Last Thursday Imagethief spent the night in Shanghai prior to an event. The event was held at the luxurious and swank Shangri La Pudong, a hotel so grand and impressive that they supply binoculars in the conference room so you can admire their spanning view of the Bund and Shanghai's iconic Oriental Pearl TV Tower.

Imagethief did not stay at Shangri La Pudong. Next time you see Imagethief, ask him here he finds his Shangri La and he will tell you that he found it at the considerably more downmarket Shaanxi Business Hotel in Puxi. I stayed at the Shaanxi Business Hotel as a show of solidarity with the PR manager of my client company, Miss Y., who was staying at the same hotel. Despite the fact that I probably could have simply booked the Shangri La for myself and charged it to the client, I elected to save her 1000RMB and take advantage of the opportunity to take her out for dinner. This is called client relationship management. And I paid a price for it.

My room had a spectacular view of Yan'an Road, and single-paned unstripped windows so I could be sure to hear the clicking valves in every taxi and truck that roared by. The service was fine in that cursory, skin-deep kind of way you get used to in China. That's where people smile and greet you cheerily, but are totally incapable of helping to you to resolve any kind of problem. I found myself needing to print about thirty pages, and my conversation with the woman at reception went like this:

Me: "Hi. I see the business center is closed. Can you help me to print some pages?"
Smiley reception woman: "I'm sorry. The business center is closed."
Me: "Yes. I see that. Can you help me to print them, since the business center is closed? I need them early tomorrow morning."
Smiley reception woman: "I'm sorry. We have no printer."
Me (gritting teeth): "Alright, then. What time does the business center open in the morning?"
Smiley reception woman: "Eight AM".
Me: "I'll have to leave before then. Is there any chance they can open before eight?"
Smiley reception woman: "Maybe."
Insert sound of my clenched teeth shattering.

I went up to my room and looked up the Shangri La's number on the Internet. The Shaanxi Business Hotel doesn't have foreign TV channels, but the broadband works a treat. The woman at the Shang assured me that their business center would open at 6:30 AM. Problem solved.

The Shaanxi Business Hotel's clientele runs heavily to Chinese businessmen in town from the provinces (Shaanxi, one presumes) and what appear to be Russians. Either way, they all appreciate a party. The floor I stayed on had lots of open room-doors, through which drifted the sounds of music and glasses clinking. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that the designers of the Shaanxi Business Hotel have not, apparently, heard the good news about sound isolation. As I turned off my light at 11:30, anticipating my brutal 6:15 AM wakeup call, I heard my neighbor in animated discussion with several friends while music thumped through his television. Fortunately, at about midnight they all stumbled out for drinks, but made sure to close their door with a resounding slam! so everyone would know they had left and it was safe to go so sleep.

At 4:15 AM my neighbor came staggering back, blind drunk (I have to assume), 三陪小姐 in tow, and proceeded to have to an impromptu, liquor-fueled karaoke session in his room.

As I descend into middle-age and my politics inevitably harden I'll be able to look back on that night and identify --to the second-- the moment my opinion on the death penalty changed. I now see my youthful opposition to capital punishment as woefully soft and misguided. Lying on my bed in the wee hours, staring down the barrel of an obscene wakeup call and needing to manage a Fortune 500 company board-member through a group-interview with five foreign correspondents, I understood the purpose of the death penalty. And not with a coddling, Western, twenty-years on death-row followed by a slow, fuzzy barbiturate slide into oblivion execution. As I listened to my inebriated neighbor ululate along with his television to the giggling of his Shanghai crack whore I began to appreciate the brutal immediacy of a Chinese-style execution, which often involves being dragged into a quarry and shot in the back of the head with a pistol immediately after your appeal is rejected.

I always travel with earplugs, and this would seem like a perfect opportunity to have used them. But with less than two hours until I needed to wake up, I didn't dare put them in. I was afraid I would sleep through my alarm; a career-limiting move on interview-day. I considered banging on the wall, but thought that might just encourage him. And my experience with the reception woman didn't make me think the hotel would be particularly aggressive in responding to any complaints. And, mostly, I was just too tired and shocked to do anything. So I stewed and hmmphed and flipped like a flapjack.

At least it didn't last long. A half an hour later the baijiu took hold or the hand-job was over or whatever, and they glided into silence. To choke on their own vomit, I could only hope.

The next morning I got up on time, wolfed down a quick breakfast at the Shaanxi Business Hotel's thoroughly mediocre buffet, and was out the door for the Shangri La at 7:30. When we got there, fifteen minutes later, the contrast with the Shaanxi Business Hotel was astounding. All was gilded, polished and serene. I gazed longingly through the cafe windows at the lavish breakfast spread, just beyond my reach. We found the business center ready and waiting for us, staffed by helpful, eager young women.

They smiled sweetly and charged me 350 kuai ($43) to print 33 pages.