HANGZHOU "You have to go to Hanzhou. Don't miss it!"

A week ago Saturday (5.24.14) three of us, Ding Yaping, Yang Xiaoling, and I meet at the train station for my first train ride in China.

The train station looks like a flying saucer from the outside, too.

It is not the fastest train, and it takes two very hot, humid, uncomfortable hours; at least we have seats!  Some of the people stand the whole way because they  purchased standing class (if that's a valid term).  Happily for us, the seats are reserved.  No arguing about whose seat it is.    

   We arrive in Hongzhou after two hours, about 4 o'clock, and after standing in a covered concrete holding area for almost an hour, we finally get a taxi to take us to the hotel.   Xiaoling has a former classmate who comes with a friend and drives us to the lake.  By then it must be 6 p.m. or later.     We get dropped off and start walking.

Stopping to look at the magnificent view.

 

Legend says that when the lake dried up there was a  Golden Buffalo lying at the bottom, and it would rise up a spew water that would refill the lake.

Hangzhou is home to West Lake.   A fairly innocuous name, until you see it.

We will take a boat like this on Sunday.

 

Night settles in pretty quickly.   We walk for a couple of hours, leave the lake and find an arcade area, and walk the several long blocks until we see where it ends.  Games, food, curiosities, toys, everything is  going on and the area crammed with people.  By 8:30 p.m or so, we are feeling hungry, so we find  a  little restaurant.  We love the menu names, if not the help.

Take a look:                                                                           
                                                                     

                           

       

 We are having a great time with the names.   She knocked flat small potatoes is pretty darn good.  So is Delicious Tin Foil.   It gets us to imagining the food.
                                                        So we order.  And discover a few of the dishes were

spicy.   Now the dishes are not just a little spicy.  They are a  whole hot spicy even for Ding Yaping and Yang Xiaoliing.   We send one dish back, but the ladies eat the other one.  The dishes come out one by one.   We don't order all of the dishes with unusual names. I mean Delicious Tinfoil does not make it to our table, nor did it make it to our list of possibilities. But we do order She knocked flat small potatoes because the name is so cool.  When it comes, it turns out to be small potatoes that look to have been were deep fried. Now Yaping is a bit of a stickler on things being described accurately; after all, a spicy dish should have some hint that it will be spicy either in the description or the photo.  The English names apparently have no connection to the Chinese names, and the descriptions are usually pretty detailed in Chinese.   So not only did we already send something back, but when a female worker walked by Yaping mentioned how the She knocked flat small potatoes do not look like the picture.  They certainly are not knocked flat.  The worker gets a little upset, raises her voice and the two go back and forth for a few minutes, while I continue eating. Arguing seems a natural thing at times.  I've seen it on the street in Shanghai when a street vendor put  her finger on a scale, and having suspected this, the female  customer who  purchased the melons went to another vendor and asked her to weigh the melon. When she found the first vendor had cheated her,  she went back to tell the vendor off; and of course the vendor shouted back even louder!  Well, I was enjoying the potatoes while the discussion ensued (I have to say Yaping has not raised her voice)  when the worker grabs the plate of potatoes and takes it off our table!   What a surprise.   Thus, begins our auspicious evening meal in Hangzhou.      Dinner the next night cannot be as exciting as this one.

After dinner, we walk a bit until around 10 p.m. we decide to head back to the hotel.  The problem is that we need a taxi.  But there are  dozens of people looking for a taxi, and every taxi we see already has a fare, or is waiting for a fare who had reserved it.  After 30 minutes we wonder if we will ever find a taxi.  We walk up and down the street trying to find one.   Finally across the street a driver sees us, and we are able to head back to the hotel.  

But this is only the beginning of the adventure in Hangzhou.  

I go to bed a little before  midnight and watch a Chinese version of SYTYCD and fall asleep with the TV on.  About 1:30 a.m. I wake up to knocking on the door.  I struggle to the door, open it to find a young woman, who speaks to me in Chinese.  I say NO to whatever she is saying--drugs, rock-n-roll, or dancing-- and close the door.  Obviously she does not care to understand No, and continues to knock, whereupon I continue to say no.  I turn off the TV and the light and go back to sleep, or try to after she goes away.  But she comes  back and knocks at least one other time.    The next morning I tell  my story and the ladies laugh.   They tell me they have found business cards under their door with a young woman pictured on it.  Most importantly, they have had a good time laughing.

Sunday morning, Xiaoling's friend picks us up and drives us to the lake.  She is going to walk with us, but traffic is heavy, and parking is unavailable.   She drops us off on the other side of the lake, and we begin our walk back to the city.  It's just like Hansel and Gretel minus the bread crumbs., 

 So begins our second day.   

West Lake is not just a lake, it's a huge garden covering over 2 square miles and more--or a series of connected gardens.   The lake is broken by a causeway, or two, which we walk  until we reach a boat ramp, a little over a mile from the drop-off spot.  

