This was a light day on our itinerary. In particular, I would describe it as an “easy morning”:
23rd Shanghai -> Xian – “free morning” (read hour) in Shanghai – went to arts & crafts exhibition (shop) bought a few things -> hotel -> Mongolian Barbie (again!)…
…but the thing I didn’t mention directly in that note, despite one of the undocumented events of that morning being embedded in my memory, was the historic movement of my bowels.
Because, folks (and this is a matter that is rarely discussed in travelogues), I had, until that morning, spent the entirety of our China trip free of any bowel movement whatsoever.
Let me be clear about this. Between our departure from the Excelsior Hotel, Heathrow on 15th November until that morning of 23rd November just before leaving Shanghai…nada.
I even honoured myself with an:
Ex-Lax Award For Industry
This was not an entirely private matter on our tour. People on such tours talk about their bowel movements; in most cases because they are reporting excessive or unusual activity. My deficiency in that regard became a matter of some legend in our tour group.
“Any news?”, I would sometimes be asked by a curious (or plain nosy) fellow tourist at breakfast or perhaps at the start of the evening, after an hour or two of down time in the hotel. I’d reply with a doleful shake of the head, unwilling or unable even to simply say, “no”, or “not yet”.
I suppose this quiet morning in Shanghai was the first opportunity Janie and I had to sit still for a while, take stock on the many events of the holiday (including the lack of one particular type of event) and reflect.
Janie reflected that it was getting to the stage that further prolonging of the inevitable might be a health hazard for me. I was very resistant to the idea of taking medication which might easily send my system into the opposite, therefore even more troublesome, mode.
Janie tried some site-specific massage which, quite quickly, had the desired impact. A quite magnificent offering at that.
I think I might even have got a round of applause on the coach when we announced my (or perhaps I should say, our) delivery.
Flight to Xian -> long drive to hotel -> dinner at hotel and early night.
Of course there must be loads of big hotels in Xian now, but in those days we stayed in one simply named The Xian Hotel, as I don’t suppose there were all that many hotels in that city.
In that hotel, I awarded our floor boy (who was a girl):
The Brain Of China 1993
…although I cannot remember why. I also honoured the hotel itself with:
The Oral-B Tasteless Toothpaste Award
…see also my note in the Wuxi piece about the disintegrating toothbrushes – we always take our own brushes and paste now – even when we are staying in fancy-schmanzy hotels.
At least I was now at ease and ready for one of the most interesting days of our tour; our main day in Xian: