At a slower pace

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I think that I was slightly disappointed with Shanghai. I had been expecting this booming, modern city. While I saw some of that, I imagine that it’s still a decade away from being what Hong Kong or Singapore is now. On the hand, Hangzhou, which is only a couple of hours from Shanghai by car, bus or train, is a city that is developing in amazing ways. The downtown area is thoroughly modern and if I was to hazard a guess, it would be that Hangzhou is where the neo-rich Chinese come to play.

The main attraction of the city is “West Lake,” a manicured and cultivated set of parks surrounding a 9 km. diameter lake. It really is beautiful as you can see from the pictures. In the morning it’s actually peaceful, but by mid-day and after the hoards of tourists descend and the few foreigners around become as much of an attraction as the lake.

Where the money comes in is in all of the building just across the road from the lake, nearly encompassing the whole. To begin with, within 100 meters of the hostel I stayed at were a variety of clubs including one who had Paul Van Dyke DJing at it just after the new year. Another hundred meters up the road from the hostel was a Porsche dealership, as well as a Ferrari and Maserati dealership (see photos). Then there are the expensive western, Indian, Thai and other varieties of restaurants in and around the lake. So, it is my guess that the rich of Shanghai maintain second homes in Hangzhou, where they visit on weekends to get away from the frenzied pace of Shanghai. Then again, I could be completely wrong, and instead it is where the “Party” elite have their retreat, but I think it is the former rather than the later.

All in all, it is a beautiful city and I wouldn’t mind coming back for an extended stay, perhaps teaching to explore it further…just not on Chinese level of wages.

Oh...one last thing. If you've heard of a dish called Drunken Prawns, but you're unsure of what it is. Well, I went to dinner 2 nights ago and ordered just that. I was craving some sea food and prawns sounded great. I was expecting steamed or stir-fried to a nice pink in some sort of sweet and spicy sauce. What did I get? A glass bowl with a lid. When I lifted the lid, one of the prawns proceeded to jump out of the dish. You see, Drunken Prawns are live, served in chinese wine, to make them drunk I suppose. I kind of lost my appetite at that point, but I did give it a try. I ate exactly one, the one that tried to commit suicide or was perhaps leaping to freedom. It was interesting and I'll leave it at that.

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