Peace Hotel - Part II- Time Travel

(When Chuck, the rascal cat, wanders out of the lounge area of the Peace Hotel while Bob and I are sipping our Bloody Mary’s, we panic, and there’s a mad dash for the hallway.  Bob scampers off in one direction.  I go off in the other.  My heart pounds, not daring to imagine that the poor kid may be lost forever in the hotel, in Shanghai, in China.  This is PART II of that harrowing adventure . . . Part I was posted on Monday, September 17, 2012.)

Someone taps me on the shoulder.
It’s got to be Bob holding Chuck, telling me that he didn’t go far, after all.
        I’m about to heave a welcome sigh of relief.  I turn around. 
But I’m wrong.  
The Peace Hotel is well-staffed.  A well-dressed gentleman is standing there.  He smiles and says, “Can I help you?”
I fumble with my answer, “No. I’m looking for my . . .”  I’m not stupid enough to say “cat.”  I quickly insert the correct answer, “ . . . husband. He just wandered away.  We were in the bar. Having drinks.”
The hotel attendant nods.  
“I’ll just go back there and wait for him,” I add, hoping to get rid of this smiling attendant, who nods again and finally begins to walk away. 
I almost collapse on the floor as I watch him fade into the distance.
Chuck, where are you?
Could he have returned to the bar area?
Cats are great at leaving their scent behind.  That would be the logical thing for him to do.  Follow his own scent back to where he knows we are, once he realizes he’s in a mega strange place.    
I almost run down the hall now, convinced that Chuck is in the lounge area, waiting for me, probably propped up on the chair, eating our snacks . . .  
I refuse to accept any other possibility.

And that’s when it happens.  I spot the rascal cat, slinking out of a room that leads into the hallway.  Immediately he freezes when he sees me. Guilty, no doubt.  Luckily, we’re alone in the hallway. There are things I’d like to say to this cat, but I can’t speak because my throat feels so tight it’s as if I have a noose around it, so I whisk him into my arms and shove him into my smart bag.  
At least he’s safe.  Now I have to find Bob and tell him.  
I have every intention of doing so . . . because I can only imagine the anguish Bob’s going through.  He loves Chuck as much as I love him.
Somehow I become distracted. 
The room Chuck sauntered out of seems to beckon to me.
There is a soft light flowing into the window from outside. It‘s dusk, which some overly imaginative people refer to as the witching hour.  I glance into the room, and the furnishings, even the paintings on the walls, seem to harken back to an earlier time.  
Instantly, I’m reminded of “Somewhere in Time” and the scene where Christopher Reeve visits his college professor who reluctantly tells him of a moment when he felt sure he traveled backwards into the sixteenth century.  Only for a moment when the room around him flickered and the furnishings changed.  
      Time travel.
I step into the room and walk toward the window, heavily decorated with drapes. I expect, when I gaze out, to see Nanking Road filled with pedestrian traffic and cars, part of the modern world that exists around Shanghai, China.
But even as I shift the opaque curtain aside, in my heart I know I’ll glimpse a different world. For I expect this is a very special room.  By some quirk of time and space.  
The door has been left ajar for a reason.  
Chuck wandered into it.  
I was drawn to it.  
And now . . . carefully I pull the sheer drapes aside and gaze out.
And my heart metaphorically stops.
Just for a few seconds I see the hustling and bustling Nanking Road that I’ve only glimpsed in black and white photographs.  
A Nanking Road full of color and life.  I scan the scene before me and greedily take in all the details:
      Bicycles have huge woven baskets attached to the handle bars.  A red cable car squeaks past.  Several old-fashioned looking box-shaped cars drive past with their windows down.  Large cloth signs hang from poles suspended from the buildings that line the street, advertising the storefronts, in Chinese, of course.  The large, bold lettering sways in the breeze.  Men in suits wear hats, and the ladies are all in dresses. These pedestrians are in stark contrast to the rickshaw drivers who in baggy trousers and T shirts pull their load behind them.  One rider, asleep in his conveyance, wears laced, flat leather-like shoes that resemble our modern day sneakers.  

