That year, I dragged my body that was exhausted physically and mentally from the past five years, and wrapped my confused soul, to Chengdu, a city that gave me a temporary sense of belonging at that time, because I had a good colleague in Chengdu who was also very loyal to me. I have always admired him. I had heard about his reputation when I was in Daocheng. Later, China National Geographic interviewed him and had his biography. He is a person who has a good combination of ideals and reality. He knew about my closing of the store in Xi'an and asked me to come to him as the store manager and work together. In fact, he not only asked me to be the store manager, he also had ideas and was a support to me. I found out later. Although I didn't adopt his plan because I no longer wanted to be a youth hostel, but still I'm very grateful to him. There are quite a lot of clues in this story. It's a bit messy to write. Let's talk about it slowly. First, I'll talk about myself at the time. After I came here, I did feel a little more stable. Although I knew this was a temporary plan, I felt a real sense of relaxation compared to the feeling of being at a loss when I returned home.
Day by day, I started to get into the role, and I was busy every day, with all kinds of work in a store, and working in a youth hostel was a very specific thing. My friend's youth hostel was very large, and it was the largest youth hostel in Chengdu at that time. Except for the three conjoined buildings surrounding a courtyard, it was like a small park inside, with rockery fountains, ponds, and various goldfish. The second and third floors of the building were still very impressive. The large terrace, these designs were learned from my friends who had traveled around the world and stayed in many hostels for many years, and combined their own ideas. At that time, I thought it could be regarded as the number one youth hostel in Chengdu, and it was also first-class in China. It also won the second place in Hostelworld's Asia Youth Hostel that year. It has a very atmospheric atmosphere, and many international backpackers stay here every day. In the bar, on the terrace, in the public rest area, there are people reading, playing ball, chatting on the lounge chairs, foreigners of all kinds, and many delivering goods and express delivery coming in through the inconspicuous door. When you look inside, you are shocked, just like the United Nations. Indeed, those years were the most prosperous years of youth hostel culture. Now the overall culture of youth hostels has dissipated in China. There are many reasons. Maybe I will write about the exit of youth hostel culture in China later.
The work of a youth hostel is a real matter, specific and numerous. For example, if the pond water pump is broken, the fish in the pond must be fished out. Western food ingredient suppliers need to find more similar sources, and go out to contact them. The infrastructure of the guest rooms is maintained and repaired. Sometimes in the off-season, carpenters and decorators are hired to renovate the guest rooms, the bar menu is updated, the dishes are adjusted, and several new cocktails are added. . . There are also front desk employees who have resigned, and new people need to be recruited and trained. There are 6 girls working at the front desk at the same time. . . Because of the large number of receptions and the fact that there are many things for foreigners to do, these backpackers will come to the front desk to talk about local life matters, and there are also people who come to chat when they have nothing to do. The front desk is bustling with people and bursts of laughter from time to time. You can imagine the scene. At the same time, there are also tour groups that go out to see pandas every day, which are called panda tours for short. Many things have to be arranged in detail, because most of the guests are foreigners, and the language problem is not a problem in the store. The girl at the front desk here speaks very good English, and she has been selected for the interview. However, once you leave the group, if you encounter anything, the travel agency will There will be problems, so you have to arrange things carefully beforehand. When running a youth hostel, it is about word-of-mouth, because youth hostels do not rely on occupying the CBD location in the city center to attract guests. They rely on online word-of-mouth. How to get the word-of-mouth? These details are arranged in a reasonable and scientific way to bring guests a great tour group experience and local life experience.