Day 9: Hangzhou (way outside SH)

I was supposed to go to Su1zhou1 and Zhou1zhang1 but when I arrived at the meeting place, the tour guide said I was the only one to sign up for that one for the day. I would need to attend the Hang2zhou2 tour instead for no additional charge, or they could give me a refund. I pondered for a few minutes and decided to go on the tour. They dropped me at the company’s office, and I boarded a bus w/ 7 other people.

Our tour guide was named Cindy, and her English had kind of an accent to it… like british or aussie mixed. She did all the explanations in English and Chinese, which was cool.

We were heading to West Lake (Xi1 Hu2) first to take a boat ride around, and we’d see this famous pagoda there, a carp pond. Then we’ll go eat. Then visit a famous temple w/ a giant Buddha (25m tall – second largest Buddha in china I think). Then go to the dragon well tea place to sample tea.

She told us this ancient story about the butterfly lovers… apparently some rich beautiful girl surnamed Chu was annoyed that only boys could go get an education, so she pretended to be a boy to go to school. She met a boy surnamed Liang there and they studied together and he had no idea she was a girl, and she fell in love w/ him. So she invited him back to her home and mentioned that she had a “little sister.” But, when she got back home and before he was coming to visit, she found out that her parents had promised her to marry some other rich dude. And the Liang guy was poor and wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. He arrived. Found out what was up. Got really sad. Went home. Got sick. And died. She agreed to marry the other dude, but under the condition that they go by her lover’s grave on the way. So she was wearing her red dress – traditional color for weddings – but underneath was wearing a white dress – traditional color for funerals. She got to the gravestone and took off her red dress and sat by the grave crying. Then the ground opened up and swallowed her up, and they were together forever. And these two butterflies flew up from that spot at that moment. It’s like China’s romeo and Juliet.

She also told another West Lake story in Chinese… something about this dude who wasn’t really respected in the community b/c I think he was drunk a lot. But he had this dream where spirits of the mtns talked to him and told him that the mountain his village sat under was going to collapse. When he tried to tell the villagers, they didn’t believe him b/c he was … fei1 fei1 dian2 dian3 … maybe that’s wrong but I think it’s close. Not sure what it means, I’m supposing something like flaky or retarded. It could be that he was somehow a spirit too, or either he called on the spirits to make this distraction for the villagers to follow and look at in wonder so they would be saved from the collapsing mountain. I think I mostly got that story right, but I was kinda sleepy and I’m getting a little overwhelmed trying to pay attention to understanding Chinese.

Anyway. It took us forever to get there – prob 3 hrs ish. But the lake was pretty. Big. We took a boat ride, and the whole time Cindy thought we’d lost one of the guys (the other American – a philipino dude from boston who used to live in ATL (Mariano) – but he was sitting in front all along. She was kinda upset about it, understandably. This dude from Beijing who is going to high school in Germany brought his host mom and dad who speak only a little English, so he was doing a lot of translating to german. He was interesting and very friendly and outgoing. He could speak some English, and fluent mandarin w/ a Beijing accent, fluent german, and a little bit of spanish. Pretty cool. I later found out his name is Xiao Long.

We could see the pagoda pretty well from our boat ride – it has a real gold top. And at some point it collapsed b/c people stole the bricks from the bottom, so I think in like 1924 or so they had to rebuild it. There were also these little stone pagodas in the water – they’re on the 1 yuan bill. And there’s two bridges, called something like the broken bridges b/c of the way snow rests on them but then only part of it melts off at a time, or something. Again… I missed some of the Chinese explanation that this guy (I think from a diff tour group) was doing for the entire boat. We then walked by a big carp pond. And then to lunch (food was ok… nothing awesome… though I later found out that the soup we had is a special West Lake soup made from this weird slippery leaf veg – chun cai maybe?... didn’t really like it. They gave us a fish. Some fried pork or beef not really sure but I liked that. Some steamed egg that was decent. One of the women at lunch said to me after asking if I was from Taiwan, that I looked like just how the Taiwanese people on TV look.
Then we went to the temple – first walk through an area that is kind of wooded but w/ a big stone hill – some Indian dude came over and thought it looked like a mtn in india, so he thought it flew here, so its name has something to do with flying mtn. It has a lot of Buddhist carvings on it. And has an even #’d pagoda (which is unusual in china – usually odd #’d). Entering the temple area, we first passed a smaller hall w/ a smaller Buddha in it surrounded by 4 big direction gods (like a lot of the temples I’ve seen). Then, at the bigger temple hall, the huge 25m buddha (sandalwood, painted gold) surrounded by many gods on the side (one that is the goddess of protecting children, who used to be a monster who ate children but received enlightenment after her child was hidden from her and transformed herself into this goddess). And on the back, the goddess of women/fertility surrounded by a lot of stuff – apparently she used to be a he in the hindu beliefs, but after Buddhism was brought to china many things were altered. After that hall, there’s another hall full of 500 statues of monks in all different shapes, facial expressions, accessories/weapons/whatever – all supposed to be representing all the monks in training to be gods.

