Sunshine Hotel

Although I do like to go out and eat, sometimes it's easier to eat at the hotel. My floor has its own dining room, and I almost never see anyone else there except the staff, giving me a sort of regal feeling as I occupy the entire place. The dinner is not really a meal, more like a buffet of appetizers. But I can get enough to eat, its about 40 feet from my door, and they throw in free beer for two hours a night...so you can understand that it's the default option often enough.

The staff is bored stiff most of the time so they seem happy to help me with my Chinese. It can be a bit tricky though. Once I asked how I might tell a cab to go to the subway. I got the answer "kē jì guǎn", written out in pinyin with tone marks and characters as well. I dutifully repeated it till I felt confident in the tones and then tried out the next time I went to the subway. To my surprise it worked and I felt quite proud of myself to have used a 3-syllable word. Later I looked this word up and found it did not mean "subway" as I had expected, but rather "Science and Technology Museum" - the name of the closest stop to the hotel. Luckily I didn't try this out downtown or it might have been a lot more expensive.

Tonight was one of those nights, getting back late and having to call into a meeting in Canada at 8:30, it was actually sort of relaxing to eat at the hotel. I think it was a bit better than normal - spring rolls, seared tuna sushi, crab on a stick, other meat on a stick, some kind of shrimp cake. This seems sort of typical for a cross between Western and Asian food that hotels seem to have (in my admittedly limited experience).


The beer is Tsing Tao, probably the most famous Chinese beer. The spelling is the old Wade-Giles system, so it is actually pronounced "qīng dǎo" - like the Peking vs Beijing thing - the older spelling system was not that accurate. It's a pretty good beer for spicy Asian food, light and refreshing.


I normally don't eat too much dessert but today I tried one. Like many of the Asian desserts I've tried, there were flavours that I wouldn't normally associate with sweets. This one was a cherry tomato in a chocolate mousse-like cup. The chocolate actually softened the acidic tomato so it kind of worked.

The fruit with it is some kind of exotically coloured plum - for a while I thought it was a lychee fruit since they told me it was "lǐ zi" (李子). But lychee is actually "lì zhī" (荔枝)....totally obvious, right?



Chinese Word of the Post

厦 xià - building.

Context This morning I was in a hurry to get to work so I grabbed one of the cabs and said "Yindong - Xinjinqiao Lu". Yindong is the name of the building and Xinjinqiao is the street. Lu means street. It is literally around the corner so I figured this was enough info. Plus I pointed. It never hurts to point. Anyway he set off in totally the wrong direction. After further pointing it seemed he was just making a longish turn around the block. After a while it became apparent he was going somewhere utterly different. More pointing ensued and after pulling out my best Taxicab Chinese and making the shape of the building in my hands I finally convinced him of his error...."Oh I thought you meant Yindong Road!" he says (I think). God only knows where this road was. But now, armed with this new word, I can say "Yindong da xia" next time I am late for work. But I will probably still point just in case.