Hangzhou and Huan Shan

Modern Hanzhou doesn’t have much of the old city charm left. Despite that, i still like the place. It’s one of the more relaxing big city in China, streets are wide and straight, it’s pretty easy to get around by bus, and things are much better indicated. We weren’t attacked by street touts every five minutes. For the first time in China, we almost felt invisible – and that’s a very good thing. :)

West Lake is beautiful, albeit the fog (or pollution? I’d rather believe it’s just the fog). we spent a few hours walking around and hoped it’d reveal its true beauty to us. but nope, the fog continued on like it’s part of the lake. IMHO, the lake contributes a lot to the city’s overall laid-back feel. the shore is very happening day and night, friends meet there, companies have outings there, and people just gather to pass time. Hanzhou would not be Hanzhou without West Lake!

the lake, like a shy lady wearing a veil, seldom revealing its beauty

a park by the West Lake

we also did a day trip to a nearby water town Anchang(安昌). it’s not yet spoiled by tourist buses and guides touting honks and flags, maybe the inconvenient location explains it. it took us 3 hours and 4 bus transfers to get there. the town is quiet and peaceful and it feels so real. People seem to live on their undisturbed lives like a hundred year ago. Such place is, sadly, diminishing fast in modern china….

the old street of Anchang

the old town spans on both sides of the canal.

Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain)

Back in taiwan, my dad played this DVD about Huan Shan that totally rocked us. we had every intent to end our RTW trip on a high note, so what’s better than spending a night on top of Huan Shan and catching the sunrise next morning? well well well, as an old chinese saying goes, “no matter how much one plans things out, life always intervenes”(人算不如天算), or weather intervenes, in our case. we woke up at 4am to a pouring rain. not only did we not get to see the sunrise, the moutains are covered in a thick layer of fog, the whole day! we lingered on but miracle didn’t happen. All we could do was to read the signs and use our imagination to picture the breathtaking scenery amid the fog that is just meters in front of us! talking about frustration! they said out of 365 days a year, the sunrise can only be seen on 50+ days. so we weren’t that unlucky. but a foggy day like this is definitely not the norm. It hadn’t been raining for a month prior to our visit!!

Like we didn’t have enough bad luck, we took the wrong gondola down to the much-deserted back of the mountain with absolutely zero means of public transportation. seeing us cold, tired, and in a hurry, a driver wanted to charge us outrageous price to bring us back to the front door. but that’s another story for another day… my blood pressure rises just thinking about it. zen…..

this is the Huang Shan we saw. :(

we waited at this spot for a while, suddenly the fog went away a bit and revealed this bizarre looking stone, the chinese named it flying over stone.

we couldn’t wait to put everything behind us. so when we finally arrived back in Hanzhou that night, we went straight to the most prestigious restaurant Lou Wei Lou(樓外樓)by the West Lake and had a feast – west lake vinegar fish (西湖醋魚), deep fried shrimp and eel (蝦爆鱔), mixed seafood, a basket of soup dumplings (小籠包), accompanied by some local longjin tea (龍井). The fish is starved in West Lake for 3 days to remove the muddy taste. I can tell you their starvation is our feast! :) The master poet Su Dong Po from Song dynasty once said “there are no better banquets in the world than those in Hanzhou” and there are certainly a bit truth to it. Now if you’ve ever had the dish DongPo pork. this is the the same Dong Po i am talking about, in fact, he invented the dish! he’s a writer, poet, calligrapher, governor of Hanzhou, and a food connoisseur. talking about versatility! :) In the restaurant every table seemed to have this dish. Too bad we didn’t get the chance to taste it!

I’ll end this entry with some fun. I got this picture from Huang Shan. Look at number 3. Not disturbing wild life is a good thing, but the translation doesn’t quite convey it right – can I flirt with them by buying them a drink? :-)