Hangzhou

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Hangzhou is the capital of Zhejiang province in southeast China. It is known as one of the prettiest cities in China and also one of the most romantic. I found that that is true; Hangzhou is gorgeous and I saw about 3 wedding caravans and 6 brides/grooms walking around the city dressed for the wedding during my two day visit. I loved Hangzhou. Part of Hangzhou has the city feel because of the tall buildings and nightlife, but the other part is the China that I have been waiting to see. I have been waiting to see rural China, outside of the cities, where life is traditional and not the modern city-life. Don't get me wrong, the Chinese city life is great, but I want to see the other side also.

The train to Hangzhou is about 14 hours. We arrived at 6:30 am on Saturday morning and we were welcomed by rain. We ate breakfast at our hotel and then set-out for the West Lake. The West Lake (Xi Hu) is pretty much one of the prides and joys of Hangzhou, and rightfully so. It is what it's named - it's a big lake in the western part of the city. The overall scenery of the lake and around the lake is incredible. Yes, it poured the whole time that we were there, but it was still great. I have got to say though, there were not many foreigners there at all compared to other places in China. Even so, the place was still packed. The Hangzhou people go there and walk around themselves all of the time because it is so pretty and it's a great weekend activity. While we were there, we saw peacocks! These were not "zoo peacocks," they were just peacocks hanging out around the lake. It was pretty cool because I've never seen one outside of a cage. However, I think they were a little disappointed about the rain and would not open there feathers...oh well. You can also go on one of many boats at the lake. They take you out on the boat and around the lake to see all of the edges of it just like any water attraction back home. They had traditional-looking Chinese boats, ones shaped like dragons, and charter boats. All of them, ofcourse, were made for tourists and had windows, etc. All in all, the lake was a good time. I wish I had an extra day to go back to it on a sunnier day, but either way, I got to see it.

After the lake, we began to make our way over to the Lingyin Temple area. It took forever. A few quick observations on Hangzhou: traffic is terrible. Beijing is your typical city traffic jam with multiple-lane roads, a lot of cars, rush hour traffic, etc - you know what it's like. Hangzhou is not completely like this. It's your same-old traffic jam, except the reason there is traffic is because the city has really outgrown itself. There are one-lane roads and every hour of the day is "rush hour." In Beijing and other cities, there is an alternative to driving because China is starting to add subways all over the country. However, Hangzhou does not have that yet and it's hard to bike there because the cars drive in the bike lanes to cut around the traffic. The public bus system is not very excessive either and either way, it's hard to get them through the cars. On our way to the Lingyin temple, we spent 30 minutes at one red-light. Another observation of Hangzhou is the air is much cleaner. In Beijing, if and when it rains, which is seldom, it helps to clear up the pollution. It rains quite often in Hangzhou, from what I am told, and I think that might have an effect on its pollution. My friends and I really enjoyed the air.

The Lingyin Temple is another awesome place. Once again, I am going to tell you that it is gorgeous because of the landscaping - trees, flowers, the hills, etc. When you arrive at the complex of the temple, you begin to walk up a path that will eventually take you to the temple itself. The walk is really cool because there are caves and tunnels in the mountain that you can walk through and there are little streams that you walk over. When you arrive at the temple, you reach a big, yellow wall. The different temples are also yellow. The Lingyin Temple is one of the ten most famous Buddhist temples in China. "Ling Yin" is translated in English to "Temple of Inspired Seclusion" and it traces back to the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317 - 420AD). "In its heyday, the temple comprised nine buildings, eighteen pavilions, seventy-seven palaces and halls with over thirteen hundred rooms providing accommodation for around three thousand monks" (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/zhejiang/hangzhou/lingyin.htm). As for the main halls, once you walk through the first hall, you come out into the scenery again, walk up some stairs to find the second hall, same thing to find the third, and same thing to find the fourth. After you've reached the last one, you are pretty far up the hill - well, farther than you expect to be. When you are looking at the main hall after you first enter, you don't even realize that there are any behind it because it is so big. You know those Russian Babooshka dolls where you open the big one, find another one, open it to a smaller one, and so on and so forth? These temples reminded me of that. You start with the big one, walk up some steps to a slightly smaller one, up some steps to a smaller one than that, etc. It was pretty cool.

