Monday, 23 November 2009

Hangzhou was really beautiful!

But you can judge for yourself. The pictures we took are here, here, and here.

The first westerner to see Hangzhou was Marco Polo (in the 13th century). He liked it, too. It has in the past been an imperial capital city, but that ended when the Mongols conquered China and choose to make Beijing their imperial capital. Today Hangzhou has a population of over 6 million and is one of the second tier cities of China, quite prosperous, but not a commercial center like Shanghai or Hong Kong. The leading feature of the city for tourists is Xi Hu (West Lake). About 3/4 of the circumference of the lake is unspoiled, with one of the downtown areas of Hangzhou meeting it along the remaining 1/4. For those 3/4, just about every view is like looking at a classical Chinese watercolor.

The train journey to and from Hangzhou went quite smoothly, although I'd have to say that the ultra-modern Shanghai South train station is not quite equaled by the somewhat tired and cramped Hangzhou Central train station. The trains are very fast "bullet" trains — with a top speed of around 150 kilometers per hour — and the trip takes just over an hour each way.

Upon arrival midday on Friday, we settled into our really posh room at the Hangzhou Shangri-La Hotel, had a quick lunch in the hotel "coffee garden" and then went out for a little walk. It was just a short way from the hotel (across the street, really) to the north shore of West Lake, and we spent a couple of hours walking to and then right around Gu Shan Island, one of the islands in the lake. After that, it was dark, and we were quite cold, so we quit touring for the day and had a nice dinner at the Chinese restaurant in the Shangri-La.

Saturday morning the weather had improved considerably — it was completely dry although still pretty cold. We took in the Mausoleum of General Yue Fei (right next door to our hotel). The general commanded the army during the Southern Song dynasty and successfully battled northern invaders. But he was betrayed by a prime minister, recalled to the Song court, and executed in 1142. Some 21 years later he was exonerated, a big mausoleum was built, and his body was moved to a new tomb there. After seeing the mausoleum, we trekked up the hill behind our hotel, seeing the Zi Yun cave, the Daoist Bau Pu Temple, and the Bao Chu Pagoda. After all that, it was high time for lunch! We thought of having our lunch at an Italian restaurant we had spotted the day before on Gu Shan island, and made our way there, only to find it functions just as a bar at lunch time. Oops. So, plan B. We had read in our guide about a grouping of shops and restaurants named Xi Hu Tian Di, modeled after a similar grouping we know in Shanghai called Xin Tian Di. We caught a taxi to try for Xi Hu Tian Di, but we pretty much completely failed to make the driver understand this destination (which was supposed to be 147 Nan Shan Road, according to our guide). This sometimes happens. Our pronunciation of Chinese names can be just far enough off as to be incomprehensible (at least to taxi drivers). We do somewhat better with addresses, but this sometimes doesn't work either. He got us about 2/5 of the way there, and put us out when he hit the first clot of traffic on Nan Shan Road. Hmmm. Catching a second cab, we tried again. This second driver was also pretty much at sea about where we wanted to go, but he got us to where I could see number 150 on Nan Shan Road (which should have been pretty much across the street from number 147, our destination). The driver was at that point busily conferring with someone by cell phone about our destination, and since I thought we were pretty much there, I told him to let us out. We weren't, however, pretty much there. Across the street from 150 Nan Shan Road, there was no 147 (and in fact not really any buildings at all, just the lake front of West Lake). It turns out we were still only about 3/5 of the way there from our original starting point. By this time, it was well time for some plan C. Miles spied an Indian restaurant nearby, and so we had our (rather mediocre) lunch there. Oh, well. After lunch, we went (on foot!) to an old market street (Qing He Fang Old Street) downtown and poked around a bit there. Still wanting to do more touring, but fed up with taxis, we took one of the buses that service simple loop routes set up for tourists that we'd read about in our guide over to the Lei Feng Pagoda, and enjoyed the 360 degree view of all of Hangzhou from the top. The original Pagoda dates to 977, but it collapsed in 1924. Today's pagoda is just called a tower and it was built in 2001. The Buddhist Jing Ci Temple was just across the street, but it was 4:30 by the time we got to the entrance, and it closes at 4:45, so we left that to the next day. Having cleared off nicely, the weather promised to be really fine for Sunday, but equally to be really cold for Saturday night, so we decided not to leave the Shangri-La and had a nice enough dinner in their Italian restaurant.

Sunday proved to be clear and warm enough to enjoy with just a sweater and no coat! We armed ourselves with several cards written by the front desk staff to show taxi drivers, and started our touring with the Jing Ci Temple that we had run out of time to see on Saturday. Then we took the tourist bus out to Ling Yin Temple — the biggest single tourist site of Hangzhou. The walk up to the temple itself passes by hundreds of buddhist rock carvings — some of which are very old. These are carved right into the rock of Fei Lai Peak "Peak Flying from Afar". There is a legend that says this mountain was magically transported here from India. Some of these carvings survived being damaged during the Cultural Revolution, presumably because of their locations inside caves or uphill by a considerable climb. The temple itself has, due to various wars, fires, and other disasters, been reconstructed 16 times. It is still impressive. After a simple vegetarian hotpot lunch, and a cable car ride up the hill behind Ling Yin Temple, we got to Bei Gao Feng (the Northern Peak). We saw another temple up there. I don't have the name, unfortunately. But we had really gone there for the view you are supposed to have of the entire city anyhow. But it was pretty hazy, so the view was not what we'd hoped for. After the cable car ride back down, it was time to catch a taxi and, hoping third time was the charm, make our way to Xi Hu Tian Di, to choose a restaurant for dinner. This time, the taxi driver understood our card and got us there just fine, but there was not much there there. We didn't really scout out any nice restaurant for dinner and left wondering a bit what all the fuss was about the place in the first place. But we found ourselves right by the pleasure boat piers, so we took a boat ride out on West Lake, arriving at a very picturesque set of small islands connected by causeways. The sun set for us out on those islands, and we got another boat back to downtown. The dock we landed at was not quite the one we'd left from somehow. By this time, in just our sweaters and no coats, we were no longer quite warm enough, so we ducked into the Hyatt Regency right by the docks that we did land at. After very civilized cocktails in the lobby bar, we found a really nice Chinese restaurant right in the same Hyatt and had our dinner there. It took a while, but we caught a taxi back to the Shangri-la and thus ended our touring Sunday.

There are some specialties of the local Hangzhou cuisine that we got to try. The most memorable was probably something called Dong Po Rou, after a poet of the Song dynasty called Su Dong Po. It is composed of fatty pork (something like what Americans call bacon) which has been cooked with Shaoxing wine and is served in one long slice that has been wrapped up into a pyramid shape. The pyramid sits atop a preparation of bamboo shoots that have been cooked in some sweet-salty sauce. This is served with something called "pancakes" that is more like a small delicate pita bread. You take the little bread and split it open, add some of the pork, and some of the bamboo shoots, and enjoy the whole thing something like a pita pocket. It's very rich, but very tasty.