Hangzhou

This famous old town is simply beautiful - and totally overran by tourists, who won't even be stopped by pouring rain or unbearable humidity. Thanks to that, though, Hangzhou is lush and green, at least around West Lake, the historic part of town. Briefly, during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279 AD), even China's capital, Hangzhou is mostly known as a city of poets and merchants. There's a Chinese saying - in heaven there's paradise, on earth there's Hangzhou (and Suzhou). That's how beautiful it's supposed to be and that's why it's so popular with Chinese tourists.

We arrived to pouring rain, but the second day was nice and not even too hot for a hike in the hills south of the Lake. That's where the famous Dragon Well tea is from (龙井 Longjing is a small village between West Lake and Qiantang River - a river so big, it's shocking I had never heard of it. It even experiences strong tidal waves, supposedly on every 15th of the month, and lo and behold, we witnessed one).

But first we "hiked" to the tea museum and Longjing village. Not exactly a hike, because most of the way you are forced to share the road with cars and tour buses that are almost bumper-to-bumper all the way, which of course, doesn't stop them from honking all the time, because that's how you drive in China - with the horn, not the gas. I was very happy when we made it to the tea museum, a quiet oasis, and entrance to the beautiful grounds is free! (They make up for it by charging horrendous prices for the tea.) Supposedly, you can get free tea from any inhabitant of Longjing, but we were quiet put off by the inevitable "Hello, hello, tea!" So we ran. And wandered for about an hour through picturesque hills and tea plantations.

Hangzhou

The eastern side of the lake is lined with bars and restaurants that cater to tourists, thankfully our hotel was located a bit south, away from the crowds. Elong.com ("electronic dragon"), the Chinese version of expedia, is a good resource for travel booking, I already used it for my trip to Hainan. We did make good use of the fancy hotels there, though - we went to the Hyatt for dinner and had the probably best chicken of our lives. It's called "beggar's chicken" (and my Chinese friends think we're crazy for going to a fancy restaurant to eat this, but I still believe it was worth it - the chicken was organic) and is basically a whole chicken, that is stuffed with mushrooms and bacon, drenched in a tasty wine-soy sauce, wrapped in lotus leaves, packed in clay and then baked. So, it's steaming in it's own juices, that can't evaporate because the clay is air tight, and it absorbs all the flavours, also that of the lotus leaves. Of course it was served with a lot of tam-tam, i.e. a hammer to break the clay crust (for good luck). Oh my, it was so succulent and the meat so tender, just falling of the bones... I'm getting hungry again writing about it. After that, we foolishly shared their special dessert platter that contained concoctions such as green tea creme brulee (which I had before and was not a big fan of, but this one convinced me otherwise - the key is to not make it too sweet but let the slight bitterness of the tea dominate), a Jasmin Tiramisu, Grand-Marnier parfait served in an orange and Lotus puff pastry. We left the restaurant positively stuffed and happy :)

The next day we needed to recover, so we just did a little walk around the lake (12km), marveling at all the tourists that go to the most famous bridges (such as the lover's suicide bridge or the "broken bridge", which looks like it's broken if there is snow on it, because the snow doesn't stay on a small stretch in the middle). We had planned on taking a bus back that evening, but when I checked (ehm, that means sending an SMS to one of my helpful students ;-)), it turned out there was none that evening - it was Duanwujie (dragon boat festival) and therefore a holiday. I think this was really the first time I appreciated not being a poor student anymore (and moreover living in a relatively cheap country), because it was no problem to go back to our hotel and say we want to stay another night.

The last day we went to the famous Fajing Temple complex. Apart from the main temple there are also smaller ones scattered throughout the hills and quite impressive stone carvings of buddhas in the hillsides, dating as far back as Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD).

West Lake and Peak Flying from Afar

We relaxed with another cup of the local tea when it started raining again and we had to head back to the bus station... of course, we missed the bus we had booked because we got stuck in rush hour traffic, but fortunately there was another one just half an hour later. This time we even had comfortable seats and arrived back home in good spirits 3 1/2 hours later.

