The Hotel on the Roof of the World

The Hotel on the Roof of the World by Alec le Sueur

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Authors: Alec le Sueur
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monster next to me. Mr Liu read out the previous day’s financial results and Harry gave the forecast for the coming week – which was rather bleak. After the high occupancy and revenue of the summer months, business had now entered the gradual slide down towards the low winter season. We were still over 70 per cent occupancy which sounded quite respectable to me, but next week we would fall into the sixties.
    As I was contemplating the drop in hotel occupancy and what could be done to reverse the trend, a low gurgling noise started its rumble in the chair next to me.
    â€˜Cccccrrrrrrrgggggggkkkhhhhpt.’
    Mr Pong was clearing his throat in preparation to speak. This warning signal had already woken every expat around the table and sent them leaning as far back on their chairs as possible. Even Gunter, four chairs away, was not safe, and, panic stricken, he pushed his portly frame as far down the table as he could.
    In painfully long statements of Mandarin, Mr Pong pointed out that there had been a problem in the kitchens with some confusion over the purchase of yaks. Heather translated for us. He said that he was sure that it would not happen again, if the expatriates would not argue and if there was a better cooperation. He suggested that perhaps so many expatriates were unnecessary.
    It was exactly the kind of calculated attack that Party A tried when they saw disputes amongst the foreigners. The General Manager pointed out that there were only ten expatriates present, instead of the nineteen when the hotel opened and the twenty-seven allowed in the management contract and that any less would severely impair the efficient running of the hotel.
    Much to everyone’s relief, Mr Pong did not reply, and the Deputy Food and Beverage Manager, a Mr Tu Dian, announced the good news that in the evening there would be a banquet held by the ‘Protocol and Friendship City Division of the Friendship with Foreign Countries Association’.
    Mrs Qi Mei followed this with an announcement that I would have to go to the People’s Number One Hospital for a health check and the meeting was adjourned. As we walked down the stairs I told Mrs Qi Mei that it was very kind of her to arrange the health check, but it was completely unnecessary as I had already had extensive medicals at the request of Holiday Inn, both in Paris and Hong Kong. She smiled and said, ‘Yes.’
    Miss Tsao, my deputy, was having a word with Jig Me after the meeting, about her papers. She had volunteered to come to Tibet twenty years ago and now wanted to return to her home province, but as her papers said that she was resident in Tibet, she was not permitted to move to any other part of China.
    I carried on to my office, on the ground floor of the main block behind the gift shop. It was a small room with two desks, one filing cabinet, three chairs and one sofa. A large orange telephone sat on my desk, together with a flask of hot water. I was expected to provide my own jam jar. The floor was entirely covered with piles of paper. I was greeted enthusiastically by Tashi who I had not seen since he picked me up from the airport. ‘This is Mr Alec,’ he announced in English to the three other office staff. ‘He is a big potato.’
    It transpired that the Chinese have a system of measuring someone’s importance in relation to the size of root vegetables. Thus I was the ‘big potato’ for the Sales and Marketing Department and my staff were introduced to me as ‘small potatoes’.
    Tashi gave me the news that no matter what I had understood, I had to visit the hospital. He had been given orders to accompany me and to be my translator. I was not sure if this would be a good idea.
    The hotel Landcruisers were in use, so we took a rickshaw down the tarmac cycle lane, past the cow-filled skips of refuse to the People’s Number One Hospital. Another feature of Chinese modernisation stood before us. Short railings

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