Hangzhou

On 10/17 we went to Hangzhou. It is around a 2 and half hour drive from Shanghai. Hangzhou is highly regarded as one of the most beautiful places in China. Here is a quote the tour guides love giving around here - Once described by Marco Polo as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world”. I don’t know if it was all that, but it was pretty.

After arriving in Hangzhou, we took a pleasure cruise across the city's famous West Lake. It is important to note that the Chinese concept of pleasure cruise means a big wooden boat crowded with 50 people on wooden benches. As you can gather from the pictures of the lake, here are some interesting facts for you about the lake. Our tour guide told us that lake is half man made. Apparently 50 some years ago, give or take 50 years (sorry I wasn’t listening that closely) the lake was very polluted. To clear up the lake for tourism (and you though the Chinese weren’t capitalists) they pump fresh water into the lake and continue to do so even now, every couple days. The whole lake is also only about 5 feet deep. The West Lake is surrounded by a number of mountain like hills with a few pagodas on them. I wanted to point out another fundamental of Chinese tourism. Many places are advertised as “scenic” or a place you can be one with nature. Apparently being surrounded by thousands of people (literally) and being assaulted by hecklers of various forms of crap… I mean souvenirs (my least favorite was a cheap wooden kazoo) is a deeply spiritual event.

After a slightly awkward lunch we proceeded to Guo's Villa, a classic Hangzhou residence featuring a gorgeous private garden. This was my favorite stop on the tour. It was very beautiful. Oh, once again we ran into those dangerous Chinese cave trolls. This one was one of the gray shirted varieties.

The final stop on our tour was to learn about Hangzhou's famed Dragon Well (Longjing) green tea from the China Tea Museum and Meijiawu Tea Plantation. This experience was brilliantly outlined by Anne’s entry “Fountain of Youth Found”. The only thing I will add is that the only way out of this “Museum” (I prefer the more accurate “mandated tourist buying site”) is to zigzag your way through a 6 rooms souvenir shop selling everything tea related. This ranged from pillows filled with tea leaves, tea flavored foods, silk cloths, knock off designer purses, watches, chopsticks, calligraphy brushes, and tea pots.