It was the fourth event of the 2016 PGA Tour China season, and I was an hour from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport on Chongming Island. The island is a peaceful stretch of farmland and home to Lanhai Country Club, a long, windswept Nicklaus design modeled after Big Jack’s favorite holes in the U.K. I had spent the previous 24 hours with a vicious stomach bug. I couldn’t have named a single ingredient in the Sichuan hotpot from two nights before; perhaps I should have been more inquisitive.
48 hours earlier, I’d been in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province, heading into the final round of the Cadillac Championship one shot outside the top 10. I was playing well and had a real chance at a top-five finish. Chengdu is a sprawling, rapidly expanding city—construction cranes on every corner, entire neighborhoods rising all at once. It was like that in most major Chinese cities then: ambitious development, shiny high-rises, and entire districts of completely empty apartment towers known as “ghost cities.”
Chengdu is famous for two things: pandas and Sichuan hotpot. One of these knocked me out, and it wasn’t the cute, docile bears. Hotpot is cooked and served at your table in a massive vat of broth, chilies, and ingredients of questionable identity. The spice levels range from a gentle tingle to full demonic possession capable of killing both host and exorcist. Mine was the latter—24 hours of misery I wouldn’t wish on Mao Zedong. I never left my hotel room for the final round. The withdrawal alone probably made that hotpot the most expensive meal ever eaten.
My now-wife, Sarah, and I arrived in Lanhai the next day with a local hotel reserved. I was fragile, feverish, and wanting nothing more than 10 hours of unconsciousness. After checking in, we opened the door to our room and were hit by a festering odor of mold, sewer, and rot. As an experienced budget traveler, my standards are low, but this made a crack den smell like The French Laundry.
We were offered another room—this one with sopping-wet carpet covered in gouges and stains. Had someone been practicing bunker shots in there? Dismembering a body? I could’ve been convinced either way. The carpet would’ve been drier if someone had left a garden hose running all night. With no other rooms available, we sloshed our way in. The bed was only slightly softer than a dining table, and we chose to ignore the long, dark hairs sprinkled around the pillow. Fully clothed, we tried to surrender to exhaustion.
An hour later, scratching sounds in the wall jolted us awake. The vexing, nails-on-chalkboard noise would have piqued the interest of both cats and pest control. Was I dreaming, or was there a colony of bathing rodents beneath us? The scratches kept coming, and the paper-thin walls offered a front-row seat to every movement of our neighbors. Then came the itching.
Every patch of exposed skin started to tingle. Sarah felt it too, and we both began scratching like mad. Bed bugs making their move? “Ready to check out?” I asked. She’d been ready since the second we stepped inside.
At sunrise, I rode the haunted elevator to the lobby. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since opening day. To reach the front desk, we passed the narrow breakfast area, where a cook was already whipping up dishes you couldn’t possibly identify. I hugged the wall, slipped past the tables, escaped outside, and inhaled a long breath of fresh air.
After scouring the town for an ATM—many Chinese hotels back then were cash-only—I gathered enough for a new hotel. As I returned to check out, I ran into fellow pros sharing their own horror stories. One had spent the night chasing a bat around his room. Another had been swinging a long iron at rodents and was considering leaving his 3-iron behind to avoid flashbacks on the course.
I entered through a side door near the breakfast area. A younger woman and her mother (or grandmother?) were seated at a table. The older woman suddenly turned and projectile-vomited directly in my path. This place was straight out of The Shining. Was I hallucinating? Get me out of here.
A minute later, I stood at the check-out counter. The desk clerk leaned back in his chair, buried in a newspaper, completely ignoring me. I waited, stunned, exhausted, baffled. For a moment, I considered picking up a dish of Chinese candies and tossing it on his newspaper. Then something moved in the corner of my eye.
A lobster was making a run for it.
At full crustacean sprint, it scuttled toward my feet, perhaps sensing an ally. I stared, momentarily unsure if this was real. Twenty more feet and it might escape. Keep going, buddy. Don’t stop. I tried subtly ushering it forward.
The lobster, like me, was in survival mode. Who knew how long it had endured this hellish place? It wasn’t turning back. It paused a few feet away, then reared back on its tail, raising its claws toward me like I was the final boss blocking the exit.
“Dude, wrong guy,” I tried to say in Lobster. “We’re in this together.”
I looked back at the clerk. Maybe I should send this lobster flying across the counter to confront its true captor. Or maybe I should save it—smuggle it on a train, release it into the ocean—an act of defiance against the golf gods and this unholy establishment. At this point I was fairly certain I was hallucinating.