I guess this can be seen as our first test run for travel in China. Valuable lessons learned:

• buy your return or onward ticket as soon as you arrive, because often they are only sold at the train/bus station, which might be several km out of town.
• noble hotels might still be a bit expensive at around $100/night, but they are invaluable as god dining resources (you need an excellent food buddy such as B. though :-))
  
• stay away from cocktails, even in pricy bars
• be flexible with your itinerary, i.e. always be prepared to have to stay another night
• there's nothing that can not be done over the internet in China!
  

Hopefully, I'll remember those when we start out silk road trip - we're leaving July 5th, heading to Xi'An, where we want to stay three days, then to Lanzhou and southern Gansu... and then we'll see!

On a totally unrelated note... more pictures from Nanjing, taken on an amazingly clear day - we have only had haze, smog and humid 34 degrees since we got back from Hangzhou.

More of Nanjing

(Menu) Items of Interest

Before heading off to a three-day trip to Hangzhou (the city of gardens and teas) and getting even further behind on my blog, I should get a few things out of the way, so I can write about Hangzhou when we get back :) Needless to say, B. was struck down with food poisoning and a cold pretty much after he set foot in Nanjing. We still managed to explore a few restaurants (luckily, we can now order food for three :P)

• Durian pastry - simply awesome! Fresh durian is incredibly expensive. They usually sell it in small pieces, plastic-wrapped in the supermarket, but once my friend told me what I had bought was not soft and therefore not fresh enough and the other time we bought it it tasted like onion... so, I'm still a bit unsure as to how to pick out the perfect durian, but there are a few dim sum places that carry durian pastry, and these are simply to-die-for. If you never had durian, there's simply know way to describe the taste - or rather the smell. It's overwhelmingly intense, to the point of almost making you feel sick. But it manages to just scrape by the "offensive" and make it into the "delicious" category.
  
• Late night snacks and morning tea - I found out that the one Guangdong restaurant just around the corner has actually pretty decent tea and dim sum every morning - you just have to go there before 10am, admittedly, a challenge, but not so much with a jet-lagged guest around who's jumping up and down on my mattress at 6 in the morning asking to be fed :) This place is also open till midnight with the same kind of snacks. A rare opportunity for late dinner, usually all the restaurants close at 9.
• Beijing style pancakes - the new hype of street food. Imagine a big crepe (baked until totally dry and crispy - Montreal style :P), filled with egg, Hoisin(?) sauce, all sorts of pickled veggies and - most importantly - a piece of crispy fried dough. The whole thing is then rolled up and folded and is a crunchy as well as tasty matter. A few weeks ago you couldn't find a single vendor for this in Nanjing, now they're popping up everywhere! Competition already seems to have struck down one of the two on my street.
• Crawfish is now in season - the most popular version here seems to be the "13 flavour" cooking method, which definitely contains chilis, sichuan pepper and garlic, but I'm hard pressed to name more flavours... it didn't have the typical Sichuan taste though, the spicy-numbing was rather subtle.
• Pumpkin/squash stewed in coconut milk is always delicious. Even better - black rice stewed with coconut milk inside a pumpkin. Eaten in the "Great Nanjing Eatery."
  
• Garlic greens with duck liver (the kind waitress came back after taking our order to tell us that we had ordered liver! If we were sure that's what we wanted (the menu was only in Chinese). Well, given that I was able to understand her in Chinese, chances were pretty good I knew what I had ordered. If I hadn't understood her question, we could not have been helped anyways!)
• Our friend, the mysterious cabbage - usually it's a good idea to ask for whatever vegetable is in season and/or the local specialty, but after ending up with the same cabbage (some relative of kale but it has pink stems that emit a very pink juice) three times, even twice in one day, we might change this approach.
• Funky meat salad - imported from Sichuan, available on the market. Funky here means a variety of cooked, but cold, intestines, such as gizzards, tripe, tendon etc. that are tossed with chili oil, cilantro and peanuts and eaten as a salad. Surprisingly delicious!

That's all I can think of for now... I've been meaning to write an entry about the role of women in Chinese society, but I think the topic is weighing me down too much. That's one reason for the long silence. Sorry. Back to more food and travel soon!