three TV sets, the three showers, and so on. We discovered calla lilies in our room and a bowl of fresh fruit, a box of gourmet chocolates and another of gourmet cookies. Bath towels fit for a giant, fluffy bathrobes, slippers and a cushion for the tub were laid ready, and at one side of the window was a circular sofa (with satiny cushions) that could have doubled as a spare bed. The glass desk on the other side had chairs on two sides, 'his and hers'. From the river we had a panorama of the 1500m wide Qiantang River, its traffic, its bridges and skyscrapers on the far bank and the gardens on its near bank.

Buddhist Pine at the hotel's entrance

Finally we were left alone, but our welcome to Hangzhou wasn't over by any means, because Andy and Jennifer, the prime instigators of our lavish welcome, had also promised to treat us to dinner at the hotel followed by a show downtown––the sound and light show known in English as Impression West Lake directed by Jiang Yimou––this too turning out to be fantastic entertainment, which we watched wrapped in plastic capes to protect us from the light drizzle and the breeze off the lake. Chris was so entranced by the show that he described it immediately afterwards (we had come rattling back to the hotel squashed intimately into a small and dangerous taxi) in an email to the family:

"I've seen some impressive sights in my time but nothing comes close to the West Lake show. Together with thousands of others, we sat on tiered seats (front row, of course, for MR AND MRS HOBBS) and I was wondering how they could do a light show on something so big and wet. There was a small jetty affair but that seemed inadequate ... But promptly at 19:45 the "house" lights went off and the credits were projected onto a small screen held up in a boat. Andy explained to us that it was to be in five acts: boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl get married, boy and girl have to part, boy and girl meet again as spirits (or something like that: there was also a sea-serpent that was integral to the plot).

Anyway, the credits finished and everything went dark. And then a single spot light lit the man, dressed in formal robes, standing on the water in the middle of the lake. The music was magnificent and, as we watched, the man started to walk across the surface of the water towards us. The performance finished an hour later and we were stunned. There had been ... boats and an incredible serpent lying and thrashing all across the lake. No photographs would do it justice.

Andy then secured a taxi for us by pushing in front of several thousand people and we returned to the hotel ..."