1961 The high-speed train is closest too us and is more wedge shaped, the two more round nosed trains farther away are slower.
1967 This is the train station taken from the second floor that surrounds the station like a large balcony. You can see the large white with red stripe ‘Opening Soon’ tarps on the first floor. The McDonalds is to my right on the upper floor.
2008 This is West Lake with Hangzhou in the distance. This is the smaller, people-powered boat type. You can see one of the larger boxy powered boats just in front of the bow in the distance.
2017 This is stone bridge on West Lake. The tall structure in the distance once served as a lighthouse.
2039 This is our West Lake cruise boat. Yikes!!
Oct 14 & 15 – At Sea. The two days were as routine as days at sea can be. After two days off the ship going from morning to night, I was ready for the ‘at sea’ break.
Oct 16 – Shanghai-Hangzhou, China. Today we are headed to the city of Hangzhou. Over the years this area of China has been designated by various travel writers as ‘A paradise on earth’. Unfortunately those writers are all historical figures, starting with Marco Polo who described Hangzhou as “The City of Heaven, the most magnificent in all the world”. I’m a little skeptical that anyplace near Shanghai can be that picturesque.
Shanghai is a much larger city than Beijing and financially very prosperous. It has some beautiful buildings and quite a bit of open space and, although the traffic is terrible, it seems to be a cleaner, nicer city. It’s divided in half by the Huang Pu River. To get to our birth we will sail up the Yangzi River to Wusong and then enter the Huang Po and sail right to the center of Shanghai.
We are traveling to Hangzhou on a new high-speed train. It’s about 190 km from Shanghai and the train portion of the trip will take about an hour. Unfortunately the Shanghai station for the high-speed train is right next to the airport and that’s in the extreme western side of the city. Our ship is docked in the middle of town so we started out with a one-hour bus ride from the pier to the station. Actually the location is pretty well planned. It’s right next to the airport and the terminals are side by side mirror images of each other. Shuttles to take passengers between the two on a continuous basis.
New does not adequately describe the system or the station. Most of the downstairs section of the station has ‘Opening Soon’ tarps covering the commercial spaces. The upstairs section is open for business and has shops and restaurants, including the ‘American Embassy’, McDonald’s. Always on the lookout of local treats I bought a small package of dried plumbs at the snack kiosk. Hershey’s apparently is a big hit in the Orient. Hershey’s Kisses are everywhere including here.
The train that will take us to Hangzhou is fast, although not as fast as the blurb for the tour claimed. I was pretty sure that the 258 mph should have been 258 kph and it turns out that’s correct. The train is very aerodynamic. The shape looks a lot like the Thallys trains in Europe, sloping, wedge shaped engines attached to cars that have a slightly oval cross-section. The seats are very comfortable. We passed cars with two seats across and four seats across before arriving at our car, which has five seats across. There’s plenty of leg room but at 5 wide, not much shoulder room.
The train has a LED information sign that keeps you posted on progress, speed and outside temperature. We did hit 300 kph on the trip, a very respectable 180 mph. That was only on a short run between the most distant stations. Most of the time we were going a little over 220 kph, still a respectable speed. No telling how long this trip would have been on a bus. On the train, it was just a little over and hour.
Hangzhou started out as a commercial center renowned for its natural beauty. The area is hilly and has several lakes. It was the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty in the late 12th and early 13th centuries. We have a pretty hazy day like our first day in Beijing. Scenery shots are going to need a lot of help to be worth keeping.
The Hangzhou station is right downtown but with the traffic congestion and narrow streets it’s no place for our bus. Consequently it was about a half-mile mile walk to the parking lot. HAL had properly labeled the tour with its ‘Strenuous’ icon but people tend not to pay attention to that and there are a few folks that are having trouble keeping up. It was a short/long ride to the west side of town and the appropriately named West Lake.
Again the parking lot was not exactly close to the pier where we board a boat for a short cruise on the lake. It was a pleasant walk. We got off the bus at the lake shore and walked along the lake before turning onto the Su Causeway. Another few hundred yards down the causeway we arrived at the boarding spot for our lake cruise. There are two typical boats on the lake. The most numerous type is powered by a sculler or rower stationed on the aft deck and consequently is fairly small, 18-20 feet. These have various configurations, some are completely open, others have a small, wooden semi-enclosed area amidships and still others have a cloth canopy covering the same area. The second type is a much larger (30-35 foot) power boat with a small open area at the bow and stern. Most of the boat is inside an enclosed in a plain, brown, wooden cabin with large windows that slide open.
Our boat is not either type. It was about 40 feet long and mostly covered but in this case by a structure that resembles a Chinese Imperial building, complete with tiled roof, protecting animal totems on the gables, carved wood in the eaves and painted red. To say that it was the most ostentatious ship on the late would be to understate the reality by a large margin. We did have a fairly large group and it might have been the only vessel that could accommodate us. During our 45 ride around the lake we attracted more than a small amount of photos, waves and smiles.
I should take this time to mention that the Chinese are, to a great extent, very welcoming to tourists especially outside the larger cities. A warm smile and a stab at ‘ne how’ (hello) with an ever so slight nod of the head (small bow) always gets a return smile and a properly pronounced ne-how. Parents seem to enjoy it if you wave and greet their children. Many times they will speak to the child, apparently to tell them to wave back because that’s the result. Some kids, like small children everywhere, are shy but most will break into a huge grin and wave as best they can. These are the moments I enjoy most while traveling, a little personal interaction with the locals.
