We finally got to Hangzhou -- the train ran at a staggering pace of about 40mph the entire way. We only passed two or three other trains so it would have been nice to go a little faster. One of the instructors actually got ill from it. Something about the not-quite-fast-enough motion really did not sit well with him. We have a nightmare all-day train ride in a couple of days, so I think he's making alternate travel arrangements. He's lucky -- I think I'm going to go crazy from 8 hours on a train.
View from the train.
Another train view.
We got off the train at Hangzhou Station and WHOOMPH... hit that hot humid air like a wall of bricks. It had been a bit hot in Suzhou but nothing like this: there were water drops just levitating there in midair, as if to spite gravity along with us suffering tourists. We had had to lug all our baggage onto the overloaded busses, whose A/C units just couldn't handle the load. Instead of taking us to the hotel, we had to go to lunch first... frankly, I just wasn't very hungry in the heat. We did get back to the hotel and dumped off our bags and were getting ready to go back out when... bap! A huge drop of rain fell, leaving a 1.5 inch wide droplet on the pavement. Bap! Bap! Two more, enough time for us to clue in and look up at the sky. Then, Nature having given us fair warning, the sky dropped a small river on us. In an instant it was pouring, huge drops and plenty of them and we scurried for cover. It raged for 10 minutes or so, so we decided to postpone the afternoon sightseeing a bit, giving us a very welcome 45 minutes to hit our rooms, crank up the A/C, and take a shower.
Eventually the rain did subside, giving us about 10 minutes of patches of blue sky, about the only blue sky we've seen in China. Then we headed out to the West Lake. Incredible. A huge lake, seperated by bridges, several islands, and walkways. Hangzhou is about the greenest part of China we've seen so far -- trees everywhere. (No big surprise in this humidity, though.) Another, ``Gosh, I'm really in China!'' moment. Very, very cool place, although the sun had come out and we were sweating like mad. (The bathroom scale read 7 pounds lighter this morning than it did yesterday afternoon. I suspecti it was just from sweat and all the water passing through my system.) We paused at one point for a group photo and maybe 30 people left their cameras for the guide to take our photo with. After 10 or 15 cameras as we were standing in the sun on this big rock, immobile, there was a big change of heart. People were shouting, ``That's my camera! Skip it! Just get me off this rock!'' The guides chose that moment to forget collquial English so we did get through all the cameras. (I saw it coming and didn't leave my camera -- it wouldn't have been worth the extra heat and the guides would probably freak at my camera anyhow and have to fight with it for crucial extra minutes in the sun.)
West Lake.
More West Lake.
Bridge at West Lake.
Some monk guy. I forget the story.
Pagoda Boat on the Lake.
Later today: the horror. Domestic Chinese air travel. Hopefully this will not be my last entry.
I bought a copy of the Chuang Tzu, the famous Taoist text, to have something to read on the trains and airplaces. We'll hit Wudang Mountain and the Taoist monastery in a couple days so I hope I have time to finish it and be in the proper frame of mind. I've read the Lao Tzu already, though, so I've got the basics.
I was hoping to find someplace that sells English books or magazines so I'd have more to read on that long train ride. Hah! Not likely! Not here in Hangzhou, anyways. Maybe in Shanghai I could have, but not here. Not without major searching, anyways, which we had no time to do.
Today was another of the familiar pattern days: get on bus, drive 20 minutes, spend 20 minutes touring factory/sweatshop, spend 60 minutes in factory/sweatshop's gift shop, get back on bus, repeat. At least I wasn't the only one frustrated -- by the end of today I think we're all totally sick of shopping. Even the restaurants where they take us for lunch of dinner always have gift shops attached. We're being herded from trap to trap, bled of our cash at each location. Prices are still lower or much lower than they would be in the states, but much higher than we could find elsewhere in the city if we could get out on our own. When we can't, of course. Well, not during the day anyways. We usually hae evenings free so most folks go out for midnight walks some stores are open really late so you can find similar products and compare. Seems like street vendor prices are usually quite reasonable. Stores attached to factories, especially ones with signs in english welcoming visitors, are ripoffs.
``Well, duh!'' I can hear you saying. Oh well. I've only bought a tin of Dragon's Breath tea, unlike some of these folks who have dropped hundreds or thousands of dollars on this trip so far. Which is pretty silly, it seems to me, since we can probably find nearly identical goods in Guangzhou or HK for the same price and not have to lug them around for two weeks. I wouldn't mind getting some of these hanging scrolls that people are picking up, but I just don't want to carry them around with me.
There was one hand-embroidered silk tapestry thing that I would have died for. Tiny, tiny patches of color and detail so intricate that I stood there and stared at it for 10 minutes or so. Which I shouldn't have done, obviously, since the sales guy noticed and began the pitch. The thing is, the tapestry was hand-made and probably represented a man-year or two of work (and it probably was only one person working on it). Asking price was 89,000 RMB. Over ten thousand bucks. Wow. If I had bargained I could probably have got it down to $5K or $6K, but I don't have that kind of money. When I win the lottery though, I'm coming back and buying that thing. Or one like it.