DAY 7

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Today we caught an 18 seater bus to the Water Town about 100km northish from Hangzhou. It picked us up from the hotel at about 7am and on the way through the city Kwan’s father intercepted us on the side of a busy road to give us breakfast! It was a bag of Baou (no idea how to spell it but it’s pronounced bow) and they were like soft doughy pork wontons and they were great. The trip took us out of the city which was what I was hoping for so we could see a bit of the ‘heartland’ so to speak and it was really interesting. Passing through the ‘suburbs’ we saw a lot of new high rise accommodation being built, and it’s been the same wherever we’ve been. Each project looks like up to a dozen 20-30 story blocks, and we have seen lots them everywhere we’ve been. It’s like a bit of a revolution, maybe the government, flush with funds, is making a push to remove all the Stallinist era buildings and upgrade the peoples living standards. Further out it seems a lot less organized, people out here appear to be living in almost squalid conditions, everything looks dirty, houses are old and run down and all the streams and rivers look polluted. Further out of the city the high rise apartments give way to low rise 3-4 story living or one level housing surrounding small fields of some form of crop. Everything is built out of brick or concrete but it all looks dirty, even the new ones look stained. We got to the Water Town which was like Venice except smaller and not romantic in the least. The place was really old and the stonework and bridges were quite awesome but the amazing thing about it was that people actually still lived there - in dirty cramped conditions while the tourists filed by. They live off whatever skills they have whether it be carving wood or filing stone and sell it to the tourists, and they try really hard.
Next door to and adjoining the Water town was a ‘normal’ rural town (Ouzjin I think) and that was a bit of an eye-opener as well, we caught a couple of rickshaw type things and went for a tour of some backstreets. Some of the accommodation here amounted to nothing more than a two room concrete cave with kitchen in one room and a bed, table and TV in the other - at least they had power I suppose. We managed to find a place that sells coffee (not always an easy task!) and had a sit down before making our way back to the bus and back to Hangzhou. I went for a walk later on in the afternoon up the hill behind our hotel to see the view, the air was quite clear so I took some pics.

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Photos

Water Town
Live show for the tourists

Water Town
Lots of tourists in matching hats, all Chinese. (Not many of us!)

Next to Water Town
This guy was selling goldfish of his truck

Next to Water Town
Didn't look very clean to me!

Next to Water town
Backstreet. Took a video as well, not sure if will work on here

Next to Water Town
Very old bridge 500 y.o.

Water Town
The obligatory pose, Kwan insisted.

Water Town
Cool bonsai trees, no doubt destined for market

On the bus
Stopped at the lights, some typical transport

Hangzhou
Cool pathways on the hill behind our hotel. (Not literally, it was still hot and wet)

Hangzhou
Came across this temple on the path

Hangzhou
These guys were carrying big lumps of firewood up to the temple. Hard work, they deserved a break.

Comments

[Ann]

Fabulous
Thanks so much for informative photos of Hanghou. Going there next week and it's nice to get some genuine photos of the place not from a glossy tourist source. Lovely photos