My God.  I must be  transported back to . . . the 1930’s . . .
I hear my name and stumble away from the window.
“Bob?”
He’s standing in the doorway.  “What are you doing in here? Did you find him?”
I nod.  Should I tell him?  Should I admit that for a few seconds, I was transported back in time? No. He’ll think I’m crazy.      
“Thank God. Well, let’s go to dinner.”  That’s Bob.  Hungry.
With Chuck safely squirreled away in my smart bag, we find our way to the nearest elevator. This hotel is so posh there’s an elevator attendant waiting to push the buttons for you so you land on the right floor.  
She smiles.  “Can I help you?”
“The Dragon and the Phoenix.”
In the restaurant, we’re seated near a large picture window, but I can’t look out of that window right away.  When I do, the view of the Huangpo River is spectacular.  Boats navigate down the river.  And, yes, they are modern boats.

  My tiny foray into the past is over.  
The Peace Hotel.
Some spectacular place.
And for once, Chuck’s rascal behavior has led to a good and wonderful thing.  
The kid will get extra snacks tonight.

        To read more about Chuck, log onto www.katelutter.com

         My paranormal romance, Wild Point Island, is now available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com in paperback and ebook format.  

Chuck Climbs Great Wall of China (with a little help)

Visiting the Great Wall of China was not Chuck’s idea.
It was mine.
Chuck came to China to see the Panda Bear eat bamboo.
But since we were in Beijing, AND since the Great Wall is considered one of the Eight Wonders of the World AND since it’s been claimed that the Great Wall can be seen even from outer space (the moon, to be exact), I managed to convince Chuck the Castronaut that the Great Wall was worth seeing.
But was it true?  Can you see the Great Wall from the moon?
I digress, I know, but this claim was first made in 1754 and repeated several times over the years until in 1932 it even appeared in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.  The truth is that--despite the immensity of the Great Wall--it cannot be seen from outer space.  According to Wikipedia,  trying to see the Great Wall from the moon would be like trying to see a single shaft of human hair from two miles away.
Not likely.
As we hike the stairs to reach the Great Wall, I share what I know about the Great Wall with my intrepid rascal traveler:
1.  The Great Wall was built to protect the Chinese Empire from invasions from nomadic tribes and military groups.
2.  Several walls were built as early as the 7th century and later joined together to form the Great Wall.
3.  The Great Wall stretches 3,889 miles long.
4.  Before the use of bricks, the Chinese used earth, stones and wood to construct the wall.
If you’ve ever been to the Great Wall, it’s like any other tourist attraction.  You have to buy a ticket.  And then walk, walk, walk to what appears to be a gigantic stone staircase where you have to begin to climb.  You notice that the place is mobbed.  There are people everywhere.  And basically what everyone is doing is climbing steps to reach the Wall, which is more steps.
There is more than one access point to reach the Wall.  When I was last in China, eight years ago without Chuck, I climbed and climbed steps and never technically made it to “the wall.”  This time I climbed for approximately an hour, with Chuck, of course, in my smart bag, peeking out, and did make it to the wall.
It wasn’t easy.  The steps are uneven.  It is hot.  You are part of a line of people all climbing upward.  It is very slow going.  Some people are climbing up the middle of the steps, attempting to move more quicky, but if you choose that path, you have nothing to hold onto.
The view is fantastic.  The wall was built along the highest ridge of mountains which is why you must climb upwards to reach it.
When we finally reach “the wall,” we come to a kind of landing with an enclosed building of sorts, with windows that look out over the magnificent views.  At least there’s some degree of shade.  We celebrate briefly and take photos.  We’re totally exhausted.  And people are pushing past us.  There is no place to sit and order a cool drink of anything.  The water I’m carrying is warm and almost depleted.
We have the option of continuing to walk along the wall, and I actually thought that once we reached the wall, it would even out and become like some fantastic walkway with lemonade stands and souvenir shops, etc.  But I’m wrong.
Perhaps, way far up, the stairs will even out to a walkway, but that is miles away.  Someone tells me that if I climb to the next landing, it will look exactly the same as this one.
I’m feeling exhilarated because I made it to “the wall,” but disheartened too.
Should I turn around and go back down?
Chuck is nodding “yes.”
Bob wants to continue onward.  His ego is at stake.
But, of course, with guys that is what it’s always all about--the competition.  I didn’t want it to be about that.
It’s then that something magical happens.
I spy a group of two couples posing for pictures on the landing where we’ve stopped.  The two women are obviously sisters, and they're standing together and posing in such a way that they lean into each other with their one arm reaching up to form half a heart.  Together the two arms, one from each sister, form a whole heart.
I’ve never seen that before.  It’s so sweet.
I speak no Chinese but I motion--asking if I can take their picture.
They nod.  Then Bob and I strike the same pose, and they take our photo.
They spy Chuck.  They are enthralled that we have our cat with us.
In China, each Chinese household is limited to only one dog.  Thankfully, there is no limit on cats.
We smile.   Then we all laugh together, start down the steps, and I know I’ll always remember the Great Wall, our trek up the stairs and the two sisters who made the heart with their arms entwined together.

