The company had chartered a hotel, Holiday Inn, for us to stay in for a long period of time, and a strange thing happened at that time. Every night at around 10 o’clock, there was always the sound of machines turning in the next room, sometimes faintly, sometimes clearly. Because the walls were not very soundproof, I could still hear the noise from the next room. Out of curiosity, I stood on the bed with my ear against the wall, trying to listen to what was going on in the next room. I could faintly hear some tiny English words on the TV, and I could hear the sound of the machine rotating and crashing. I could hear a woman screaming in bed, accompanied by a few men saying something in it, and all of them were speaking Chinese, not English. As long as I waited for the next room to open, I would pretend to go out at the same time to see what kind of people were coming in and out, and gradually got used to it. Since I had this experience, now when I go out on business trips, I have the habit of listening to the sound of the next room.
