Guardians of Grail

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Adventures in China's first 'western' hotel,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]
The brand new China has forgotten a slice of old Shanghai.
Where else could you sleep for under Rs 4,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],000 a night within the same hotel where Albert Einstein stayed in 1922 and Charlie Chaplin honeymooned in the 1930s? A high level Bertrand Russel fan,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], check in to Room 310.
The atrium of China oldest western hotel,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the Astor House in Shanghai, is encompassed by rooms where Bertrand Russel and Albert Einstein once checked-in. (Photo by Reshma Patil)
Over a century ago when its phone number was 200,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the riverfront Astor House hotel was China's pride because the first posh 'western' hotel home to elite politicians,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], philosophers as well as a visiting US President in 1897.
Today, puzzled taxi drivers have a problem with Shanghai ever-changing maps to find the over 160-year-old three-star icon with Chinese concierges in Scottish skirts. The hotel ballroom, known as the birthplace of Chinese social dancing, now serves baked beans and pizza beside Shanghai dumplings in the breakfast buffet.
Tourists disregard the five-storey colonial structure because they walk past with cameras trained on China's New York on the other side of the Huangpu River, in which a 101-storey bottle-opener-shaped skyscraper may be the new star on Shanghai's skyline with the world's highest hotel, the Park Hyatt, on floors 79-93.
Many locals and expats haven't heard of that old Astor House built with a Britisher in 1846,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], reconstructed in 1907 and restored in 2002-06. The hotel staff are as bewildered by the history because the difference between pasta and noodles.
In the lobby, a man-sized poster praises the government's preservation of Shanghai's heritage and offers guests a free hotel tour. Employees looked astonished when I requested the tour. One of them scurried to read the notice she had never noticed.
Finally, the manager and I headed to the third floor atrium encompassed by celebrity rooms (higher price) and walls lined with old photographs and notes about the Astor House history. Rather than saying a good story,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the manager got engrossed in reading the historic notes as if he had no idea he worked inside a hotel from where Shanghai's first mobile call was dialled in 1901. It had been Shanghai's first hotel powered by coal gas and the first to get tap water. In 1882,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], it had been China's first hotel illuminated with electricity. The locals described the hotel seven lamps as mysterious artificial moons. In 1990,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], China's first stock exchange since 1949 was launched here.
Ah. The manager read everything and said he had to leave. But I demanded to determine an area. A maid was sent to open Room 304. I saw a cover girl on a glossy magazine near the bed and a computer about the study table. If it wasn't for that three Einsteins framed on the wall,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], you'd never result in the historic connection.
The Astor House was not on my small travel agent's listing of recommended hotels. He hadn't heard about it. The recommended hotels were typical of China's 'modern' hotels. I find them clean but overpriced and depressingly boring with garish brown interiors, hard beds,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], and an extra 50-80 yuan (Rs 350-560) to have an unappetising breakfast with nothing vegetarian except bread and stale cereal.
The agent reluctantly booked the Astor House although it was cheaper than anything on his list,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], perhaps at recession prices. Very old hotel, he warned. "At least it'll have character,'' I said.
Your accommodation has retained more than character. The high-ceilinged rooms are bigger than rooms in many of Shanghai's best hotels,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], but cheap curtains hide beautiful old-fashioned window alcoves.
My quaint room was cosier than Einstein's room with the shiny yellow bedspreads and excess furniture. But when I shut the door,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], water bottle on the study table would topple with a thud. When a bus rumbled outside, the wooden floor would shudder. At 6 am the very first morning, the door chain jammed and that i was locked in. A lift on my small fourth floor moved grudgingly only if an ancient lever was yanked.相关的主题文章：

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