China Revisited - 2013 [25]

The High Life

The night before we left for Guangzhou, after a day of seeing Splendid China, Edward and his mother took us to a restaurant on the 96th floor of the tallest building in Shenzhen. Donna was excited because Edward mentioned that the restaurant served western food. After a week of immersion in real Chinese food, she was anticipating something, well, something less Chinese, more familiar.

As one would expect of a restaurant on the 96th floor, it had a panoramic view of the city. The windows that afforded us this view extended clear down to the floor line.

There were a number of interesting features to this restaurant that are related to its location.  The fact that we had a table next to the window with a view extending 1000 feet straight down was one of these features -- an exciting prospect.

Standing well back from the glass, I could clearly see Hong Kong territory beyond the river and clogged traffic on the arteries below as far as the eye could see.  Just like an American city.

In theory at least, and in retrospect, I am glad for the opportunity; but the experience itself was rather unnerving.  Irrational and unmanly though it be, I admit that I am generally afraid of heights, which has meant a number of highly stressful tourist adventures through the years. In 1986 I found myself virtually crawling along the fortification wall of a castle ruin in Wales that my kids and pregnant wife had just crossed. With no apparent hesitation or discomfort.

I found myself nearly paralyzed, able to move forward only by bending nearly double and focusing my attention entirely on the the walk immediately in front of my feet.  I gripped to the stone numbs along the edge that had once shielded this walk from the enemy, sliding my hands forward so that I would not have to let go.

I have a similar, though less severe problem watching others dangle over the abyss. These window washers swishing from side to side twenty five or thirty stories up a  building in Haeundae in Busan, made my legs and ankles hurt.

 And on a visit to St. Paul's Cathedral in London, in October, 2010, my son Ian, who shares my terror of heights, asked me to ascend the dome of St. Paul's all the way to the little walkway at the top. We made it, although we found ourselves riveted to every surface we could make contact with.

Our dinner turned out to be a western style buffet, different on the whole from what we had been eating for a week, but with precious few American offerings. I found a table with lamb, which was extraordinary, so I was able to skip the octopus.

There really were an enormous number of options from all food groups, foreign and domestic.  One I found particularly interesting was labeled "French Cut the Cheese."

One table held a large, elegant tray of what looked like dark tapioca.  Nothing else, just the tapioca. I didn't try any.  But Donna later identified it as caviar.



I was personally far less concerned with exotic foods than I was with the fact that my chair sat 18 inches from the window with its view of the ever- darkening abyss.

The topper to the evening was leaving the restaurant.  The elevator, which could whisk you up in a matter of seconds and make your ears pop, only went as far as the floor below. To get to the food itself, one had to climb a spiral stair case that rose about forty feet in the center of what is essentially a large room.  Because the walls of that floor, too, were entirely glass and because the bannister was supported by glass panels, the staircase appeared to be suspended, rising as if in mid-air.

I had managed to climb to the restaurant by focusing on each step as it came.

Now, how to get down?

It's not like me to speak of in terms of the laws of physics as a rule, but I was well aware that he who goes up must go down. Irrational though it may be, fear of heights defies most logical attempts to explain it away.  Nevertheless, I have learned that a man who freezes with fear will remain frozen. So I have learned to address the fear by moving because it is easier to keep moving than to start moving.

So -- I stepped forward, slowly, fearfully, and kept going although every step going down was like stepping out into thin air a thousand feet above the city streets.