Again, with the 6AM start. Breakfast was similar to what we had yesterday. Nah, it was exactly the same. Again, the spinach was best. Yes, I do think it is strange that spinach was offered for breakfast. These are the type of things one must become accustomed to when traveling. In New Zealand, for breakfast we eat toast or cereal. Almost never fried rice and spinach. Those are what we call “dinner food”.

After dinner breakfast, guess what we did? That’s right: boarded the bus. Then what? We waited! I’m not sure what we were waiting for, as nothing much was happening. No-one got off or left the bus during the hour. Strange? It would become familiar. Eventually, after the planets had reached the appropriate alignment, we left the hotel forever. We drove to the airport and were ejected from the bus.

We milled about in the airport entrance for sometime, unsure of what we were supposed to do. Eventually a guide came and herded us in the correct direction. He then proceeded to demand our passports, apparently so our check-in could be processed more smoothly. We handed our precious booklets over, then waited. And waited. After more waiting we finally saw him return with a bag of passports and a fistful of boarding passes. Uniting the trinity of human, passport and boarding pass was entertaining – no-one could read more than 50% of the names in his fistful of boarding passes. I started yelling out my mis-pronounciations of names until we all had our required documents.

Although we had now checked in, we still had to get our luggage on the plane. This involved more waiting and queuing. Finally, when it was done, we were directed to the boarding area, where we waited some more. Along the way people were lost and had to be recovered, mostly from toilets or fast-food stores.

It was a relief to finally get on the plane.

About 95% of the passengers on our plane were from the Chinese Bridge group – we received more than a few confused looks from local Chinese passengers. I found myself seated between a tiny Japanese woman and a Chinese man.

As we all know, there are many Chinese with a rather low opinion of the Japanese.

After finding out that Yvonne (my wife) is Chinese, he said I was China’s 亲戚, or son-in-law. He also gave me most of his food. I ate it (even the massive amount of rice) because I wanted to be polite. I was very full. We talked for the whole flight, which was great because I wasn’t tired at all and definitely didn’t need sleep. Every now and then he’d lean over and make some comment about Japanese people. Quite entertaining.

When we landed some people clapped, I think they were Russians. Apparently surviving a plane landing is quite an event over there. After landing all this mist started coming out of the air conditioning. It was strange. I took a video of it, you can see it here: mist on a plane.

Changsha, Hunan was hot. Very hot. It hit us like a wave as soon as we left the airport. Luckily there was an air-conditioned bus waiting for us, to wait in.

And in that bus, we waited.

Tags: Beijing - 北京, Hunan - 湖南, Travel - 旅游

On the way back from the great wall many of us were tired and wanted to rest quietly. The rest of the passengers were tired and wanted to sing loudly. I didn’t mind the singing so much, until Carl’s turn was over. After he sung, the quality of performances fell consistently. Eventually a large number of the singers were just yelling. At that point we (the non-singers) started yelling too: abuse at the singers. At some point we all stopped and the bus ride continued in relative quiet.

After much driving we reached our destination (wherever that was) and got off the bus. We were immediately herded into away into a building marked “Beijing Steel”. I didn’t know what to expect.

Turns out we were there for dinner. On maybe the 10th floor (wasn’t paying attention) there was a really flash restaurant, complete with stage, elevated tables and chandeliers. The roof and walls were splattered with small windows, giving the effect of a starry sky. To enhance this further, there were clear bulbs of glass suspended in strings from the ceiling. It was very nice looking.

The food was not quite at the same standard as the decor, but as I would be heard saying throughout the trip: “You try cooking the same meal, at the same time for 200 people who are always late, and see how THAT tastes”. When dinner was over, we bleated and kicked our way back to the bus, then were driven to the hotel.

After a short rest, Carl Jason and I ventured out: to McDonald’s. We took a cab, which was cheap. Carl and I had “Number 2 Meal”, because it was the only one we could read – 第二餐. It turned out to be a double cheeseburger. And it was great, even the chips! Jason had a sundae, because it was the only thing he could read. After finishing our meal we returned to the hotel.

Carl and Jason went to bed. I wasn’t willing to miss out on any fun activities, so I hung around the lobby waiting for something to happen. Two Hungarian guys came down and started asking the main organizer what they could go out and do in Beijing. The organizer basically said that the only place worth going to at that time (10:30PM) was “Bar Street”. None of us were interested in drinking, as we had to get up at 6 AM the next day to fly to Changsha, but we couldn’t miss this chance to pay money to get driven somewhere so we could wander aimlessly.

The guide demanded a map from the hotel receptionist, and drew a dot for the hotel and another for Bar Street. We thanked him and went out to find a taxi. The ride to Bar Street cost about 37元, and took about 30 minutes.