Final stop on our tour was the Dragon Well Tea factory. They took us to a room and made us some of their A grade tea. First she put the dry leaves in the glass, poured a little hot water (85-90C) to cover the leaves and you swish it around and smell them – very aromatic. Kind of like spinach a little. Then she pours the full glass w/ three quick up/down movements w/ the water pot (maybe to stir things up a little?), and you let it sit to cool for a few minutes. Here, they call it eating tea (chi1 cha2) instead of drinking, b/c inevitably, you will eat some of the tea leaves (they’re soft and not bitter). Each cup can be refilled w/ water 5x. They showed us 3 kinds of tea leaves, and the way you tell a better quality tea is size of leaf (smaller = better), color (lighter = better), and aroma (stronger smell = better). They had us try the best of the 3. Then they brought out their emperors (huang2 di4) variety, which looked even better (though they didn’t let us taste it). I was a little skeptical about this whole process of the tour bringing us here, them letting us taste and giving us a nice little presentation about it and stuff. But we all got some tea. The Boston dude (Mariano) went in w/ me on the buy 4 get 1 free of the little canisters. We got the huang di kind, and he let me have the extra one so I gave him a few extra RMBs.
It took us forever to get back mostly b/c the air conditioning was starting to go on the van. Plus, anytime it was on, it smelled like gas a little in the van. My playlist that was the soundtrack for the ride home I’ll share later. I realized that my iphone is very heavy on certain artists and types of music and desperately lacking in many essential areas such as JT and The Killers and Lil Wayne. I’ve got a lot of what BC would call songs “tortured by something… like, I love you, but we have to break up. Or, I miss you. Or, I’m sorry you died.” I agree that music is a good place for expression of these kinds of things. And I also believe in well rounded collection of musical expression, which the songs on my iphone do not represent right now. Xiao long and I talked a little about iphones and about England and America (he’s thinking about going to England to study English next year). Cindy and I talked a little about traveling (Taiwan, US, Australia) as well as her english which is really good and like I mentioned sounds sort of british. She confessed that when she practices sometimes she practices w/ English accent to sound more formal. She likes the US accents (northern and southern – she thinks they’re very interesting), but she hears those a lot and kind of wants to be different. We also talked about how women in China if they’re over 30 and unmarried people talk… whereas in America it’s not really like that.

We got back, and it was late – like 7. I was in the area near the Samsung bldg, all the lights, the opera, Royal Meridien shopping ctr. Had to switch cabs a couple times b/c they didn’t know Pudong very well and had no idea about Shi1 Mao2 Hu2 Bian1 Hua1 Yuan2 (Shimao Lakeside Garden), and I didn’t know the address, and they didn’t want to try. Finally the 3rd cab was cool w/ me calling aunt sandy to have her describe its location. Silly me for leaving the house w/o the address written in Chinese.

I got back, ate some food, got some more shit from my grandmother about looking like a boy b/c my hair is short (oh yang a yi who cuts her hair the other day was saying how puo puo’s hair is short too, and a lot of young people have short hair now, but puo puo still thinks its better longer), had some beer, watched some of the opening ceremonies of the World Games on Taiwanese tv. I thought I’d see Dylan on there for sure b/c he’s so tall, but I never saw the US walk in. The big news was that the teams from China did not attend the ceremony. Like they’re participating, but claimed that they couldn’t come to Taiwan until the 17th (tomorrow). So when it came time for them to walk in for the processional, they had the Taiwanese girl who held the name plate, and then another Taiwanese girl holding the flag. Very much the talk of the news program that was broadcasting some of the ceremony live.

Rui and I sat around for a bit talking b/c she hates going to sleep. I looked online at Taipei hotel stuff and got a little tired of looking. She showed me her mini iphone, which seems like it sucks a lot (you have to use this pen pointer, and it doesn’t work well).