Passing through Hangzhou and Putuoshan

Getting to Hangzhou from Guilin:
22 hour bus/train
1 day lost (and we don't have too many left here)
60 US Dollars (about)
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Saving it by flying Guilin-Hangzhou (2 hours/$130): Priceless

Arriving late (1am-ish) in Hangzhou, we were exposed first time to the prices of east-coast Chinese cities. The cheapest we found was a nice youth-hostel for $24 - quite a fortune in Vietnamese/Yangshou-ian terms.
The Chinese proverb "Shang You Tian Tang Xia You Su Hang" - "Above [in Heaven] there's Sweet Paradise, Below [On Earth] there's Suzhou and Hangzhou" is what drew us to check out Hangzhou ourselves. We had quite a nice day, walking around the famous West Lake (Xi Hu) of this ~2M people city. We didn't do much here besides walking around the lake (decent size of about 7-9 sq.km.) eating Chinese ice-creams and inventing games to pass away the day.

Our two new games:
The first is called "Block the Bloke". It consists of us sitting on a bench with our (sun)umbrella, drawing the usual curious looks from local kids and adults and then immediately lowering our umbrella to block them from seeing us. When they pass us we keep pointing the umbrella at them and raise it for a second or two and then lower again. The winner is the one getting the local's attention for the longest amount of time. It's an amazingly funny game which our Chinese friends really liked, especially those sitting next to us.

Another game was "Join the Gang". It is based on the fact that whenever we took a picture, within 5 secs. 1-10 locals would pop behind our shoulder, trying to watch our camera's LCD. We decided that when in Rome.... So besides spitting and squating, we started popping behind every pictures-taking Chinese camera, shoving our own noses (especially my XL one). So hilarhous, believe me. And just like in "Block the Bloke", we had lots of laughs with the locals, who ended up photographing us instead.

We are glad we came to the legendary West Lake, but we did find it somewhat overrated (especially as we left Yangshuo early to get here!) As you can probably guess by now, Hangzhou was a real chill. For that reason we decided of course to return to our hectic schedule after just 2 nights in town.

We continued on our way to Putuoshan.
Mount Putuo (Putuoshan) is considered to be one of China's four sacred Mountains and as such is yearly visited by reverent followers, coming to pay there respects to Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy. The Lonely Planet promised us the "China we all dream about" so we didn't really know what to expect (not much considering our experience with LP China). But actually it was fantastic there! We only spotted a couple of foreigners while all the rest were cheerful Chinese tourists.

On a side point: Chinese Tourists
Many travelers complain about Chinese tourists. We find them just so funny and amusing. You only need a really basic control of Mandarin to start a conversation. Usually the first question is where we're from, to which we also need to explain that Yisele [Israel] is not Yidali [Italy]. People are actually quite knowledable about Israel and the reactions we get about Israel are: a) we're friends of U.S. (usually implied derogatively), b) we have a war with the Palestinians (usually empathic about this one - some guy offered to send us the Chinese army to help. Seriously.), c) we hate Hitler (to which we started a long philosophical dialog with the aid of a local translator).
We respond to every curious look with Ni Hao (or Meow, as we sometimes pronounce it to take the mickey) and so far didn't run into any trully anoying local tourists. Our advice is therefore, LEARN MANDARIN! Or otherwise, just reply with Ni Hao and see how their looks turn into wide smiles.

Where were we? Oh yeah, Putuoshan. So we took the day to tour Putuoshan's different temples, walking along the alleys and even swimming in an excellent beach there (see pictures). Didn't have the courage to try the local seafood, so we sticked to our regular rice/noodles menu.
Since we were quite behind our schedule, we left Putuoshan the following day and got stuck in Ningbo, another ~1M people city you've probably never heard about. Had a nice meal in a Chinese Luxury coffee-house and went to sleep before the early train to Shanghai the following day.

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