From January 5th-10th I went with Fei Fei to Hangzhou, "without doubt the finest and most splendid city in the world", according to Marco Polo (there is a picture of Fei Fei standing in front of his statue). It is a beautiful city and is considered the most beautiful city in China by the Chinese people. We went at the wrong time however. January 6th was hovering at zero degrees with intermittent sleet all day. The Xi Hu (West Lake) is the main attraction at Hangzhou and it's a nice lake with an island in the middle and several peninsulas. It's surrounded by Buddhist temples, mountains, late 19th century European style houses, pagodas, and a botanical garden. I twisted my ankle while sightseeing so we cancelled the hike up to the Lyngyin temple.
The city itself is much cleaner than Nanchang. They even have their own Papa John's Pizza with delivery as you can see--delivery by bicycle. I was finally able to find a reasonably priced (probably fake) leather jacket. For some reason leather jackets are way expensive here and the ones they actually claim are real leather go for at least 200 American dollars, but this shop was shutting down the next day and I got a deal for 280 yuan=40 dollars.
The food in Hangzhou is a bit of a disappointment. Similar to Fuzhou and Xiamen, the close proximity to the East China Sea causes seafood to be the prevalent local food, which I do not partake of. We did manage to find some Sichuan restaurants and they were "ok", but luckily on the last day we found a great one. We wandered by an Irish pub and considered going there one night, but the prices were a bit ridiculous: 60 yuan a pint of Guiness (about $9) and the bar food comparably priced. Overall, the city was quite a bit more expensive than Nanchang. The taxis start at 10 yuan, the buses are 2-3 yuan a ride, even the baozi is 2x the price. I do want to check Hangzhou out again b/c the horrible weather did not give me a fair overview of the city. But all in all, the trip was fun and I enjoyed spending time with Fei Fei before she goes off for 4 weeks to visit her family for Spring Festival.
Most of the pictures are close to the West Lake. The big statute of Chairman Mao is at Zhejiang University which we also walked around.
This is my blog. I will be chronicling my travels through China over the next year for my friends and anyone else that stumbles upon this blog. I will also periodically post my thoughts about current events, especially when such events pertain to myself, China, freedom, or "computer cards". Feel free to post comments but do be discreet in referring to yours truly. May you always drink deep...Aquafraternally yours.
So I have been taking private Chinese lessons twice a week. My tutor is Xiong Ying (pronounced similar to Shiong Yin) is great and turns out she is also very talented. I saw her playing the Pipa, a traditional Chinese instrument, at a show at her college and asked her to play it for me so I can record it. Unfortunately my digital camera sound capture quality is not great and consider that she is playing in a classroom without great acoustics and the temperature is about 5-10 degrees Celcius. All that having been said, I think it still sounds awesome. I put it on Youtube.com and you should be able to watch it directly below (I hope, I am new to posting videos):
If it's loading too slowly jut go to this link and it will go faster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRgwDuQ0tL8
Be sure to listen to the last 1.5 minutes, that's where it's really impressive. The song she is playing is a very old Chinese song which describes a famous battle...