The Hotel on the Roof of the World (20 page)

‘Well done, Tu Dian,' I said,
‘Yagadoo.'

Believe it or not,
yagadoo
means ‘good' in Tibetan. It is tempting to say
‘yagadagadoo'
, but as the Flintstones have not made it to Tibet, this falls rather flat with them. Tu Dian was happy. Fifteen of us sat down for the Christmas dinner. A select crowd of the local travel agents, a group of Germans from Beijing who were wearing red hats with white bobbles, two Belgian engineers who had come out to install a PBX system at the Lhasa telephone exchange, Conny, myself and the dreaded Nancy and Bob. We sat there around the table, in sub-zero temperatures with tinny Christmas music blaring over the PA, staring at the white rabbits.

A Himalayan Hamster shot across the doorway of the coffee shop. Fortunately the food arrived before any of the guests noticed it and then all concentration was on eating. The meal was excellent. A Tibetan bean soup for starters. Imported cold cuts of meat as second course followed by roast Chengdu chicken and not a piece of cabbage, yak or spam in sight. Dessert was a very passable crème caramel. Conny showed the chefs how to make a delicious mulled wine and we even celebrated by using Chinese Dynasty wine as the main ingredient, which has the rare distinction of coming out of a bottle with a cork. Most Chinese wines are peculiar chemical brews held in the bottles by screw tops and if left over night in a glass, they tend to separate into a clear liquid and an evil-looking purple substance.

Just before dessert, the rabbits started becoming frisky. The cage rattled as the rabbits thumped away at making baby rabbits. Not all the guests found it amusing and reluctantly I asked Tu Dian to take them away.

The Tibetans loved Christmas because it signalled the start of the New Year party season. The parties would extend through Western New Year, into January or February for Chinese New Year and on until the most important of all – Tibetan New Year, which could be as late as March.

Between Christmas and New Year there was a party every night. The Foreign Affairs Office winter party, the CITS party dining on highly suspicious items in their refrigerator restaurant beneath the Potala Palace and worst of all – the ‘Advanced Workers' party. This demonstrated all that Communism stands for: a group of various workers from units involved with tourism were presented with ‘Advanced Worker' certificates in front of a bored, clapping crowd. We sat in our overcoats in the filled-in swimming pool of the Tibet Hotel, which had been turned into a nightclub, while the ‘Advanced Workers' paraded around the dance floor. There was an engineer from our hotel, although what ‘advanced work' he had done, nobody could tell me.

They held their banners high as we listened to the inevitable speeches. Everyone nodded and clapped when they thought they should. We were served warm beer, inedible cold meat and bowls of sunflower seeds. Grisly bits of yak meat accompanied slices of unidentified animal organs on chipped plates. I left mine untouched and spent my time trying to master the art of eating sunflower seeds. I assume that this sport is an import from China, but it has been widely accepted by Tibetans. You have to pick up a handful of sunflower seeds, pop them one at a time into your mouth and then, without the aid of your hands, crack the seed open between your teeth, spitting out the seed case on the floor while swallowing the seed kernel and talking simultaneously. If you are good at this you can build up the speed of emptying an AK47 in the Barkhor and the floor by your chair will be covered in a crunchy coating of empty sunflower seeds. I was never very good at it but it kept me amused while the speeches were going on.

New Year's Eve was the excuse for yet another party. The Tibet Tourism Bureau had the bright idea to call it the ‘Visit Tibet Year' party. It was a good idea, it was just a pity that they had not told anyone about this earlier. Nobody knew that the following year was going to be ‘Visit Tibet Year', but such minor technicalities were unimportant to them. It was a similar case when CAAC started flights between Lhasa and Kathmandu. They had kept it secret until the first flight landed and were then surprised that the flight had been empty.

Promotion and even the basics of marketing were alien concepts to the Communists. This always baffled me as you would think that if they were so good at brain-washing a billion people into thinking that Mao was great and that the Little Red Book was essential to life, then they would know a thing or two about selling ideas, promotions and PR. This could however explain why the word they used for all the marketing activities we undertook was ‘propaganda'.

‘Making some more
propaganda
?' Tashi would ask as I warmed up the computer to type in the latest edition of the Tibet Travel News.

I was unable to avoid the Mao Tai
gambay
s of the ‘Visit Tibet Year' party and was very pleased when it finished abruptly and everyone went home. I tried to play Scrabble with Conny that night but it was a pretty boring way of spending New Year's Eve – finally we gave up and listened to the BBC World Service wish their listeners in Asia a very Happy New Year.

On our Western New Year's Day, Jig Me again gave the expats a day off. I slept in and only just made it to the buffet before the coffee shop closed at 10 a.m. The tray of so-called ‘bacon' looked even more unappetising than ever. I fished around in the grease with the stainless steel serving spoon but all I could find were small cubes of hairy pork fat. There was some curled up spam in another dish which looked equally unappealing. The bread rolls were positively dangerous. They would have been better suited to the construction industry than as a food item. I was not going to risk my teeth on them, as going to the dentist at the Barkhor was not high on my list of priorities. I found Tu Dian and told him that this was not acceptable. I had become very good at these speeches. He bowed his head, frowned and nodded. ‘Sorry, Mr Alec. Tomorrow OK.'

I looked at the tray of scrambled eggs. At least it was still yellow, but it had gone fairly solid. I hacked off a corner and returned to my table where Zhang Li had poured me a cup of five-hour-strong Shanghai coffee.

To give the impression that the coffee shop was heated, each table was supplied with a small pot of burning alcohol – the type used to keep pans warm when served on the table. They did not generate any significant amount of heat but it was fun to pick them up and roll the alcohol quickly around the rim as this produced a great cloud of flame which leapt up to the ceiling. This game soon lost its attraction and I spent the afternoon with Conny climbing one of the small hills by the pointy mountains at the west end of the Lhasa valley. It was a beautiful day but by the time we returned to the hotel I was feeling rather ill.

