In a thriving city where every office, train, park, store and restaurant is vibrating with cheery ambition, the bleak upstairs dining room is an oasis, the only public spot where it's OK, at least for a moment, to give up.

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The palace's State Dining Room, where we wait for the president, is a grand, lavish affair, complete with chandeliers and a long hardwood table that can seat 50.

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The State Dining Room is where we greet special official guests, and you guys count as our special official guests.

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Next door to the chairman's dining room is a canopied swimming pool, complete with plastic dolphin, where his four grandchildren can frolic.

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Brown banquettes upholstered in what the French euphemistically call moleskin but North Americans know as leatherette line both walls of the long, narrow railroad-car-like dining room, and there's a little bar just inside the front door where your bill is tallied and taxis are called.

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