The Jinling Hotel used to be the highest building in Nanjing but now it is dwafted by almost every building which has been put up in the last 10 years. It’s hard to believe that once you could see everything from the top.
The Jinling Hotel is probably the best one in Nanjing. It is right in the centre and has a very useful travel centre which can buy your train tickets. This is handy since the new restrictions imposed by the government means that foreigners cannot now use the automatic machines in the train stations.
So I was in the Jinling Hotel this morning to get my weekly tickets for Shanghai (30 pounds for a round trip). When I am in the Jinling Hotel my friends and I always like to take the opportunity to use the toilets as they are very clean and you can sit down… a real luxury in Nanjing.
The only problem I find with the toilets is that there is a woman who lives in them – well when I say lives, she is always there standing by the sinks waiting for customers. When I go in she selects a cubicle for me and opens the door to it. Unusually for Nanjing there is no piped music, TV channel, kung fu move or advertisments shattering the peace.
It is really quiet. So I am sitting there, the only one in the toilets and she is standing outside my door waiting for me to finish. It is completely silent. We can both hear what’s going on and I find it very off-putting. How can I relax when there is a woman standing outside the door waiting to clean what I have made dirty.
I somehow manage to perform my duty and and she helps me open the door, I go to the sink and she darts straight into the cubicle and starts cleaning the toilet bowel (not that it needs cleaning you understand!). I know she is trying to help but I would prefer it if she just hung around outside the toilets themselves. This is the only time when I wish I had cartoons or a dating show filling the air.