“Hey,” I said. The clerk pulled the corner of his newspaper down, glaring with one eye. I nodded toward the defiant little creature beneath me.
“Your dinner is making a run for it.”
The man stared blankly. The lobster had more personality.
“Wǎnfàn zài pǎobù,” I said. Dinner is running.
Finally, the clerk lowered the paper and saw the lobster, claws raised. Without a word, he stood, walked around the counter, grabbed the lobster by its antenna, and carried it straight to the kitchen.
In a place like this, survival requires solidarity. And I’d just snitched on the lobster. Maybe I deserved the previous 48 hours.
Moments later, the clerk returned and stood behind the counter at attention.
“I’m checking out,” I said.
My now-wife, Sarah, and I arrived in Lanhai the next day with a local hotel reserved. I was fragile, feverish, and wanting nothing more than 10 hours of unconsciousness. After checking in, we opened the door to our room and were hit by a festering odor of mold, sewer, and rot. As an experienced budget traveler, my standards are low, but this made a crack den smell like The French Laundry.
We were offered another room—this one with sopping-wet carpet covered in gouges and stains. Had someone been practicing bunker shots in there? Dismembering a body? I could’ve been convinced either way. The carpet would’ve been drier if someone had left a garden hose running all night. With no other rooms available, we sloshed our way in. The bed was only slightly softer than a dining table, and we chose to ignore the long, dark hairs sprinkled around the pillow. Fully clothed, we tried to surrender to exhaustion.
An hour later, scratching sounds in the wall jolted us awake. The vexing, nails-on-chalkboard noise would have piqued the interest of both cats and pest control. Was I dreaming, or was there a colony of bathing rodents beneath us? The scratches kept coming, and the paper-thin walls offered a front-row seat to every movement of our neighbors. Then came the itching.
Every patch of exposed skin started to tingle. Sarah felt it too, and we both began scratching like mad. Bed bugs making their move? “Ready to check out?” I asked. She’d been ready since the second we stepped inside.
At sunrise, I rode the haunted elevator to the lobby. It looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since opening day. To reach the front desk, we passed the narrow breakfast area, where a cook was already whipping up dishes you couldn’t possibly identify. I hugged the wall, slipped past the tables, escaped outside, and inhaled a long breath of fresh air.
After scouring the town for an ATM—many Chinese hotels back then were cash-only—I gathered enough for a new hotel. As I returned to check out, I ran into fellow pros sharing their own horror stories. One had spent the night chasing a bat around his room. Another had been swinging a long iron at rodents and was considering leaving his 3-iron behind to avoid flashbacks on the course.
I entered through a side door near the breakfast area. A younger woman and her mother (or grandmother?) were seated at a table. The older woman suddenly turned and projectile-vomited directly in my path. This place was straight out of The Shining. Was I hallucinating? Get me out of here.
A minute later, I stood at the check-out counter. The desk clerk leaned back in his chair, buried in a newspaper, completely ignoring me. I waited, stunned, exhausted, baffled. For a moment, I considered picking up a dish of Chinese candies and tossing it on his newspaper. Then something moved in the corner of my eye.
A lobster was making a run for it.
At full crustacean sprint, it scuttled toward my feet, perhaps sensing an ally. I stared, momentarily unsure if this was real. Twenty more feet and it might escape. Keep going, buddy. Don’t stop. I tried subtly ushering it forward.
The lobster, like me, was in survival mode. Who knew how long it had endured this hellish place? It wasn’t turning back. It paused a few feet away, then reared back on its tail, raising its claws toward me like I was the final boss blocking the exit.
“Dude, wrong guy,” I tried to say in Lobster. “We’re in this together.”
I looked back at the clerk. Maybe I should send this lobster flying across the counter to confront its true captor. Or maybe I should save it—smuggle it on a train, release it into the ocean—an act of defiance against the golf gods and this unholy establishment. At this point I was fairly certain I was hallucinating.
“Hey,” I said. The clerk pulled the corner of his newspaper down, glaring with one eye. I nodded toward the defiant little creature beneath me.
“Your dinner is making a run for it.”
The man stared blankly. The lobster had more personality.
“Wǎnfàn zài pǎobù,” I said. Dinner is running.
Finally, the clerk lowered the paper and saw the lobster, claws raised. Without a word, he stood, walked around the counter, grabbed the lobster by its antenna, and carried it straight to the kitchen.
In a place like this, survival requires solidarity. And I’d just snitched on the lobster. Maybe I deserved the previous 48 hours.
Moments later, the clerk returned and stood behind the counter at attention.
“I’m checking out,” I said.
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