Wait, do what now?

Okay, here's the post where I freak my mom out. Today was mostly ordinary in the never-been-to-China sense. So yeah, not really ordinary, but kinda like the past four other days. If you want to skip to the exciting parts, our bus was hit by a very small truck, and I just got back from a night club in downtown Hangzhou, where we were the life of the party. Don't believe it? Yeah, me either. No really. Less exciting stuff first though.

We woke up at 7 and drove around 2 and a half hours out of Suzhou to Hangzhou in the Zhejiang province. One of my Chinese profs is from this city. I gotta say, Hangzhou makes a much better impression than any of those other cities. According to our guide, the Hangzhou government is currently taking several "green" policies, which are badly needed in this whole region. The haze is remarkable, especially on the West Lake, but I'll get to that later. And by remarkable, by the way, I mean insanely choking. You do get used to it, though. Shanghai straight up smelled like sewer, but you even get used to that after a day or so. Hangzhou, though, has very many green areas, which were all but sparse in Shanghai, which is so incredibly built-up. They excuse this by saying it's better for the fengshui, or balance of an area. Good fengshui as applied to houses and buildings means it faces a body of water to the front and mountains to the back. Since there are no mountains around Shanghai, they claim that building so many skyscrapers is like "building mountains". That's kind of a stretch.

But in Hangzhou, there are natural, and incredibly beautiful mountains. In fact, 70% of the region is covered in mountains, 10% by water, and the rest by regular land. The city is without a doubt my favorite so far. The government gives extra money to apartment skyscraper buildings to decorate their outsides to make better impressions to first-time visitors. I don't know if this is due directly to the fact that Hangzhou is richer per capita (and thus richer because of taxes) or if the government is just different. The former makes more sense to me, because under the party rule, I highly doubt different regions on the east are treated any differently among each other. So because of this extra wealth, I feel like Hangzhou has the ability to use their wealth to help green up the area. The whole eastern part of the country needs it, at least all of it I've seen so far.

Our first stop was Lingyin Temple, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Buddhist temple in China. Once again, like the embroidery yesterday, words cannot describe the sheer beauty and majesty of this place. Even if I don't believe in Buddhism, there is absolutely something powerful and spiritual about that place. Buddhism could be total rubbish for all I know, and so could Christianity really, but I absolutely respect any religion that insights so much hope and faith in people in something they cannot even see. Anybody or anything, symbol or person, who can inspire people to live better lives deserves to be respected, regardless of creed.

In order to get to the temple, you have to make a quick detour through a cave and slightly over a mountain pathway. A few of us, including myself, saw that the path continued upward, and split off from the group. The path consisted of a maze of stairs leading in winding and diverging paths until it reached the nexus at the top. It was a bit more anti-climactic than one might have imagined. Instead of there being an insanely large Buddha at the top surrounded by incense and maybe even Yoda, there were friggin' drink vendors. We still got some pictures at the top on some cool rocks, then made our way down, which was a lot quicker. We made our way to the temple and ran into our guide, who was really worried that something had happened to us on the mountain. We felt really bad, but she didn't seem to be too upset with us.

We made our way to the temple complex itself, which was all painted gold. I got some video of it, but photography is forbidden inside. I probably would not have taken any pictures anyway, because I did not want to be disrespectful. The place is an active, working temple, complete with monks walking around. I saw one with Nike socks. It made me smile on the inside a bit. Every day at four, the monks go into the temple and recite the Sutras together. Inside the main chamber is one gigantic, heavily ornate Buddha, probably four or five stories tall. Utterly insane. On the other side of it was the female Buddha, Guanyin. Flanking the building on the sides were rows of people that I did not recognize in the foggiest, but they were amazing to look at.

In another building were rows and rows of golden statues. The placks underneath each and every one of them revealed that each was a past Buddha. There were literally hundreds of these beautiful, completely each unique, statues. The plaques all read "the first" or "the 331st" Budda. You could walk around and look at each and every one of them and a face would not be repeated. Most of them were smiling and appeared to be well-nourished, so to speak. One of them had a monkey. That was pretty sweet. There was this one Buddha statue where he was ripping his chest open to reveal a midget version of himself. Awesome.

Our guide showed us how to pray at the gigantor Buddha statue, and a few of us followed suit. I did not partake because these were not my customs, but I respectfully watched and learned nonetheless.

After this we headed off to the West Lake. I don't remember much historically about this particular place, but today it's known as the lover's paradise. A lot of couples come here on dates. The lake itself is about 4 square miles (I think. It's about 6.4 square kms, which I think corresponds correctly. If not, I did it in my head. Sue me), and we took a boat ride around the circumference of it. It's much cooler in Hangzhou than in Suzhou and much less humid. People were complaining about the heat, but I was loving it. I got a few really great pictures, but the haze really prevented anything fantastic. It was a shame, because you could hardly even see the banks of the lake once we got out there. Either way it was beautiful anyway.

