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Sunday 2004-07-04 - Dunhuang, China
Market instead of Internet
After lunch at John’s I asked one of the guys there for the Internet Service; they don’t have it here, he says (and neither does the hotel, as I already found out) but he gives me directions where I can find several Internet cafes; “slow”, he warns. Slow is no problem - I’m typing locally most of the time anyway. First I go to the hotel lobby where I sit down at a table and write a bit more; then, accompanied by Carla, who just wants to walk around Dunhuang, I follow the directions given.
At the first Internet cafe, soon found, I am studiously ignored completely, so I walk out again. Not much farther on is another place, like the first with a lot of work stations, but here they’re more friendly. The young man (who tells me it costs 2¥ (Yuan) per hour) shows me to a terminal and starts up Internet Explorer for me. That’s fine, but I need Notepad as well, I try to explain. He doesn’t understand what I mean, so I just sit down and poke around for a while; it’s hopeless — this is a completely customized shell under Windows 98 (I do find out that much) but all menus are non-standard, completely in Chinese, and in fact there are several virtual desktops, it seems. Notepad can’t be found; it’s probably never used — can one even type in Chinese in Notepad, I wonder? I have no idea. I don’t see Wordpad either; I’m forced to give up after a few minutes. I raise my hands in defeat. “No problem,” gestures the young man when we leave.
I give up the idea of updating the travel blog from Dunhuang, and decide to walk around town with Carla instead. In a nice pedestrian street with a lot of stalls with souvenirs we shop around a little, take a peek in yet another Internet cafe (I recognize the same customized shell, so I’m out again very quickly) and then find a nice vegetable market where we roam around a while, and I take some pictures.