The scrambled egg was taking its revenge. I just made it back to my room before exploding. Liquid came from holes I never knew I had. I have had food poisoning many times in the past, from experimenting with unknown foodstuffs during my travels as a backpacker, but I had never been knocked out by anything like this. Shamefully, I told everyone that it must have been something I ate at the Barkhor – while only Tu Dian and I knew the real source. Tu Dian felt responsible for me and made special soups which Conny brought me but I could not keep them down. Jig Me wanted to send me to the People's Number One Hospital but I insisted that I would have to be dead before I went in there. Conny called for Dr Grubby but he was sick too. The flights to Kathmandu had been cancelled for the winter and the flights to Chengdu had been out of action for the last two days. ‘Can you die from food poisoning?' I kept asking myself. Would I get a sky burial?

I was out cold for four full days. I was eventually brought back to life by rehydration packets which Sue, the new manager from Save the Children, had brought from her previous assignment in Africa. Conny mixed them up and told me they were, ‘Delicious. Like lemonade.'

Both of these statements were untrue.

To make matters worse, I contracted a severe bout of flu. A nurse from the People's Number One Hospital came up to the hotel to give me gigantic syringe-fuls of penicillin. They were the syringes of horror movies. Enormous things with long needles which she filled up in front of me. With a sadistic smile, she then waved for me to roll over and jammed the needle into my backside. Slowly, ever so slowly, she emptied it into me. Twice a day. Alternating buttocks. There were no pills available – this was too simple a solution – if it was going to cure you then it had to hurt. Between the injections Conny nursed me back to health and I could see that there was more to beautiful Belgians than their chocolate.

I was still white when Barba returned. He laughed when I told him what had happened.

‘You see Alec. I am a vegetarian. I do not even eat onions or mushrooms as they interfere with my meditation. This could never have happened to me.'

Barba had brought back a new member of staff – his Sicilian side-kick – Guiseppe Bonetti. It is hard to imagine a closer fit to the Italian stereotype. A Danny Devito look-alike with one sole objective in life – sex. Bonetti's idea of nirvana was not to break away from the endless cycle of rebirths but to find himself in one endless orgy.

He was a perfect companion for Barba. Each morning they could discuss in detail their conquests of guests or staff of the previous night. So much for the cryptic warnings I had received in Hong Kong about trying on shirts. The lessons learnt from the episode in the Palace Hotel lift were now largely forgotten. Bonetti was officially in Lhasa as Food and Beverage Manager and he struggled valiantly with Tu Dian, his local deputy and Mr Han the Purchasing Manager, to improve the food quality.

Chef returned to Lhasa and found a way to improve the desserts on the buffet table. The cakes never had soft centres but were always frozen solid. Guests would chip at crème caramels with their spoons, thinking they were cracking the caramelised sugar of a crème brulée. But it was not sugar. It was ice. Chef found that if the desserts were stored overnight in the refrigerator instead of being left out overnight, the problem was solved.

Although the cuisine started to improve, the traditional fight between Executive Chefs and Food and Beverage Managers soon resumed.

‘How can you have a
German
chef?!' screamed Bonetti.

‘How can I verk in ze kitchen ven I find Bonetti in here cooking his own pasta on my stoves?!' shouted Chef.

Morale was sinking to rock bottom. There was a day when we had no guests in the hotel. No one. Not a sausage. Four hundred and sixty-eight rooms, eighteen suites, two Presidential Villas and not one guest. Empty.

The wind whistled along the corridors and a lone sweeper from Housekeeping Department polished the marble floor in the lobby. One of the expats had brought a video of
The Shining
up from Hong Kong. That night we huddled around the television in room 3205 and watched the horror story about the family of a mad axe-man, who bore a striking resemblance to Barba, living in an empty hotel. They were in the depths of winter, cut off from the outside world, as all manners of horrific incidents took place. Was that noise just the squeaking hinges of the fire doors blowing in the wind or had a tricycle gone down the corridor?

‘I put ze lights off in ze coffee shop,' said Chef. ‘And now zey are on again.'

I still shudder at the memory of that night.

Barba was also becoming scary. His moods were less predictable and his rages greater than ever before. His wife had refused to come out to Lhasa with him and he took out his anger on whoever he saw fit. He abandoned the management table in the coffee shop and set up his own table in the winter sunshine out in the courtyard. He ordered one of Charlie's finest tablecloths for his own table, while all the other tables remained bare. Bonetti was his personal chef and regardless of what the guests and other expats had to put up with, Barba was assured a freshly made Italian meal every day. He and Bonetti brought in their own supply of extra virgin olive oil, mozzarella and Parmesan cheese. Any guest asking to eat what the manager was dining on was given a short answer, normally consisting of two words. Any guest making the mistake of sitting at Barba's table was sent running and waitress Zhang Li was given the task of keeping guests away. It was pitiful watching her trying to explain to a guest who had paid $200 to $300 a day for the privilege of being in Tibet, why he or she could not sit at the table.

‘You no sit here. Here Mr Barba. Mr Barba Manager.'

No one could join Barba at his table except by personal invitation. The two exceptions were Bonetti, who provided him with food and entertainment, and myself, who told him what was going on in the hotel. Barba adopted me as his protégé and each morning at his breakfast he taught me his ideology. Although this gave me a great insight into his marketing genius, it also meant that I had to sit and listen to his obscure beliefs.

One morning at the breakfast table, Barba sat in a pensive mood. ‘Alec, to manage someone,' he scooped his freshly made doughnut in the bowl of yak yogurt and honey and looked me straight in the eye, ‘find out their weakness. Then manipulate them.'