Day 12

We started the day with a 2½ hour bus ride to Hangzhou. The traffic was reasonably mild (funny how a city of only a million people seems “small” over here). We’ve had great weather up to this point, but we got our first rainfall today. It’s helping to cool things off, but we hear it’s flooding the river in Hangzhou. A lot of Chinese cities are like New Orleans – lower elevation than the rivers. The sky here is a little strange. Sometimes you can look straight at the sun during the day, but it doesn’t hurt your eyes, because the pollution is so thick. We stopped at a Chinese rest area along the way. Everyone ran in to buy snacks, but no one knew exactly what they were buying except for the Coke and Pringles.


Our first stop was a boat ride on the Grand Canal. This was the same canal as in Suzhou, but at the other end. The southern portion is definitely more affluent than the northern section. Afterwards, we got to walk through the gardens, but it was raining so hard, it was difficult to take pictures. I must confess, the constant noise from all the people and traffic is starting to get to me. Many times when people speak Chinese, it sounds like they are angrily shouting at each other; and most people drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand on the horn. Our bus driver has 2 horns – a softer one for pedestrians and an air horn for vehicles that are trying to cut him off. Luckily I had my MP3 player and headphones for the boat ride.


After lunch, we went to a tea plantation. This area is supposed to be famous for the quality and purity of their green tea, but I’ll have to admit that I still like black tea better. I bought a small can of jasmine tea, mostly because it smelled so great (very flowery). It was very interesting to see the tea plants. I didn’t realize they were small bushes that are grown up the sides of the mountains. The Chinese do all the picking and drying completely by hand (no tractors or combines).


Our last stop was the Yue Fei Temple and Mausoleum. Yue Fei was a famous general, so this place was more garden than temple.


The ancient statues were in much better shape than most of the ones we’ve seen in other places, because they were not attacked as severely during the Cultural Revolution.