On Saturday night, we went to Qinghefang Street. "Qinghefang Street, one of the most famous historic streets in Hangzhou, reflects features of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). Most preserved buildings are from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Strolling on this street, you will be attracted by the antique buildings and local crafts, such as silk parasols, brocades, noted Zhang Xiaoquan scissors and Hangzhou fans" (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/cityguides/zhejiang/hangzhou/shopping.htm). The place has tons of different souveniers. Hangzhou is also known for its Longjing tea and its silk so there was a lot of that. Tea and silk are everywhere and this is one of the best places in China to buy them both. We also went back to this street on Sunday for 2 hours so I'll tell you about that now. I like to sum up my experience like so: I bought things this time and I ate Camel!!! I would like to give kudos to the camel population because they are delicious! You wouldn't think so, but they are. The camel guy asked if I have any American dollars to show him because he's never seen one. I felt bad because I didn't and explained that I live in Beijing right now so I don't have any. I think it may be his dream to see one of every currency of the world...he's an interesting guy...and his camel cooking is amazing. Chuanr is meat on a stick and Hangzhou has some of the best chuanr that I have eaten in China. Also, I would like to acknowledge the presence of Dairy Queen in Hangzhou. It was exciting. They don't have cookie dough blizzards, which was a let-down, but they do have oreo...so that was sufficient...both times that I ate it.....haha

Anyways, Sunday ranks as one of the best times that I have had in China so far, I think. There is a little village outside of Hangzhou called, "Long Jing Wen Cha." This is the home of the famous Long Jing Tea. It's a small village no more than 2 blocks long. Cars can drive through it and it's further up in the mountains. It is really cool. We went hiking off of the main road because we saw a very small, man-made trail. What we found was amazing and personally, I find that to be an understatement. After about ten minutes of hiking through a bamboo forest, we found some little cemetary. There were probably about 50 tombs up there scattered along the mountain-side in the middle of the bamboo and trees. As we kept climbing up, we saw some of the most amazing views that I have seen so far. I don't know, mountains truly are majestic to me. There's something about looking out from a high point on a mountain over an expansive portion of land that is just relaxing and inspiring. The first time that we had a good view to look out, we saw another small little village way down in a valley and mountain-sides covered in tea plantations with rows and rows of tea plants. This is the China that I am talking about wanting to see. It was away from the city and back into the roots of China. This is where the famous tea comes from. I don't think many people walk up here other than the villagers because the paths were small and sometimes I would not even call it a path. Naturally, we kept going. The next major view that I came to was facing the other direction. This one was facing back down upon the Long Jing village and way in the distance was the city of Hangzhou. I did not realize how far we were from the city until then. It was so cool. Again, we kept walking and there was so much to see up here. We ran into another cemetary, this one was for a different village. I came into an opening and found myself in the middle of tea plant rows looking out over 2 little villages and tea rows in the distance. I looked to my left and there was a tea farmer so I had to go talk to him. To make a long story short, the guy was about 55 years old and had never left his little village. There are no paved roads to get to their villages and only some people go into the city. They essentially just live and survive in the village and there cemetaries are there also. My friends and I stayed up here for about 4 hours. Anyways, we bought some tea from the village; I mean, we had to and it's pretty cool how they weigh it out. Some tips for buying the best tea are: you want the yellow green color leaves and the dark green ones are the worst; it should have a very strong aroma, it should taste sweet and not bitter; and they should be flat, even, and smooth on the surface of the tea leaf. Also, you want a length of about 2 cm because longer or shorter than this affects how it tastes. Just FYI in case you buy it some day?

