Alice (Tonya) in Wonderland

This is not a Beijing-sightseeing-China-as-cultural-odyssey story, so skip it if you’re only interested in China details. This is a classic “Tonya took a wrong turn” diddy for my family’s amusement.

So, a neighbor of mine back home is world-travelled and has owned restaurants where I grew up. I procured him some spices from India and he was quite pleased, setting to work making fabulous dishes with them. I wanted to bring him some from here (notice past tense). My driver explained that there was a mall attached to my hotel – and in the basement was a traditional Chinese grocery store. Easy enough.

So I entered the quiet “mall entrance” and found myself in a large 6-story ultra-hip mall with no “basement.” It wasn’t out of reason that a large mall would have an associated grocery story – after all, Harrod’s London has a very exquisite outlet that dispenses wonderful culinary items. So not finding a basement, I began looking around… This mall is a single store – just multiple departments across many floors with a tall central atrium. I looked up the atrium at the identifying signs on each floor and noticed that the top floor was titled “Gourmet”… I had visions of the Harrod’s experience – lush chocolates, fabulous teas, and yes… spices. So after much ado and finding no one who understood the term “lift” or “elevator” – I set out riding the half-dozen escalators it took to wiiiiiiiiiiind my way up the sixth floor. Gourmet? Not quite - it was the mall's Food Court. I walked all the way around around it – nothing but a smelly smoky food court. (Sorry, Jim.)

So I knew there had to be a way to get back to my entrance point to the hotel more quickly than a half-dozen escalator rides with connection points half-way around the mall. (After all, I was in a hurry – I had blog entries to write!) I scanned the perimeter for a service lift – and voila! ... Floor 1, please. But when I emerged through the “Looking Glass”… I was nowhere near my hotel entrance. I was in a run-of-the mill standard office building. And dumb me, I left the safety of that single portal back into Wonderland in search of clearer directions.

My “Mad Hatter” was a young uniformed security gal that didn’t know the first thing about English (except the words “Office Building”). Frustrated, I got back on an elevator (key, an elevator) and started pushing buttons for the upper floor of the mall from which I’d accessed the service lift to begin with. Amazingly, the door opened and there was no Wonderland - just floor after floor after floor of office cubicles.

Deflated, I went back to the main floor to see the Mad Hatter. Mad Hatter spoke no English… hotel, Courtyard, mall, eating, shopping. Nope, not at all. She suggested I go outside and walk around the building – communication by hand gesture, of course. And as luck would have it, I had shed my coat when I dropped off my day’s purchases at the hotel room. There was no 10-degree-Fahrenheit-way I was going outside!

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I finally figured out the secret passage (a select un-marked elevator was the only one that exited at the Food Court service area on the top floor of the mall). I made that round of escalator round-the-mall spirals. An hour’s adventure later, I’m (now) back at my hotel "home" and that’s all that matters. All, except, of course that I don’t yet have those darn spices. Oh, well – the search continues.