What is the Mandarin for "Monday, bloody Monday"?

Out of the Gobi desert into China and the mountains

Finally arriving in China, and Beijing, I reflected on the shocks that await the unwary (and the wary) traveller, that I have encountered so far. The first was on booking into my hotel in Moscow (10 days ago!) and having a bath. There then followed that lacunae when one realises that there is a live, large, insect in the (just evacuated and emptied) bath. There is that knife edge of wondering - did I bring that in from my last means of transport? - Metro for me - or was it there previously? Did it share a bath with me or not and why have I only just noticed?

Then there is the jolt on arriving at Beijing Railway Station (the main one) to realise that it is eight or nine years since I was last in China. Since then, China has enjoyed massive growth for each of those years, and has held the Olympics. I am ascribing the absolutely stunning change I observed to these two factors. Amazingly, it appears that - at least on one day at one railway station in Beijing - the Chinese have learnt to queue - for taxis if nothing else. I was in the queue for a legitimate taxi, rather than a gypsy one, for about three quarters of an hour. During that time I observed queue behaviour that would do justice to a bus queue in Clapham. In the 45 or so minutes, there was only ONE fight between would be taxi passengers.

The taxi driver delivered the next blow. Lulled by the substantial, but imperceptible, skills of the railway attendant, I had gained the impression that my Mandarin might have a very restricted vocabulary, and that my pronunciation might well be laboured and slow, but that it was fairly correct. Faced with a cabbie, it rapidly became apparent that my pronunciation was so slow and laboured that the effect was exactly the same as if deliberately mangled. However, after three goes, and a look at my hotel voucher (printed in English) we were in business. Then the only thing left was finding the hotel. Beijing is a very big city; the last I heard, it only has nine ring roads, and even having an address is no guarantee that one comes off the right ring road exit. Again, a saving grace - the voucher had the hotel phone number on it, and he used this to obtain directions.

Then to the hotel, to face the sinking feeling when the hotel denies having a booking for you; and does not recognise either of the two company names printed on the Airmiles hotel voucher. The day was only saved by the hard work of the duty manager, plus a bit of serendipity on my part - spotting in the very (very) small print of an internet produced voucher, a company reference that the hotel (sort of) recognised, and was able to track back within their systems to the company, and then forward to the booking.

Just one final piece twist of the knife of traveller's woes. There were no rail tickets waiting for me, for my onward journey to Xining. This is the situation that arose on the Trans-Mongolian Express. On the first or second full day onboard, I received an email saying that Mastercard had blocked my payment for the tickets. This was after the same thing had happened when I went to pay for the tickets in England, and resulted in (supposedly) Mastercard lifting the freeze; me having a long talk with the security people at my credit card who informed me that:
1 I had triggered an extra alert on the security front, because my card had been used over the internet, to purchase long distance travel in a foreign country (and one a very long way away).
2 They would release the payment.
3 I was best advised to give Mastercard my itinery (which I did), as a way of ensuring that this would not happen again.

So when the travel agency re-presented the credit card voucher ten days before I am due to travel (the earliest the tickets can be booked in advance) the same thing happened again. I spent some hours on the train, and spent about $50 dollars on connection charges, for both data and voice calls, to get it notionally sorted. I am in possession of confirmation from the travel agency that they have received my payment and that they would be delivered today to the hotel. So of course no tickets. I am not a completely happy bunny, and my vocabulary (in any language) about Mastercard security would set fire to the Channel at 8000 plus miles (only joking, the Channel is safe in my hands).

And this was Monday.