We arrived in Shanghai on Wednesday after a mostly sleepless night. By the time we got through immigration and the baggage claim and took the shuttle to our hotel, it was 8:30, but mercifully, it was not 8:30 a.m. as it was at home, but 8:30 p.m., almost bedtime in China.
“Can we go to bed now?” Sophie asked. Our airplane seats had been so cramped, it seemed to me that folding ourselves up and mailing ourselves in padded envelopes might be a more comfortable way to travel. So now the narrow flat beds at the Shanghai Airlines Travel Hotel were especially appealing. Except I knew that if we went to bed now, we’d wake up starved by midnight.
“We should eat something,” I said, turning through the room service menu. There was a “prime beefburger” with “saseage bacon, fried egg and cheese,” a club sandwich with “smoked turkey lettuce, tomato, bacan and fried egg,” “Your own choiced pizza,” which did not involve a fried egg, and noodles with shredded meat, preserved vegetables, and a fried egg.
“Maybe we’ll stay awake better if we move around,” I suggested. “Let’s go check out the restaurants.” As if in a weird dream, we ended up at the first floor Dream Bar Coffee Shop staring, bewildered, at a menu of heavy-looking western meals like “Spragetti Bolognase” and a 20-page picture menu of Chinese dishes involving goat and oxen. We decided to look for a Chinese restaurant upstairs, got lost on the way, had no will to retrace our steps, and found ourselves once again lying on our beds, Sophie with the room service menu propped in front of her.
The menu slipped to the floor. We stared at it, making no move to pick it up.
“We have to order something and boil water,” I said. Both tasks seemed insurmountable. But finally I forced myself to my feet and in a sudden spurt of energy ordered two bowls of noodles and filled the water pot. Then, overcome with exhaustion, I stared at the outlet on the wall behind the little table. Crawling under it to plug in the pot seemed like too much effort.
A young man in a red jacket, white shirt, and black pants arrived bearing one enormous bowl of noodles with one ceramic spoon and one set of chopsticks. I started to explain that we wanted two bowls, but then I changed my mind. Instead, I asked if we could have another spoon.
He looked confused.
“Two spoons?” I said.
The young man’s confusion turned to alarm. He rushed over to the phone and shouted rapidly into it as if our room had just caught fire. Within seconds another young man in the same uniform arrived, looking worried.
“We just need two spoons,” I explained. I held up two fingers and then the spoon. Somehow I had gotten across that we didn’t want fried egg with our noodles, but I could not convey the concept of two. I know the word for two in Chinese, er, but it seemed to be the spoon that was tripping everyone up, and I didn’t know the word for that.
And no wonder—no one who is Chinese eats a bowl of noodles with a ceramic spoon, but with chopsticks before finally dipping out the broth. I was so exhausted that I was reverting to an irrational American reliance on silverware. But finally both guys smiled and pointed to the spoon and each raised two fingers and we all said together, “Two spoons!” and then they hurried off and I never saw them again.
So Sophie and I set to work making a mess with chopsticks, a ceramic spoon, and a plastic fork, a supply of which she remembered me packing for just such occasions. The noodles were very long and they were flying everywhere. Long noodles are supposed to confer longevity, but after a while life seemed too short to keep wrestling with those noodles, delicious as they were. Sophie managed to roll hers around her chopsticks like spaghetti, but mine kept unraveling and collapsing onto the desk. And my lap. And the floor.
I was ready to give up when our doorbell rang and there stood a woman in a red jacket, white shirt, and black pants, bearing another huge bowl of noodles.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I just needed another spoon. Two spoons.” I held up two fingers and pointed to the spoon on her tray. I didn’t really want it anymore, but what could I say? Bewildered, she handed me the spoon, and I thanked her, closed the door, and went to bed, wondering how, if I couldn’t even explain that I wanted two spoons, I was ever going to be able to say anything more complicated. Things that, it would turn out, might have come in handy the next day, like, “I am lost. Please help me find this address” or “My electric converter seems to be on fire.” But for that moment, I couldn’t even remember how to speak English, so I went to sleep.