     

          YES, someone has an umbrella, and yes, it will rain in here in Hangzhou, but right now, it's just a mist.   In these photos,we've just left the parking lot and are making our way toward the lake, but already there's water everywhere.

After a short walk we come upon the rest area with the figures below.

Eventually, we will  make our way to this building, which at this time seems far int he distance.

And to get there we walk over the first of many bridges.

 After walking over the bridge, we follow the Causeway to the left until we pass the building we see previously in the distance and find a boat that will take us to one of the man-made islands.  The story of West Lake is that it was always going almost dry and filled with muck until one year those in power decided to dredge the lake and in doing so also created three islands over the course of centuries. 

Happy passengers on the boat we took to the man-made island with a lake in he middle. There are three islands; we end up going to the one farthest from this spot.

The picture here is really a little map of our island and it details the special spot for which it is famous.

It will rain soon.  We are smothered by the humidity and heat, and the rain will  be very welcome.

The boat that brought us to the island looked like this one.

 You can see the rain hit the water.  We had to stop here to sit out the storm.  We spent it talking and watching the fish, counting lotus flowers.

 When the rain let up, we found a short cut across the island and back to the boat dock.


 

 Before long we are back on the mainland, and heading toward Broken Bridge, wherever that is.  And before we know it, we come upon Sun Yat-sen Park, which really is the location of a temporary Imperial Palace, and meant another set of gardens and beautiful indoor displays. 

We enter the park and discover these ruins.  Next door are buildings which we discover were open after we have explored this area of the park.

Part of the original foundation.

 

Ding Yaping says this image was shown in the film Iron and Silk.

 

The walkways are all immaculate

This garden sits behind the buildings we have not yet entered, but would soon, after we discovered how to get to them.

The rockery here is contained in the whole wall.

The photos above are behind the building we will enter next, the Emperor's lobby.

 This crazy guy looks like he was made for the kids to play with.


We're moving on to the Emperor's lobby and library

 

This is the garden entrance to the Lobby and the Library

 

 The Emperor's desk.  I believe the chair and the desk are original items.

What's he looking at?

The guard tells us that no one is allowed to stand above the Emperor, so this window was placed above his desk.

 After having left the Emperor's temporary home, we return to heading toward town.  We have two bridges and about an hour and a half or two hours of walking. 

 

Are we having fun?  You bet!

 

 Finally after what feels like a day of walking, we find Broken Bridge.  Nothing, however, speaks to it being broken.

 After Broken Bridge, where someone is singing over a microphone in the shade of a little pavilion filled with people, we walk another hour or so, looking for a restaurant, which we won't  find until nightfall.  On the way we encounter more sculptures,  people performing along the waterfront, and  interesting pavement.


This set of figures depicts the leaving of Bai Juyi.   See the description below.We

We walk on and see other groups of people drawing groups of watchers as they dance.

 This set of sculptures depicts elderly women.   Their faces are fascinating.

Did I say they were dancers?   Sorry.

 

The sidewalks are filled with even more of these.   By the time I finish taking these, it is dark, and we begin to look for a restaurant.  It was past dinnertime, and we settle on a restaurant and eat outdoors overlooking the lake and lighted boats.    

 

As we sat down to dinner, this boat drifts in on its last trip of the evening and then quietly disappears into the darkness.

  While we haven't broken my record for number of miles walked in a day in Shanghai, we are very close at over  7 miles. 

THE NEXT MORNING the ladies have a two hour meeting scheduled with the woman in charge of the English instruction at a local university.  But first a couple of photos.

Helen and Yaping

Xiaoling, Helen, and Yaping

We meet back at the lake a little after 11 a.m. and have a buffet hosted by Ding Yaping's friend Helen.   Thank you, Helen.      This is lunch!

Helen, Yaping, Diana.

And after lunch we rush for the train station.  We are catching a 3 p.m. train and have to hurry  to get there even though we have almost an hour; but there is no word named Hurry in the vocabulary of Chinese traffic.  No matter how hard you try, you will inevitably move Slower.  Traffic is heavy, apparently, in every China city, no matter the time of day.  But we make it, with minutes to spare.

This train is the fast train and the two hour trip lasted only 45 minutes.  For the small difference in money, the comfort of the seats and the air-conditioned train itself, the return trip home is unbelievably improved.  

And then the weekend is over; we are back in Shanghai, and rushing for the Metro line 10 with our luggage.   We get back, and Yaping gets off, but I miss the stop and have to transfer back to get to the campus metro stop.  Then I find myself coming out the wrong exit, heading the wrong direction, until I realize I needed to do an about face and walk back two long blocks.  (A Shanghai block is equivalent to two or three and sometimes maybe even four Seattle blocks.)   Each block feels like a mile if you're dragging luggage over that beautifully bumpy tiled walkway.   But  on the road,  Home is where the head hits the pillow.  It has been a wonderful weekend.  And now it is time to find a quick dinner and relax.   

Thank you Xiaoling and Yaping for planning a great trip!