An empty swimming pool. I really didn't expect it to be the most startling site I would encounter in China. Not that that it was the only remarkable view: there was a large building site that took me aback; and the angry ticket seller at the end of a four hour queue came as quite a surprise. But even these close seconds did little to live up to my expectations of this exotic location. I was more prepared to stand gaping with wonder at the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors at Xi'an, the gardens of Suzhou or the temple complex at the top of Tai mountain. But although I made considerable effort to see them all, I never gaped in wonder at them. I was too prepared for what would happen. Who goes to the Great Wall not knowing its reputation as the only man-made object that can be seen from space? One does not happen upon the Qin emperor's 2000 year old pottery army in a now remote province: one is forewarned of the large number of figures exquisitely molded with individual features. Every Suzhou resident is eagerly prepared to tell the unsuspecting tourist that Marco Polo admired their gardens some 700 years before. And, although Tai Mountain is not so well known outside China, it is not so centrally located that one could just see it while travelling to some other place: it will have been recommended by some enthusiastic friend. Expectation can destroy a sense of wonder. Or create it. And because wonder is one of those emotions that does so much to make life bearable, I feel strangely grateful to the culture responsible for the empty swimming pool, the construction site and the angry ticket seller; the fact that the same culture can count the Great Wall, the Terracotta Warriors, the gardens of Suzhou and the Tai mountain temples amongst its achievements, does, to me, add nothing to it.


My encounter with the empty swimming pool did, in fact, start with a great deal of expectation and excitement: holidays were coming and we were making plans.
"I've been looking on the Internet for somewhere to go." Katherine announced in a significant tone that suggested that this had not been a fruitless search; a tone that suggested that further questioning was expected.
"Oh yeh?"
Clearly my casual enquiry was not enough, and I was rebutted by a solid and assertive, "yes."
"So I guess you've found somewhere for us to go" I dutifully asked.
"Of course."
"And you are going to tell me about it?"
"Wellll, about 1 hour north of here is Changzhou."
"And Changzhou is good to visit because…?"
"It has a dinosaur park." She announced briskly, and then explained with some pride, "The largest one in Jiangsu, probably the country."
To which the obvious question was the one I asked, "How many dinosaur parks are there in China?"
"I dunno, but this one looks great, and the children will love it. There are loads of rides. And right next to it is a hotel with cable TV and a swimming pool."
"Well Ruthie will like that. And the cost?"
Things are never very expensive in Chinese towns like Changzhou that nobody but the residents and their close family has ever heard of; as I had no alternative suggestion, we decided to go.
"OK, Katherine. Just phone up the park to check they'll be open. Then phone up the hotel. Check they really do have a swimming pool, and that it will be open when we are there, then book us in."


I had been in China long enough to know that the devil was in the detail. A friend had gone to a hotel boasting 'the use of a swimming pool' only to find that that pool in question was a separate facility several streets away and was useable on the production of a fee payable to an entirely different organisation. Katherine is Chinese, and we weren't naïve: we wouldn't be caught like that. Ruth, Chloe and George had never before stayed in a hotel with a pool and were full of it.
"You did check they had a pool." I asked with a rising sense of concern caused by my children's growing excitement as the train took us closer and closer to the supposed pool.
"Yes." Katherine replied with a resigned air.
"What did you say?"
"Listen, I said, "Do you have a pool inside your hotel?" "Will it be open while we are there?" "Can we use it for no extra cost?" So,' she ended, looking me straight in the eye, 'Do you think that would be enough?'
"Alright, I think that should do it." I admitted


Of course, it didn't do it at all. We arrived in Changzhou in the rain so had to wait a little while for a taxi to the hotel, but our check-in and ascent to our rooms were hassle free.
"Let's go to the pool."
Just passed reception was a door with swimming pool written on it (in Chinese). Both sexes pass through the same door into a narrow corridor: after several short steps is a door with the character for man, and 'male' written in English below, George and I went through here, leaving a door at the end of the corridor, which I supposed to be female, to Katherine, Ruth and Chloe.


The reception had been nice, a touch of baroque grandeur demonstrating its desire to please before money is handed over, then clients proceed to a presentable but functional room, and maybe linger for a second or two at the doorway as their earlier impression of rococo twirls fades, and they remember the reasonableness of the price. The changing rooms had nothing of the reception's baroque or our room's hygienic functionality: the first thing that hit you was not the aesthetics, but the stench. Stale urine shot through with the acrid smell of shit. It was triumph of design that none of it leaked into the classy reception area. The ubiquitous white tiling highlighted the ominous dark stains on the floor, walls and, more remarkably, the ceiling. In the small changing area was a brown wooden bench in the middle, one of the strats with patches of rot, surrounded by large gray, rust flecked lockers; and, as if to make sure the message of dinginess got through, an inadequate florescent bulb where natural light had long been banished.


I began to undress George as two workers entered from the far doorway armed with mops, whose functions soon became apparent. Both men stood mutely in the door, leaning on their mops staring at us. Foreigners in Changzhou were a novelty; undressed ones undoubtedly more so.
"You wenti ma?" Do you have a problem? I asked, which seemed to me sufficiently blunt to see them off, but I received only mute shakes of their two heads. I carried on changing, as nonchalantly as possible with such an intent audience. They let us through when we had finished, and watched as we turned right into a needlessly signposted toilet: the stench giving enough direction. The toilet itself was a hole in a slightly raised platform, clearly marked by the piles of shit all around. Fortunately I am tall enough to aim at the hole from a safe spot at some distance; I had to hold George aloft. The two mop men watched this as well.


They watched as we left and went down another corridor. They watched mutely as we opened the door to the pool and entered. I really was not aware if they had moved into position again to watch me gape with wonder a smallish pool, about 10 metres by 20, but adequate for our purposes, except for a complete absence of water. A water void. I stared to confirm my first impression until George broke the spell. "Dad, where the water gone?"


Katherine and the girls were already at the reception. 'Apparently they can't have any water in it because of local health regulations.' Katherine explained.
"But they can spread all sorts of shit around the changing area." I responded curtly.
"I don't think there is a regulation on that."
"Why didn't they tell us there would be no water?"
"We didn't ask"
"What do you mean, we didn't ask? I don't think we could have been more specific."
"No" began Katherine somewhat didactically, "we asked, 'Is there a pool?' There is. We asked, 'Is it in the hotel?' It is. 'Is there no extra charge?' There isn't. 'Will it be open?' It is. We didn't ask, 'Will there be water?' Which is unfortunate, as that turned out to be the most relevant question we could have asked."
I didn't bother to ask why the two workers had watched us change and not gave us any indication of our waterless fate; I already knew the answer: we hadn't asked


So the waterless pool became the greatest of my Chinese wonders, eclipsing the building site and the angry ticket seller, which are stories for another time. And the dinosaur park? Well, it was good fun, but after a waterless pool, I would hardly call it wonderful.