Once we settled into our hotel, our guide took us to dinner. After this meal, which was amazing (I got to talk to Tucker and Hannah about politics. They're incredibly good to talk to about sensitive topics), we vegged out in the room for a bit before wandering the busy streets of Hangzhou on our own. However, before this happened, our bus got hit by a very small truck. We were both merging into another lane and the truck driver wasn't paying attention. Absolutely nobody was hurt, save the door window.

We did a gigantic loop around the busy city, looking for cheap shops. I found two awesome things for Cook and James. It won't be their primary gift, because it isn't Chinese in the least. Suffice it to say that they have both Christmas and their birthdays covered, or at least they will.

I hung around on the internet for a little while and hesitated getting ready to go out. We asked our guide to show us a good, cleanish club in Hangzhou. I thought we were supposed to be ready by 9:45, but it was actually supposed to be 9:30. Thankfully everyone was nice enough to wait for me as I scrambled out of the shower and into some clothes. I wore my jeans, a black t-shirt, my skateboard shoes, and my jade necklace. Simple enough. We also got to experience taxis, which was pretty cool actually.

Once we got into the club, we ordered some whiskey with black tea. The combo was really good, actually. Tucker and I took a couple of shots later on too. I honestly did not feel a thing, because right afterwards we got out onto the dance floor, which was really small actually.

You may be asking yourself, "Chris, why were you dancing? You suck at dancing", and while that is really true, in China, I'm a friggin' dance machine. Why is this, you may ask? The Chinese SUCK at dancing, at least the ones around here. They just stand around bobbing their heads. Almost reminds me of Night at the Roxsbury. So when we went out there, busting out our crappy white-man moves, the DJs got really into it as we played some call and receive with them as far as songs go. The song that goes, "Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good bye" (I forget what the heck its title is) came on, and I really think we were the only ones there that knew that song, which surprised me, because all the Chinese there seemed to know "YMCA", but I'll get to that later. Anyway, when that song came on, we were, of course, screaming the chorus. We were so loud that the DJ turned off the music for a second or two, several times, to let us fill the air with our screams.

This club's dance floor was bouncy, and was like a trampoline at times when we started dancing. I mimicked Tucker and Greg, because I really had no clue what to do. It was really cool though, knowing that I could hold my own in a Chinese dance club. The club also had cameras and large LED displays all over the walls, displaying what was happening on the floor. UNC was representing hard, man. We'd be jumping up and down, I would give the devil horns. It was sweet. The only really bad thing about the experience was this old, creepy-looking Chinese guy, who kept trying to literally take Hannah away, but we were able to keep him at bay. Anqi straight up told him "Bu xing!" (Not allowed!), but then he just brought his overly-skinny friends, and we were able to keep them away from Hannah by making a dance circle. The guys and I tried to distract him and straight up get him away, but he was not taking any hints. At one point I told him, "tamen dou shi gen wo!" (They're (the ladies) are all with me), and he still didn't leave. Anqi even elbowed him and shoved him away. What a creeper. But nothing bad happened, and that's the important thing.

Throughout several points during the time on the floor, either Tucker or Greg would face me and start doing some dance moves, which I would try to respond to. It was a lot of fun letting loose and just having a good time. At one point, Tucker motioned to one of the two circular dance podiums above the dance floor. I followed him and climbed up to the podium and danced behind him. I didn't look, but I'm sure we were on the video screen multiple times. Also, "Jump Around" came on, and all of us, being UNC freaks, went insane and did what the title commands. After a little while longer, we sat back down, but it wasn't long before Greg, Seth, Tucker and I went upstairs and danced above, but opposite to one of the attractive Chinese DJs. We traded off dance moves with her. She'd start one off and we'd mimic her, then the other way around. One time "Stayin' Alive" came on, and we did the disco. The Chinese loved that. We also busted out the Macarena. There's a reason that dance died, but everyone seemed to love that too. They loved it so much, that they featured us on the huge, primary TV screen for a long time as we danced. We traded dances with the DJ for what must have been a good half hour or so. It was insanely fun. After a while the girls joined us as well. They kept us on screen for when YMCA came on. As funny as it sounds, the entire club got into that one with us. Being on screen was incredibly fun and amazing. It was fun being the co-life of the party for a few minutes, even if I was just mimicking stuff.

Anyway, after taking a cab back to the hotel kind of early (mostly because of the creeper), a few of us got ice cream cones from Ma Dong Lao (McDonalds), then went back to our respective rooms. I'm tired as heck, and we have a long day tomorrow. Pics and videos to come soon!

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