I need to spend a single night at the airport hotel in Ürümqi before catching my morning flight back to Xi’an and thence to Shanghai. The hotel was massive, the surveillance ubiquitous, and the architecture distinctly Sino-Authoritarian. Looking out my window at the snow-covered rooftops toward the airport, I thought to myself “In Soviet Union, hotel check into YOU!”
The hotel had theoretical in-room “dinging” but I went down to the (supposedly Western) restaurant. Because of Chinese New Year, they had a very, very, very short menu of Chinese fare (written entirely in Chinese.) The food was gross but I didn’t starve.
I thought of an easy mnemonic for remembering my room number. 