The overnight train ride back to Xian is another grossly uncomfortable twelve hours, not helped by the girl opposite me taking up the small table in front of me with either her head, a book, or food. Before dawn, someone starts playing music at distortion levels on their phone. I look around for some obnoxious teenage twerp, but nobody near me looks under thirty five.
Once we arrive at the hotel in Xian, I feel awake and 10am seems a funny time to be going to bed. I lie down anyway and awaken four hours later, despite Laurie having knocked on the door ‘at least ten times’.
Laurie has a tendency to make up words when we she can’t quite find the right one or the right tense. I decide to back up my mockery of this tendency with some money. Today’s word is ‘argumentation’ which, purely by coincidence I am sure, turns out to be in the dictionary. Dinner of some more ‘point at the menu and hope’ mystery noodles is on me. I am not convinced it should be a word. It was probably made up by some American academic because ‘reasoning’ was thought to be too simple a word.
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