Submitted by Experience Not Logic Blog

Several years ago, a friend and I took a car from Portland, Oregon to New York to visit his brother who had just started his summer associateship at a big fancy law firm. We arrived on a Friday afternoon after making stops at Yellowstone and Mount Rushmore. We met his brother in his office. I was wearing flip flops at the time–I felt like a jackass with each step. Somehow his brother was able to get off at 5pm (but I think it was with the caveat that he read some 1,000 pages over the weekend), and secure the firm’s card for drinks.

Long story short, I woke up in some hotel room that ate into a huge chunk of the spare change I had left after blowing as much as my graduation money as I possibly could on fireworks at various firework depots on the drive cross country (I still have a seemingly endless satchel full in my closet). But, it wasn’t the money I was thinking about as I awoke. Rather, I was wondering whether I had fallen asleep in a cloud for the bed in the most inexpensive room in the very expensive hotel was the softest bed I had ever known. It felt like I had sunk into a cocoon of feather pillows and velvet.

Which brings me to the 5-star China hotel. I’m typing this from the Grand International Hotel in Guangzhou, my first actual 5-star experience. The service is impeccable, the restaurants are tasty, the lobby is fabulous, the rooms are well-appointed, tasteful and clean. But, the bed feels like the exact same bed I’ve slept on every night I’ve been in China–a gigantic box spring. What gives? Is this some sort of Chinese medicine thing? Are soft beds supposedly bad for people?

I might conjecture that these beds are at the heart of Chinese entrepreneurialism, When I wake up in China, I never feel like sleeping in and I’m always raring to go.