Hangzhou and some other adventures

So I lived through my two midterms on Thursday, and I think I did okay on both of them, probably A-/B+ range, although I don't know for sure yet. I had only slept two hours or so Wednesday night, but Thursday after my tests I wanted to resist napping so I could sleep early at night, so instead I went on a shopping adventure! I ventured off by myself to find a market that I had read about in my guidebook but had never actually been to before, and it was super fun. I felt so independent just getting there myself and talking to the vendors myself in Chinese and such. It wasn't a market with lots of foreigners, which was cool. I bought two skirts and a golden pig, and I think I did quite well on the skirts but probably overpaid for the pig. Oh well, it was a good buy.

Friday after lunch we left on a CIEE trip to Hangzhou! Hangzhou is south of Beijing, and is famous for being a garden city and having beautiful weather. We had doubts, because every CIEE trip so far has had abysmal weather (it is no coincidence that "CIEE" sounds awfully like xia yu, the Chinese word for rain), but it was actually pretty nice. It was soooooo green we were all just in shock for a while. Hangzhou is famous not only for being China's garden city, but also for having the famous Dragon Well tea and really nice silk and some other thing it was famous for that I forgot. Oh! Hangzhou is the city of love, I think. Our tour guide said something about Romeo and Juliet ("a very love story," in her own words), and told us that maybe we would meet our true love in Hangzhou. Good times. Another cool thing about Hangzhou was that it had animated Walk signs, like when you were supposed to cross the street the little man would not only be green, but his arms and legs would be moving. It was totally advanced. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time in Hangzhou because the train we were supposed to take back to Beijing wasn't going to run (I'm not entirely clear on why this was, but I'm fairly certain it has to do with Communism), so we had to leave at lunchtime on our second day to take a bus to Zhouzhuang (the Venice of China!), where we had like 2 hours to stroll around before getting back on the bus to go to Shanghai to catch a different train back. It sucked a little, but we also got upgraded to a 4-star hotel in Hangzhou, which was sweeeeeeet. Mostly what we did the whole weekend was look at various tourist attractions (some temple-y place in Hangzhou and of course a canal-y place in Zhouzhuang) and go shopping, our perennial hobby, although I don't generally buy much. Also in Hangzhou my roomie and I ate small octopi, which was interesting (verdict: rubbery but not bad), and in both cities Chinese people stopped to ask if they could take pictures with me, or if they were slightly sketchier, took pictures of me randomly without asking permission. Good times. It's funny, when I walk with Quynh, Chinese people will ask her to tell me things, assuming she is Chinese (Vietnamese, actually, and she doesn't look at all like a Chinese person, in my opinion, and I'm not even that good at distinguishing my Asians, if we're going to be honest). So in Hangzhou we decided that Quynh should just be my broker, and every time someone asks her to ask me if they can take a picture with me, she should charge them a couple kuai, and we could use the money to supplement our fruit-buying budget. Muahahah!

Picture time!

Pretty pretty gardens in Hangzhou:















Buddha carved in the side of the mountain:


















West Lake, the famousest pretty place in Hangzhou:














Canals in Zhouzhang, the Venice of China:














I really wish we had had more time in Hangzhou and/or Zhouzhuang, because there were lots of cultural-type things that we didn't have time to see because of our trip getting cut short and because of the nasty nasty tourist-season traffic. Shame! But I just figured out that I'm going to Xinjiang with Richard and Casey over May break! There is all kinds of culture there. Xinjiang is an autonomous province in the far western desert of China that's got some whole bunch of Uyghurs (an Islamic ethnic group), but it's just generally very diverse because it borders a lot of places, so there are Chinese and Turkish and Russian ethnic groups. Xinjiang is probably the only place in China where I might plausibly pass for a Chinese person. Might. Hen hao! I am super excited!

Oh man, Tuesday afternoon I went on a mini-adventure to figure out how to get to the Wudaokou clothing market using public transportation, because before I had only gone there by taxi, but I try not to get in the habit of taking taxis everywhere because as comparatively cheap as they are here in China, it adds up. So I looked at a map to see where the market was, then walked to the nearest bus stop and looked at the bus routes to see which ones looked like they stopped near there. Unfortunately, there are no maps at the bus stop, so you if you want to know how to get somewhere you kind of need to know the name of the stop, but I figured it out reasonably okay. I just get off the bus at a stop that I think is near where I'm trying to go and walk around until I find it. If I get lost I can always ask for directions. I think it's super fun, but most people don't have my patience for being slightly lost, so I like to go by myself. This weekend I have super lots of free time, and a lot of people are traveling, but I think I'm just going to go exploring around Beijing. Hen hao! I totally love that my weekend starts Thursday at noon, so I have lots of days to do awesome exploring!