Once we had walked back down into Long Jing village, we also decided to walk back down the road leading into the village rather than take a taxi. We knew that the tea museum was only about a mile away and we wanted the walk. A quarter of the way down, we saw a stone path that seemed to lead pretty far down off of the road. We decided to walk down it and it turns out that it was one of the places that we really wanted to go and did not think that we would have time for. We went into the "Dreaming of Tiger Spring at Hupao Valley" area. It is supposed to have some of the purest water in China because the mineralization of the spring water is as low as 0.02 grams/liter. Apparently the water seeps through quartzite and that helps. It's definitely another beautiful area. I think that it was one of my favorite parts of the trip again because it was very peaceful and it was not a very big tourist place. It was only Chinese people down there and there were probably, at maximum, 50 people when we were there. For those of you that have been reading the blog, we played peanut butter football in Xi'An because we lacked a frisbee. Well, that has obviously become tradition now and we decided to play peanut butter football again. We're getting pretty good. We also play this other game where you have to knock each other off balance a lot, so we played that also. While we were goofing around, all of the Chinese were watching. There was this little Chinese boy standing there looking like he wanted to play but did not know how. I am not sure if he has ever played sports in his life outside of running around with a few friends. Anyways, he looked interested so I went over to talk to him and his sisters. I asked if they wanted to play and the sisters said that they just like to watch, so the little boy said no also. My friends and I threw the peanut butter a few more times, the little boy still looked anxious to play, so I asked again. This time, he said yes. I started to play catch with the boy. When I was about to throw it for the first time, he was just standing there really excited, and then I finally released it from my hands towards him and his eyes were so wide and he was probably the cutest thing ever. He actually caught the PB on the first try and he looked so happy. Then he walked over and handed me the peanut butter; it was strange and I don't think he knew that he could throw it back. I threw it again and he dropped it this time. I told him to throw it back to me and he looked nervous but after he threw it and I caught it, he was so excited again. Anyways, we stopped playing and he ran to his mom to talk about how he played with the white girl. She told him to say "How do you do" to me in English. He did, I responded, and it was interesting how proud his mother was. You would have thought that he just won an incredible award. Anyways, I proceeded to teach him and his sisters how to throw and say the "high five" because that's the cool thing to do haha. My friends and I gave them high fives, said goodbye and walked away. Then, we turn to walk away and there is a group of Chinese adults playing our game to knock each other off-balance and loving it. It was too funny. Anyways, I like to think I added a little American culture to China that day haha.

Like I said, that night we went to Qinghefang street again. We ate Beggars' Chicken there - you know, where it comes out with the chicken head and feet...I couldn't bring myself to eat the feet again...maybe another time, but I doubt it. Overall, the trip was great. Hangzhou was a lot fun and I would go back. Enjoy the pictures. Just a heads up, due to many requests, upcoming blogs will include life as a Peking University student with pictures of campus and my living situation. Also, this Friday, I am leaving for a week of travel. We'll be going by ourselves to Shanghai and to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). You should check out pictures on Yahoo or Google of Huangshan and you will be excited for that blog. Well, anyways, I hope that all is well with everyone and I will talk to you soon!

p.s. - the pictures that have the word "Teter" spelled out in them are for my lovely staff and friends back at Indiana University. For those of you that don't know, Teter is one of the residence halls at IU and we have this goal of making Teter "world famous." Anyways, "Teter Around the World" is where you have to have Teter in your pictures some how when you go travel places. So, here's to all of you back at school and there will be more Teter pictures to come.

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Photos

Secret Identity Exposed!
You can never catch them looking up, but we got her! She was a nice one. Then again, even if they do look up, you can't tell because of their hat.

Raise Your Hand If You Can Read This?
....I can't either....I didn't even try....

Drying the Tea Leaves
Somehow they touch this hot metal bowl with their bare hand...

Some of the Boats
These are some of the boats that you could take on the West Lake.

Around the lake
This is when we walked away from the lake a little bit.

Teter and the Boats
Here you are

My Money is on the Dragon Boat
The little guy has no chance....and the dragon boat is fricken' cool...

Even when it rains...
Even when it rains the lake is packed with boats and people.

Lingyin Temple
The main hall of Lingyin Temple.

Part of the Walk
On the way up to Lingyin Temple

Monks and Blue-hair
Cool picture that I probably was not allowed to take...

Hall #2
2nd Hall of the Temple

Walking through the Caves
...because I'm awesome...haha

Qinghefang
Small part of the street

Camel on a Stick
It was so good!

Long Jing Wen Cha
Down the only street of the tea village. It was lined with umbrellas and people drying tea leaves.

Meat, anyone?
mmm yum

City in the Distance
We were pretty far from the city before we climbed some more

Comments

[ilchicag]

Great Blog!
Just wanted to drop a note to say I really enjoyed reading your blog! Your pictures are great... they really seem to capture the life in rural China. I look forward to reading more!