I was in China on business recently with a couple coworkers. I have been there many many times before, but this was the first time anything like this had ever happened.
For some reason, we couldn’t exchange our currency at the hotel, and the banks were all closed, so I decided we would walk around and see what we could get with the few dollars in Chinese currency I had left over from my last trip here. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to mainland China, but you’d have to be pretty daring to eat anything on the street there and this night was no exception. With no good options presenting themselves, we decided to head back to the hotel and eat at the restaurant attached to their lobby, figuring we could just charge it to the rooms.
So we get back, but it turns out the restaurant, an American-style pizzeria/bar, is not actually affiliated with the hotel at all. So no dice on charging the rooms. This adorable waitress informs us of this and also tells us they don’t take credit cards either. As we sat there staring at each other wondering what we were going to do, the waitress offers to change some of our money for us out of her own cash. We take her up on it, order some pizzas and soda water, and keep her as our waitress.