The lake is surrounded by hills on three sides and the city of Hangzhou on the east. It would have been beautiful had the haze not turned anything in the distance blue or grey. There are pagodas and other monuments along the lake side and in the hills that are very picturesque but difficult to see. Most of the lake is bordered by very attractive Chinese gardens, with stone bridges and interesting structures.
After the boat ride it was time for lunch. That was the best parking spot of the day, right in front of the hotel. After getting off our lake boat we walked through a pretty garden past a Starbucks Coffee House to get back to our bus. Not quite half a mile. Lunch was good but the rice came last and I prefer to have it with the meal. Not sure exactly why that’s done here, I don’t think the locals eat that way.
After lunch we drove to Longjing (Dragon Well) Village. This area is home to one of the most famous varieties of Chinese green tea. We are visiting the Longjin Tea Plantation. The first order of business was to pick some tea. She described what we should look for in picking the proper leaves, three small leaves on a single tender shoot. None of the leaves should be bigger than half an inch. Anything larger is called ‘mother-in-law’ tea because it won’t make a good tasting tea and it’s what you’d serve to someone you wanted to leave your home quickly.
After spending some time picking tea we all gathered in a room for a short lecture and some tea tasting. The girls put some tea in small glasses and then poured on the hot water. For their tea they recommend the water to be about 180-190 degrees F. Any hotter and you cook the leaves, ruining the flavor and the nutrients. As with other tea tastings I’ve been to they do not drink the first brewing of the leaves. They just let it soak for a few seconds and then pour the water off. The second addition of water is allowed to steep fully and then drink. This tea is very mild in flavor, as are most green teas. It has a very pleasant aroma and flavor, mildly astringent after swallowing. She said that you can brew drinkable tea three times with the same leaves before they have to be replaced. After you’ve used them for tea she said that you can use them for a compress on your eyes to reduce wrinkles and tighten the skin. They sell three grades of tea here, B, A and Empress. She opened a large package of each to show us the difference in the leaves and the smell. Empress consists of the type of leaves she wanted us to try to fine early in the tour. Each is more expensive but you use less tea to brew a cup. One finger and thumb of Empress, two fingers and thumb for A and three fingers and thumb for B. If the smell of each is a reliable indicator of taste, the Empress would have a much finer taste than the others. We were served the A grade and it was very good. Of course, they had cans of each grade on sale.
The plantation has worked in conjunction with Zhejiang University, China’s third leading school and located in Hangzhou, to develop a natural tea polyphenol supplement. They sell it in the US through a distributor in San Francisco. They claim it’s good for improving a lot of bodily problems. I might try some when I get home but I don’t want to carry it back from here.
Our last stop of the day was the Lingyin Si (Buddhist Temple). It was founded by Hui Li and Indian monk in 326 AD. And is one of the largest and most visited Buddhist temples in China. The parking lot was only about a quarter mile from the temple grounds.
Once inside the gate we walked on a path passing the Feilai Feng (The Peak that Flew Here). It got that rather fanciful name because Hui Li thought it looked just like a mountain in India that he said must have flown to China. It’s mainly interesting because over the years Buddhist carvings have been worked into the granite cliff face that you have to pass to get to the temple compound proper. There are carvings of Buddha, pagodas and other symbols. The Lingjiu Pagoda marks the burial place of Master Hui Li.
Many of the Buddhas have definitely been influenced by Tibetan sculpture traditions but some are typically Chinese. The most famous of these carvings is of Milefo (The Laughing Buddha) surrounded by a group of Luohan, his disciples. This is the large belly Buddha that is worshiped in the hope that he will bring a happy, affluent life. In this carving he certainly looks happy. There are 345 well preserved carvings up and down the mountain. We mainly saw those along Cold Spring Creek at the foot of the peak.
The first structure you encounter at the temple compound makes up a large part of the front wall. The gate inside is in one corner and when you enter you turn left to get to the middle of the Ligong Pagoda. It’s dedicated in honor of Hui Li and has one of the guardian kings inside. I’m not yet educated enough to tell whether he’s north, south, east or west but I suspect he’s north as he appears to holding a parasol in his right hand. These guardians show up at many temples to protect the main deity from evil influences.
Facing away from the pagoda you are looking across a courtyard toward the Great Buddha Hall. Near this end are two large gas torches that allow the worshipers to light the incense they wish to offer to the gods. This temple sells a lot of incense. They have boxes that range from ten sticks to at least 50. It doesn’t matter which box they buy, they set the entire thing ablaze before they start praying. They bow facing each of the cardinal directions and then walk further up the courtyard to the Great Buddha Hall before placing their still smoking incense bundle into the sand in a large bronze pot or trough to continue burning as they go inside the hall. There was a service of some sort going on inside the hall, monks were chanting and bells were ringing so I stayed outside to look at the Buddha, Sakyamumi. At almost 82 feet he’s the largest seated Buddha in China at present. I wanted to capture some of the chanting so I shot a little video of the Buddha to record it. Very soothing sound.
After the walk back to the bus and the bus ride to the train station we sipped back to Shanghai on the high-speed train. The trip back to the ship was much faster than this morning as traffic is lighter at 9PM. They held the Lido restaurant open for us to have a late dinner. Then it was back to the room to rest up for our next day in Shanghai.
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