Before leaving for China, I wondered if laptops, cameras and other expensive equipment could safely be left in hotel rooms.

The answer: Yes. Over 18 days spent in various hotels, nobody in our group of 23 had anything stolen. In fact, it was often difficult to leave anything behind, even intentionally. Many in our group had stories of leaving something in a hotel room, perhaps a tip for the room maid or a paperback they had finished. But before our tour bus left the parking lot, an official from the hotel was on the bus trying to return it. At one point, I accidentally dropped a useless receipt for a small purchase in the parking lot near our bus. Before we left, the receipt was back in my hand. But the Chinese penchant for accounting and accountability can be frustrating. Sometimes we’d have a bus full of people parked outside of a hotel, motor and air conditioning running, for 20 minutes while the hotel and our guide tried to figure out who owed money for a bottle of water. At one hotel, we asked that two cups of coffee be sent to our room. When it arrived, it came with a note written in English saying we had to pay about 60 cents for the coffee, plus put a 60-cent deposit down on the coffee cups and saucers. When we were finished, we were told to call the front desk, have a waitress come and take the cups … and refund our deposit.