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I am on my way to a conference somewhere. I get off the plane and I find myself in a driverless car on a muddy road. The BBC World Service is playing on the radio.
The ride is a bit nerve-wracking because there seems to be no hard rule about which side of the road to drive on, so oncoming traffic is a constant concern. The car is supposed to be smart enough to figure out the intentions of the other drivers, but it seems to me we're having a lot of close calls.
I eventually get to the hotel in one piece. Up to this point I haven't been sure about what country I'm in exactly, but upon arrival at the hotel, I find that I’m in mainland China somewhere. The hosts who meet me in the lobby claim we’re in Shenzhen, but I feel like I’ve traveled too far for that. Also, I can see that it has started snowing outside, which doesn’t happen in Shenzhen.
I am led through the lobby to the reception desk, but I get sidetracked and go out the back of the hotel to look around. The surrounding town is a mishmash of old and new buildings, the latter of which seem to be the usual tourist-trap places. The older buildings are more interesting – lots of square marble pillars with Chinese characters on them, as though someone carved them out of marble and glued them to the pillars.
After a lot of back and forth I get to my room, which is actually a series of interlocked rooms connected by a common anteroom. The doorways keep changing so you have to know a secret code to find the room you want.
And then I woke up.
Big trouble in little China,
This is dF
The ride is a bit nerve-wracking because there seems to be no hard rule about which side of the road to drive on, so oncoming traffic is a constant concern. The car is supposed to be smart enough to figure out the intentions of the other drivers, but it seems to me we're having a lot of close calls.
I eventually get to the hotel in one piece. Up to this point I haven't been sure about what country I'm in exactly, but upon arrival at the hotel, I find that I’m in mainland China somewhere. The hosts who meet me in the lobby claim we’re in Shenzhen, but I feel like I’ve traveled too far for that. Also, I can see that it has started snowing outside, which doesn’t happen in Shenzhen.
I am led through the lobby to the reception desk, but I get sidetracked and go out the back of the hotel to look around. The surrounding town is a mishmash of old and new buildings, the latter of which seem to be the usual tourist-trap places. The older buildings are more interesting – lots of square marble pillars with Chinese characters on them, as though someone carved them out of marble and glued them to the pillars.
After a lot of back and forth I get to my room, which is actually a series of interlocked rooms connected by a common anteroom. The doorways keep changing so you have to know a secret code to find the room you want.
And then I woke up.
Big trouble in little China,
This is dF