         PS  That photo of Chuck--he was not posed on the Great Wall, but rather on our couch in the Great Room.  Ha. Ha.  Chuck is very vain and would allow no photos of himself on the wall.  Rather he needed to "over groom" as usual and look his best.  The handsome kid!

Chuck Has Almost Meet with Chinese Panda Bear

I know what you’re thinking.

I’m sure that after you read the title--Chinese Panda Bear--you have to be asking yourself--did the Chinese Panda Bear fly here to the states or did Chuck fly to China??

This was not one of Chuck’s finer moments.

He did not enjoy being stuffed into my carryon for fifteen hours (all the air deflated out of him) as we flew non-stop across the oceans and over the top of the world to a place where people use chopsticks rather than forks and knives.

What induced Chuck to even consider the grueling journey was the thought of meeting what I would consider one of the great wonders of the world--at least of the animal world--the giant panda bear.

Chuck had only seen one panda before--at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. and if you remember that incident, he jumped into the panda’s den area and tried to instigate a show down. This time, we had a long talk before we arrived at the Beijing Zoo. There would be no jumping into the den area. Not at the Beijing Zoo. Not in China. Not in this particular tense political climate.

The Chuckster would have to be content with watching the panda bear from afar.

But that was okay with him.

The panda bear from any distance is mesmerizing.

At the Beijing Zoo, there are signs everywhere announcing the existence of the panda bear. When we first spot him, he is not doing much of anything, but we were warned he might be sleeping or resting.
I took this opportunity, as we were gazing at the panda through the glass, to tell Chuck the top five interesting facts about panda bears:

1. 99% of a panda’s diet is bamboo--a diet heavy in protein.
Pandas will also eat honey, eggs, fish, yams, shrub leaves, oranges, bananas, etc.

2. Panda bears live in the lowland areas of Sichuan Province in China. It is estimated that approximately 1590 pandas live in the wild as compared to 239 bears who live in captivity.

3. Male panda bears can weigh up to 350 pounds. Females can weigh up to 280 pounds. But when born, a baby panda weighs only 3 1/2 to 7 ounces.

4.  Pandas are solitary animals. After a baby is born, the father panda leaves the mother to raise the panda on her own.

5.  Panda bears live approximately 30 years in captivity and 20 years in the wild. Ming Ming, in captivity, lived to be 34 years old.

When I’m finished, I knew that I hadn’t answered the one question on Chuckie’s mind.

“No,” I said, “there is no record of a Panda ever attacking and eating a cat.”

Chuck sighed in relief.

“You don’t taste like bamboo,” I added to reassure him. “Plus panda bears are not aggressive by nature. They only attack someone or something who annoys them.”

At this time, the panda bear finally got up and went over to the door that led to the outside area. With his back to us, he stood there on his hind legs for at least ten minutes, facing outside. What was he thinking?

Finally, he wandered outside, and Chuck and I scooted out of the building so we could see what he was up to.

And I knew what Chuck was thinking. And hoping. He wanted to meet Mr. Panda. He wanted that panda bear to wander over to where we were standing. He wanted that bear to acknowledge us in some way. A friendly wave. A giant nod of his head. Something. Anything.

Chuck has no patience.

I was fascinated just watching the panda move.

Chuck was not.

Then it happened.

I had come to this exhibit with no expectations.

Chuck had come expecting everything.

Suddenly, the panda grabbed a bamboo branch and started eating it.

And eating it. And eating it.

I guess when pandas weigh hundreds of pounds, they need a lot of bamboo to feel satisfied. It takes them a long time to eat enough bamboo to fill their bellies.

I pulled out my iphone and started videotaping the panda eating the bamboo.
What a wonderful thing to watch.

Chuck began to get restless.

“Can you wait?” I shouted out.

But Chuck figured that panda could be sitting there for hours eating that bamboo.

I clicked off my iphone, ended the videotape, and glared at Chuck.

“You are the biggest baby.”

He glared back at me, impatience all over his face.

I mean it.

It was time to leave. I took one last look at the panda eating the bamboo. WOW. You don’t see this in the states everyday. WOW.

To see some remarkable video of the panda eating bamboo, log onto www.katelutter.com and click on the link on my homepage that will take you to my You Tube video. Enjoy!