Hangzhou

Following on from my last post, I fear I may have been a tad hard on my 'homeland'. My dad was most upset at my grumbling, saying 'if you don't like China then you don't like me'. Personally I don't know where all this patriotism comes from - he himself frequently complains of the backwardness (quote "How can China expect to host the 2008 Olympics? Nobody speaks English here!"), rudeness, how he doesn't like to be cheated...

Anyhow, allow me to rave about Hangzhou which was a very nice city. On the weekends it's chockablock full of tourists and strollers, but it still has a marvellous charm and beauty. Part of the city is modern - it has Lane Crawford! The part surrounding the lake is more traditional with rebuilt temples and houses. There are a lot of rebuilt sites which look lovely until you read how they all seem to be built in the year 2000. Must have had a big tourism drive that year heh heh.

Here are some pretty pictures:







We also enjoyed the cute shops along "History Street" which we actually thought was the Night Market. Even though it was a re-created scene of the past and extremely tourist-targetted, it was still great fun.



Hmmm, and the food was also very good: duck can be cooked in different ways - deep fried, steamed with herbs and mushrooms, etc. Sour fish at Louwailou was massive and tasty. And there is delicious fatty pork dripping with badness.



OK, it's not all sweetness and light. Visiting Long Jing (Dragon Well - the spring of water which when added to the tea is supposed to taste divine) is crap - just concrete houses with people urging you to drink tea in their concrete ground floor converted room. Apparently the actual 'dragon well' was boarded up so what water they were using to make the Long Jing tea is anyone's guess. Either it's crap or the taxi driver was doing a number on us. Dad bought some tea in History Street which when he tried it was terrible.

And in the picture below, there were signs everywhere saying keep off the grass. But that photo opportunity was just too tempting for many tourists who blatantly flouted the rules and ran amok taking pics. The little boy in the picture was let loose by his parents and proceeded to chase the peacock and try to stamp on its tail. All this to amusement of his mum and dad. Thank God one fellow tourist gave them a bollocking for it. To which they replied 'Oh leave him alone, he's just a child'. Little emperors indeed.