Hangzhou highlights:
- West Lake - stay in a hotel on the lake, get a boat ride for the day, haggle for silk in shop
- Xixi Wetlands - national park lands that used to be Song dynasty resort area, go early morning to beat the crowds
- Longjing tea village - taste at the tea shops and see the roasting
- Impressions on West Lake - amazing night time show by Zhang Yimou (Beijing Olympics opening ceremony) set in the middle of the lake
- FOOD - Hangzhou cuisine is lighter with fresh fish, vinegar based sauces, and just delicious
We trained it... purchased tickets on Monday, 64 CNY (about each way first class on the express. We got to Shanghai South station and tried to get on an earlier train, but no luck. Btw, this train station is bigger than many legitimate international airports in the US. However, the capacity for the space is severaly under strain... the waiting area was standing room only, and wow do the Chinese not need their personal space.
The craziest thing was the mad rush of thousands to the train, though puzzling given (I think) most of the train had assigned seating...
Craziness at Shanghai South Train Station
The train was nice actually, though 7 pm meant too dark for good views. We arrived in Hangzhou in about 1 hr 30 min, and we (mistakenly) decided to avoid the mad crowd and wait to get off the train. We were literally the last ones to get off of the train. We walked towards the taxi signs... and discovered why rushing in the disembarking process would have been a good idea. So we got in a semi-orderly line down this narrow, poorly lit hallway... the gypsy cabs started to peddle... I am very fortunate to be with two Mandarin speakers, one Chinese, one Singaporean. I do however know that "bu yau" (don't want) is the correct answer to these non-authorized cabs. Even the locals have healthy skepticism about safety, not to mention the 2x-3x price.
Now, we decided not to enlist the services of the gypsy cabs. But. In turn we experienced first hand the challenges of urbanization... This city has exploded in size and popularity in the past decade without building corresponding infrastructure. That means that a 1 hr 20 min train ride of 150km can be followed by a 1 hr 30 min cab line queue to travel 5km. Wow.
Once in a cab, we drove out of the very typical built out Asian city downtown towards West Lake area where we were staying at the Shangri-la Hotel, a beautiful old hotel right on the lake. It is actually a gated complex with multiple buildings. They do also have staff with pretty decent English skills.
We tried to book some tours in the morning, and it turned out lucky for us we couldn't book morning-of. We hired a cab driver for the day and head out to Xixi Wetlands, about 20 minutes from West Lake.
We arrived early, around 9am and traded phone numbers with the driver for pick up in a few hours. They are wetlands and national park lands. The area was used as Song dynasty resort land for the
later generations (who subsequently lost power I think), and has a number of areas with old (or more often reconstructed) buildings from that time period. It was a lovely walk in the park, at least for the first few hours until the tour groups started.After walking the length of the park, we decided to take a boat ride on the canals to return to our pick up location. We wanted one of the small boats with a personal rower, but apparently you can only charter one of those at the main entrance, not at the smaller docks along the way. So we found one of the loading docks for the larger (20-30 ppl) motorized boats. After some queueing, we had a pleasant ride on the rivers.
GO EARLY. We had minutes at a time to ourselves in the morning. We spent the late morning and early afternoon walking around groups and waiting behind cigarette smoke
Some funny footage from Xixi... apparently old Kung Fu masters used to practice agility on tree stumps...
Crouching Paula Hidden Lai Yun
After Xixi, our next stop was Longjing tea village. Longjin, which means Dragon Well, is the home of Longjing green tea, and the village is home to the farmers who grow, harvest and roast the tea, as well as the tea houses who cater to tourists to come to taste and see. It was a beautiful town built into the hills, along with the terraced tea fields. The tea is definitely expensive (especially when they know you are a tourist) but worth going to taste and see the tea being made and walk around.
Dinner at Lou Wai Lou - this is one of the famous restaurants in Hangzhou. Very large but we barely got a table when we arrived at 5:30 pm, they don't take bookings. Hotel at recommended no later than 6 pm for no wait and that might even be late. Absolutely delicious local cuisine and reasonable (123 CNY per person)
We had tickets to the 9:15 pm Impressions performance (there's also a 7 pm). Absolutely amazing and entertaining. Imagine the awe and beauty of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony with more creativity using the landscape of West Lake and less scale. The lake is literally the stage -- there is a platform that can be raised and lowered in the lake so the actors "walk on water" and also arrive via boats. The trees and pagodas are lit up, and in different colors throughout the show. Definitely go see one if you have the chance, Zhang Yimou has others across the country. Photos and video doesn't do the magical performance justice, but here is their promotional video
Ultimately the show was a 9 out of 10, with the minus one point solely because of the audience. As ironic as it sounds, Americans have a certain etiquette for spectating that is a luxury - no talking during the show, no flash photography or filming, no smoking... unfortunately these things were extremely distracting during the show. A beautiful scene in the light show is unfolding, then you see flash-flash-flash. Clearly the flash photography is doing nothing to capture the night time scene, but happens throughout the show nonetheless.
On Sunday morning, our attempt to drive out to the ancient Lingyin Temple was thwarted by parking lot-like traffic on the main Beishan Road around the lake. We hopped out of the cab and were denied by the bike rental folks -- apparently you need to procure a special card before using the kiosks to rent. But that led us to try a boat for our transport mode for the day, and that proved to be a wonderful experience.
On West Lake
The boat driver dropped us at the west end of the lake to a pearl shop. We didn't find any we wanted, though very pretty fresh-water pearls there, and we head across the street to a tea shop, where we tasted and bought about 500g for 800CNY between the three of us. Then we stopped at a "Farmer's Happiness" restaurant for lunch -- these are eateries where you point and choose your meal (rather than from a menu). Food was fantastic and fresh. We ate many vegetable dishes, amazing Peking duck, jellyfish, more fresh water fish, and soup.
Lunch at Farmer's Happiness
2 comments:
What a wonderful trip. Thanks for sharing your writings and videos. It was fun to travel with you.
Post a Comment