Idyllic Hangzhou

HANGZHOU:  10th - 12th January

Even with such a short distance between the two cities, the differences between Shanghai and Hangzhou are striking. While our first impressions of Shanghai after the subway were that of a city full of activity and life, with tall buildings pressing in from either side and power lines stretching haphazardly overhead, the first walk through Hangzhou was at 7am on a light misty morning, with a dusky grey sky blanketing a quiet, sleepy section of streets - my hostel was a fifteen minute walk down a pedestrian street called 中山中路 (ZhongShan Zhong Lu), a lovely cobbled street lined with shops and businesses, but at that hour there was almost no one else around. Upon arrival I found out my hostel couldn't do early check-in, so instead of being able to drop my bags and get some much needed sleep, I had to find something to do until 2pm - but even while sleep-deprived and carrying heavy bags, Hangzhou is still a lovely place to spend time, so the morning and early afternoon were spent walking around the nearby streets, going to the very edge of the West Lake, visiting a temple, and finally looking around the Zhejiang Art museum to see the artwork that was on display.

In the evening, the drizzle that had started earlier in the day was still coming down meaning it was a rainy walk to find dinner, but even with the poor weather it was much busier on the streets at night than it was that morning. A very pretty sight indeed!

After having settled in the previous day, the second day of my time in Hangzhou was the perfect time to go see one of the things Hangzhou is most famous for - its tea! I'd heard before about Longjing Village (龙井村), the home of famous Longjing tea, and it was clear I'd have to visit there. Two buses and about an hour was all it took to reach the village, and within minutes of walking down the road I'd already been called out to by shopowners, with calls of "Tea?" and "Hello!". There were few tourists in general, with it being January and very much not the season for tea leaves, but way fewer foreigners - up to that point in Hangzhou I'd only seen one or two, which was quite a change from expat-heavy Shanghai. And with only two or three other groups of visitors around, it was a lovely peaceful walk up the hilly fields until a vantage point surrounded by mist and fields of tea, with the small village buildings down in the valley between the two hills looking very peaceful indeed.

When I reached the bottom of the hill again, an old woman came up to me and asked if I’d bought or drunk any tea yet, and she ended up taking me back to her house so I could try some - she had a very thick accent that was quite hard to understand, but we talked on the way about the group of us living in Tianjin to learn Chinese, and she spoke about how difficult it must be to learn a language without an alphabet like English has, as instead of 26 letters to learn there are countless characters to try and memorise instead. Then, when we reached her house, she pulled out three massive bags of tea; she explained how there are different qualities of tea, and although that time of year wasn’t the best for tea, there was still a high quality kind that she had for me to try - I stayed there for a while drinking tea and chatting, although I’m afraid I only understood about half of what she said! She found it very funny that I wasn’t any good at opening sunflower seeds with my teeth, and so after I bought my tea she gave me a full bag of seeds to take with me before sending me on my way back through the village.

After that, I walked back through the village and around some other areas, getting buses around and visiting quite a few places, the pictures from which I’ll attach below.

Then I got on another bus to Meijiawu village, a beautiful quiet village with lovely buildings, decorations, and hardly anyone else around; I stayed here, walking the length of the village a few times, until I got the bus back shortly before sunset.

After that it was a bus back to main Hangzhou, where I got off a bit early to check out a spot north of the West Lake; a small walk through a park led me to the edge of the water next to a cosy Starbucks, where I continued walking around until I reached a wide, busy bridge across the lake. It was already dark at this point but by the time I’d walked across the first section of bridge I decided I might as well finish the walk, and so I spent an hour or longer walking the full length along the lake, eventually reaching the end and walking another kilometre along the road to reach the bus stop to finally get back to the hostel!

For supper, I went to a street near the hostel which at this time was full of people, buying souvenirs and small snacks and having nighttime walks, and bought some delicious ‘glutinous rice cakes’, which looked like little gold bars of delicious cake - I could have eaten the full box of them in one sitting! Then it was time to finally get back to the hostel, tidy up a bit in preparation for leaving the next morning, and go to bed.

The next morning brought a nice surprise in the form of sunshine and blue skies, and the end of the rain that had been falling continuously for the past two days. I packed up, checked out, and walked to the subway to visit the city’s financial district which is where some of the best buildings in Hangzhou are, (fun fact, on the way to the subway I saw someone using Chinese sign language for the first time - very interesting!) and walked for a while through the streets there with huge buildings on either side - a change from the scenery of the last two days.

The high streets of Hangzhou where the shops are were also lovely to walk through; much much busier than ZhongShan Zhong Lu, although with the wide streets there was plenty space to take in the view of all the life around me. I got some dumplings and then walked around for a while; I bumped into an informal English learning corner where I met an old couple who talked to me about Western politics, then went through an outdoor art exhibition, then finally headed to the train station.

I took a train from Hangzhou back to Shanghai, where I got the subway to a different train station for my next train, set to leave at 1am. I stopped on the way to quickly run across the street to a convenience store (便利店) to stock up on some food and snacks. I had to get these because the slow train to my next destination, the megacity of Chongqing (重庆) almost 1700km away, was set to be a 32-hour-long journey! I’ll be talking all about my visit to that huge city in my next blog, and I hope you all enjoyed reading about Hangzhou as much as I enjoyed my time there.