Wined and Dined by the Two Vice Directors of Jiuzhaigou

Emily I walked out of the park, down the hot pavement, relishing the thought of our hot shower and water (did I mention we had our own water cooler in our new park hotel room?) only to find that at our hotel, our room was absolutely clean but all of our stuff was missing. I had had so much sun for the day, that I almost thought maybe we had lost our stuff somewhere else. It was very surreal. Emily finally found some soap of hers in our room that proved we were indeed there yesterday. Finally, mandarine chinese book in hand, we decided to talk to the hotel people. I thought the whole thing was hilarious, joking that I was going to be traveling across China much lighter now, but Emily was a little more concerned (rightly so). Emily said the hotel people, "My bags, stolen" and then pointed to it in our phrase book. The hotel people laughed and told us that Andrew had packed it all up. We laughed and were much relieved. So we went to see her friend who was busy working but told us where our new free lodging was. Then we tried to repack all of our stuff in the lobby on this tiny tea table. We were happy not to think about finding lodging for the night and went to move in. To our surprise this park hotel was even better. We had a pathway leading thru a fish pond to our hotel which was nestled by the park entrance. Our room had a huge window that we could open for fresh air with a stream running below and a view of the mountains (you couldn't even see the park road!). We still had hot water, our own water cooler and extra blankets. Thinks were getting better all along. Her friend told us that the Chinese do not like to stay at this hotel because it is too noisy and apparently only park associated people could stay here.

We went to meet Andrew outside for dinner to find that he was schmoozing it up with a man in a suit. We were introduced to him and it turns out he is the Vice Director for the park. He proceeded to order dinner for us (his dinner that he was eating looking fabulous--noodles with greens). We had noodles and a special yak meat soup and he ordered beer that we toasted with in small goblets. Then the other vice director showed up and ate with us as well. During the dinner, Emily and I managed to BOTH drop our chopsticks on the ground, causing the vice director to grab and extra pair in case it happened again. They also laughingly offered up forks for us. We talked about our impressions of the park and one of them told us about his visit to Yosemite. It was very generous of them.

The next day was Saturday, but they all work every day around the clock. Andrew had arranged for us to meet with the Science Department. They served us tea and actually refilled our hot water. The science director listened to our impressions of the park and asked for criticism of the park. It was really fun to give our opinion, but it completely took me aback. We both suggested ranger led programs and I suggested a herbarium (of course). His worker bees to copius notes on what we said and our friend told us that the next day they sent out an all park memo with our suggestions. I thought this was really nice and I wondered if they had any idea what our GS level was.