On my 1988 film shoot in China, we arrived at Dengfeng (where the world-famous Shaolin temples are, in Songshan nearby) to find our hotel rooms had not been made up for our arrival. When we first checked in, the room I was given still had a woman’s clothes, underwear and handbag in it. I called the attendant over to point this out, upon which she walked off to get me another room, simply leaving the door wide open, handbag in the room and all!
A pungent pong of damp and moulding carpet smell hit me in the face as I entered the room. In the bathroom, the sink pipe was dripping water onto the floor, and the same dank smell and stinky humidity (from lack of ventilation) permeated the room. There were wet, dripping, used towels on the rails, in the sink, on the floor. The rest of the crew had exactly the same thing in their rooms. Change of towels later, the new lot was still damp and dank, and looked like mould was festering.
Chris the cameraman and I contracted pretty nasty “red-eyes” (conjunctivitis) the next day—he in both eyes, me in one. We reckoned we’d been careless in having touched or wiped our hands on the towels—we certainly didn’t USE the towels. Off we went to the nearest hospital. When it came to filling in the forms, the staff decided it was too much of an administrative problem to have Chris, the Westerner with a Western name, go on a form by himself, and as I have a Chinese name—which they can handle—they simply used one form under my name. So, officially, I went on their records as having been treated for three eyes.
The following day, the film director also went down with one red eye. Another trip to the same hospital. Oh no, they thought, not ANOTHER Westerner with an impossible-to-write name! Chris and I got seen to as well, since we were there, so they put all three of us on the same form, again under my name. Officially, then, I was now being treated for four eyes.
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