Thursday, April 06, 2006

A Visitor Calls

We have a visitor. You'd think I'd know who he was but I'm not quite sure - suffice to says it's "Some old fella" from my wife, YY's, hometown. I remember seeing him at my wedding but as most people from YY's hometown don't speak English or Mandarin Chinese I don't really get to know people when I'm there.

Fortunately, for me, we have two apartments at the moment - one occupied by us and, since our visitor arrives, my mother in-law, the other by my sister-in-law and my father-in-law, he's the lucky one to be sharing a bed with our visitor.

There is clearly a strong sense of obligation at work here, which is clearly a double-edged-sword.This means that we are putting him up, even though it appears that no-one that knows him really likes him. It does make me wonder how many more people will come to visit Hangzhou and start by gving us a call? I assume that if he has a bad time then that would reflect badly on YY's parents when everyone is back home, but what is the worst that can happen if he has a great time?

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