Having completed 6 weeks of teaching and 2 of preparation I for one was exceedingly grateful that "Golden Week" was no longer a distant speck on the horizon. Once again China prepares and participates in the world's largest human migration and why wouldn't you want to be a part of all of that chaos?
Last year we headed for Yangshuo, however we didn't check which days were the official Chinese holiday and it was manic. This year we were smarter and will be safely back in our apartment in Suzhou with at least 6 hours to spare before everyone else is actually on the move, we hope. Currently we are in Hangzhou in our room on the 3rd floor of a youth hostel very close to the Drum Tower and the historic Qinghefang Pedestrian Street.
We've been meaning to get to Hangzhou and thankfully we have made it at long last and the rain has stayed away. Amazingly the temperature is still hitting 30 degrees and is stupidly humid despite the fact that it is autumn. These conditions and the fact that we tend to walk miles and miles when sight seeing has meant that we have been somewhat sticky travellers. We've even walked further than intended due to the attitudes of the taxi drivers here in Hanghzou. In Suzhou and Shanghai we don't normally have a problem. Once in a while a driver may not understand my pigeon Mandarin or be able to read the directions I hold out pleadingly on my smart phone, but this is not a regular occurence. Here in Hangzhou we had nearly 10 taxi drivers turn us down all within the space of perhaps a 90 minute window. Some taxis were empty with lights on, saw us and drove on by. Some taxis stopped and asked where we wanted to go and then flatly refused whilst speeding away from the curb. The worst was the driver who wanted to agree on a price that was more than double the real cost the meter would have given, which he was refusing to use. We happily waved him away. The results of these mean spirited taxi drivers is an extra 3 hours walking bringing our total for the day stupidly high. I always thought that taxi drivers were meant to take you where you wanted to go and that they drove for a living. Apparently times have changed and taxi drivers may drive where they wish, when they wish.
Despite the miserable taxi drivers of Hangzhou we managed to take public transport from our hostel to the bottom of West Lake, walk up to the top whilst doing our best to avoid a few hundred 8 - 10 year olds on a school trip before eventually hailing a cab out to the tea plantations and museum. The air was a little smoggy and so some of the beauty of the lake and surroundings was dulled, but still pleasant and the tea musuem and plantations were a reasonable excursion. The plantations are nowhere near as impressive as the rice plantations along the Dragon's Backbone, but then again I am sure few crop plantings are. We did however learn that Longjing Tea is best served in glass rather than China and that in the Song Dynasty people had tea making contests that were judged by the foam and the way the tea sticks to the side of the bowl, much like you swirl your wine around the glass and watch it cling to the sides before slowly drifting downwards.
There are a few places near the plantations where you can drink tea, beer, play cards and buy fruit from wandering sales people with their 2 baskets suspended from a sturdy bamboo pole slung over their shoulder. We had a pleasant beer and tea by the water in the sun with mosquito repelling incense burning by our feet. It was after this that no taxis could be bothered to drive us further South to the Six Harmonies Pagoda and we went by foot the entire way. The walk wasn't overly interesting and the map provided by the hotel was fairly poor with few roads and little English. All in all a great challenge.... I would love to conclude that the pagoda was amazing and worth the walk, but, it was just another pagoda and not in the best of conditions to be quite honest. If you don't have much time in Hangzhou and the sky isn't perfectly clear you can easily miss the pagoda and not miss a thing.
Food is a challenge for a vegetarian in China and Hangzhou is no different. Breakfast is fairly simple. I found a little shop making breakfast pancakes and so we get a nice hot breakfast made to order for 5RMB for the two of us. Lunch is nigh on impossible as we never seem to be anywhere near anywhere at lunch time and the majority of the dim sum we come across has meat in. We can ask in Mandarin if it has meat, but despite being told that it is vegetables we have often found meat. Lunch on the first day consisted of corn on the cob and some fries from a fast food restaurant that shall remain nameless. Dinner was some delicious tofu skin spring rolls full of cabbage and tofu and some ok pineapple rice. Day 2 in Wuzhen lunch was half a packet of biscuits and dinner was a corn on the cob. Day 3 is still open for improvements. If you are vegetarian and really will not eat food that has bits of meat that you could pick out be prepared to have the worst diet ever in China.
Aside from the usual food problems we have had some fun with public transport. We decided that we wanted to visit Wuzhen. The front desk at our hostel is reasonable for information and so we followed their advice and took the metro to the bus station and then a local bus out to Wuzhen for 30RMB each. As long as you can pronounce where you are going it is pretty easy to get a bus as it seems tickets aren't really sold that far in advance. We waited about 20 minutes after our ticket purchase and enjoyed an hour on a coach that was playing a DVD of a Chinese classical concert the entire was on high volume. On arrival in Wuzhen we purchased return tickets for the last bus just in case and then paid 2RMB for the K350 to Wuzhen.
Tickets to enter Wuzhen are only sold during the day between 9:00 - 14:00. I believe they then start selling them again later for the evening and if you are staying in Wuzhen you can get a pass for the appropriate number of days. We have been to 3 water towns and this was our 4th. We only had time to do the Western zone of Wuzhen and it was great. The best thing is that there are several traditional craftsmen still working within the buildings here. We saw tradition blue and white fabric being created with starch and all of the bolts hanging from wooden frames several metres high drying in the sun. Not far from the fabric workshop you can find a pottery workshop where you can throw your own pot, fan painters, lantern makers and bamboo crafts. There is a temple, a pagoda, a museum about foot binding that houses the largest collection of shoes for bound feet I have ever or will ever see and the architecture of the streets themselves and the traditional boats travelling up and down the water only add to your experience. Being a lover of fashion and fabrics the most exciting thing for me was seeing a lady with all of the silk worm coccoons and a bucket of water beginning to process the fine, soft threads that were then eventually taken to the enormous looms where the silk brocade is still being made in the dimly lit carvernous stone building by ladies whose concentration and skill know no bounds. It is incredible to see so much work go into producing something so beautiful and for machinery not to be taking over. I would just like to say that I did not buy a single thing in Wuzhen, no fabric, no pottery, nothing. I did so well!
The streets around Hangzhou are great for curio shops, tea, stone carvings and all manner of fun things. It is noisy, busy and with so much to see. If you like soaking up the atmosphere of a place then this is ideal. There is an entire street near the Drum Tower that has stall after stall selling food at night. We saw fish that we have never seen before and some of the less desireable treats on sticks that for some unknown we reason we have only just seen despite having been in China for over a year. I really don't know who actually likes deep fried spider, but it appears to be quite popular.
We are off in search of tofu skin spring rolls and maybe a beer. Thanks to the ever present and talented Mr. Orangedog for being my personal phtographer.
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