T A B L E_T A L K Traveling on a tight budget? Share your money-saving travel tips in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Check out barnesannoble.com's fabulous selection of travel book bargains! ___________________   R E C E N T L Y This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/08/99) Mother load By Tanya Shaffer An invitation to stay with a woman's family in West Africa opens the door to more than her home (01/07/99) The men who moil for gold By J. Kingston Pierce A century after the race for the Klondike gold fields, a hiker traces the argonauts' northward course (01/06/99) Vive la roller blade! By Susan Hack In Paris, Friday night has an all-new rite (01/05/99) Death in Antigua By Steve Kettmann A host family's tragedy tweaks the conscience of a traveler in Guatemala (01/04/99)   Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		A night at the official Communist Party hotel in China leads to everything but a good night's sleep. BY JEFFREY TAYLER | "It is official Communist Party hotel," announced Ling, the travel agent in Jiayuguan, as she bestowed upon me the color brochure with the sort of reverence one would reserve for the Shroud of Turin or the sandal of Apostle John. The brochure for the Melon Hotel (thus its name translates from Chinese) in the town of Hami, my next stop on the Silk Road, made about as much sense as anything did in China: a red, winged goblet bearing two yellow stars, reminiscent of the national flag, sat perched atop a snapshot of a mold-green and urine-yellow concrete bunker with a lobby so overlit -- so over-exposed by the photographer, actually -- that it appeared to be undergoing a Chernobyl-like meltdown. Next came a picture of a young woman curled up on a bed wearing a short skirt and thick, flesh-colored leggings, captioned "House keeping department make you easy and comfortable." Further scenes depicted Communist Party bureaucrats hosting wood-faced waibin, or foreign guests; one showed a Japanese businessman sawing the leg off what appeared to be a charred Fu Manchu Warrior splayed on a bed of spinach (this turned out to be a jumbo-sized roast lamb, horns and all). And, as Ling had informed me, the introduction stated that the brand-new hotel was "subordinate to Party Committee and Municipal Government." The massacre at Tiananmen Square came to mind, as did the Gang of Four; it was hard to see how Communist Party management assured quality accommodation. But a lot had changed in China, and besides, wayward waibins were reputedly unwelcome in Hami's other, less prestigious hotels. "OK," I said, "book me a room." A day later I was riding the train to Hami through the charcoal dunes of the outer Taklamakan Desert. At midnight I disembarked alone onto the platform of Hami station. A gust of wind roiled a cloud of red dust around me. I coughed and covered my eyes. When I opened them I saw tiny black leather pumps. Then black leggings on shapely calves. Then an electric blue blazer on a petite feminine figure and a hand holding car keys. Then, finally, a face, bright and round as the moon, with almond eyes. The picture of Chinese comeliness would have been perfect if it weren't for the golf-ball-sized wad of bubble gum the Hami belle was chomping on and working from cheek to cheek. "I taxi you. No?" she said, tonguing her gum wad into the cavity of her left cheek and smiling. She grabbed my bag and we were off. Twenty minutes later I stood in the lobby of the Melon Hotel in front of a receptionist who, compact mirror in hand, was diligently tracing her eyebrows with a thick pencil. I asked for a quiet room and, keeping her gaze focused on her brows, she pushed a tissue-thin registration form at me. As I filled it out it tore in two. She snapped her mascara kit closed. "Price 150 Yuan ($18)." She squinted at the pieces of the shorn form. "Laowai! Laowai!" (old foreigner) I heard from the far reaches of the lobby. A young man in a gray polyester suit strode out of the adjacent bar and clacked his heels officiously over the black linoleum. He sidled up to me, smiling broadly and revealing shards of nicotine-stained teeth. He coughed in my face: ashes flecked onto my passport from the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. "You are a foreigner," he said in Chinese. His cigarette danced with the words and ashes flew. Taking him for a shyster of some sort, I ignored him. "Can you please get me a Coke?" I asked the receptionist, having finished with the check-in formalities. "How's her English?" the young man asked me, edging too close. She went bug-eyed and blurted out an encore: "Price 150 Yuan." "Her English is fine. I'd like a Coke." "Cokes in the wu ting," he said flatly. "How's her grammar?" "Price 150 Yuan," she said again. "Wonderful. The wu ting?" I'd been studying Chinese but I didn't know the words. "Wu ting! Wu ting!" A hubbub arose outside. Two girls skidded their bicycles to a halt in front of the hotel and minced giggling across the lobby. "Wu ting!" they twittered and disappeared down a staircase. "Please, follow me. I am the leader," the man said. "The leader of the hotel. Actually we have two leaders and I am one." He picked up my bag and led me to the elevator. We rode up to the fifth floor. The Leader flicked a switch and the hall lights came on. A woman in red sitting behind a desk eased her feet into her slippers and stood up, straightening her skirt and tossing back her hair. She fell in behind us as we walked single file down the hall. The floor was gloriously empty -- I was sick of noisy, crowded Chinese hotels. The woman tugged at my sleeve and stood on her tiptoes, grazing my ear with her soft lips. "Shoe shine?" she whispered, batting her lashes. She whipped a rag and polish out of her apron. N E X T+P A G E | In search of the wu ting