Well I got to sleep on what I think was a nice sturdy piece of cardboard the first night.
Had a long day of travel, East coast to west, San Francisco to Beijing and on to Fuzhou. I had a couple of delighted young chinese folk pick me up from the Fuzhou airport at almost midnight.
We took a bus, then a cab to my hotel. They were impressed that I had all of my belongings packed into 3 bags plus a laptop bag. Also they both operated under the false assumption that 5 pairs of shoes is too many.
The three of us get to the (hotel managers?) room to check in. At the small desk in the back there is what appears to be a gigolo. White and black checkered silk shirt and some lovely highlights in his hair. My two hosts pool in some yuan to get me a room for the night.
We open the door to the room on the sixth floor and I think it's poor even by chinese standards just based on the reactions of my hosts. It felt like they were watching me, waiting to see how displeased I was by the state of the room. There was a certain dumpy quality to the room no doubt. But after they left I found a pleasant little surprise. In the fridge were several cans of beer called Sedrin, a Budweiser brand from it's design. I drank my first Chinese beer and it reminded me of home.
I debated myself whether to visit the KTV downstairs and decided against. Only because it was 1:30 already. I probably should have gone for a drink just to make this story more interesting.
I fell asleep and now here I sit at a small desk wondering what the hell I'm doing in China. I'm just going to take it one day at a time. At first smaller increments might even be better. For my second day I'll take everything one hour at time. Surviving for an hour at a time seems like a reasonable goal for now.