Immediately after exiting the taxi I was approached by an older gentleman who began trying to get me to go to some bar. I declined repeatedly. After he got the message he began blatantly offering me a prostitute. This I also declined. I also stopped being so polite and just walked off. Within one minute we were propositioned like this (bar, then prostitute/”lady bar”) over five times. One gets used to it after awhile. The Bar street was really a group of three streets that encircled a lake. The fourth street had no bars, as it was a rather large main road.

We walked around the lake, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, depending on the amount of harassment. Most bars had 2-4 people wandering about outside, who were apparently tasked with getting as many passers-by into the club as possible. They tried everything. Mostly they offered either cheap drinks or naked women. We didn’t go into any.

The best place on bar street was a small stall where a woman was selling paintings. At first I thought the paintings were screen-prints, as there were piles of apparently identical works for sale. Upon closer inspection I discovered that these piles consisted of non-identical but similar paintings, which I found much more interesting. There were many different designs – ranging from awesome to incredible. After looking at all the artwork for some time, we left and continued to wander.

Turning a corner we saw five policemen on motorbikes slowly cruise past. We passed many more bars, and were propositioned many more times.

As we walked the final stretch I almost demanded we go back to the artist’s stall as I really wanted to buy a particular painting. A quick glance inside my wallet changed my mind.

Finally sick of being offered prostitutes, we decided to take a different approach. We told the pimps that we were gay. They immediately stopped trying and walked off, every time. If you’re ever in a similar situation, I recommend this technique.

After that, my two gay Hungarian friends and I returned to the hotel.

Tags: Beijing - 北京, China - 中国, Travel - 旅游

Ok here is the post about the park, I’ve ranted enough about .Mac, I no longer feel like vomiting into an envelope and mailing it to them.

As one does in China, we took the bus to the park. The bus wasn’t hellishly crowded this time, which was a nice change. I amused myself by memorizing the announcement, which is repeated after every stop.

Chinese: “车辆起步请拉好扶手。上车请主动投币。不设另找。请给需要帮助的乘客让个座，谢谢。”

In English it would be: “When the bus starts moving, hold on. When boarding the bus, pay the fare. Don’t forget your things when you get off the bus. If there are old or sick people aboard, give them your seat. Thanks.”

So at the park we finally arrived. Actually, the bus stop was miles away from the park entrance. We had to walk beside the park for some time before finding the entrance. Before we paid, I didn’t understand why the park has such a forboding wall surrounding it. The all comes complete with iron spikes. I remember thinking that I wouldn’t find it difficult to scale, considering my incredible agility.

At the park entrance there were a few knots of street merchants. We bought a kite from the one who yelled at us first, as we respected his enthusiasm. We bought the “vampire” kite, which is not a vampire at all, in fact it is a bat. A bat that looks as if it was assembled by a blind child. Good thing attention to detail doesn’t mean squat when the item under examination is sixty meters above. He even gave us a spool of string for free.

The park ticket cost $2.

The park wasn’t packed, but by New Zealand standards it was quite crowded. There were about three different couples having wedding photos taken that I saw. I’d say the park is a few hectares*, and has a lake in the center. There were a few boats floating around the lake, which looked like fun. We walked around for awhile, until that became boring. When it did, I demanded to be allowed to “ride the boats”. We started to circumnavigate the lake, certain that we’d find the boat rental shack somewhere.

Before that we found a bunch of people fishing. I couldn’t really believe my eyes, people fishing in the centre of Shanghai! There were quite a lot of them too, given the small partition they were fishing in. It didn’t take long for me to realise that the fish they were trying to catch had been introduced to this part of the lake. Turns out that fishing is free, but taking a fish home is 8å…ƒ/gram. Throwing the caught fish back is not allowed, anyone convicted of this crime is required to pay a fine. I took some photos of the anglers.

A short walk later and we had found the boat rental shack. Yvonne read the sign quickly, and I read the prices, because they all use the same numerals as us for numbers, unless one is in a fancy place, in which both Chinese and arabic numerals are used. I don’t know why. The prices were 25å…ƒ or 40å…ƒ. Before actually reading all of the sign, we agreed on the 25å…ƒ boat. Yvonne talked and paid the money, and we stepped onto the dock. The “dock master” took our ticket and led us past the nice looking boats to an area populated by blue pedal driven ones. It was not quite what we’d expected, but we didn’t complain. Pedaling the boat around the lake was quite fun, not totally gay like it sounds. The main reason it wasn’t totally gay was that we were a heterosexual couple. I quickly realised that my pants were too tight, as my testicles began to ache. I solved this by undoing both the button and the fly, and pulling them down a little bit. This made me much more comfortable. Pedaling at a comfortable pace caused the boat to travel slightly faster than the more expensive, electric boats. As the lake was quite large, especially from the perspective of one sitting in a pedal-powered boat, I set my phone alarm so that we’d have plenty of time to get back to the dock before our hour was up. This turned out to be an excellent idea, as Yvonne, the captain, was unable to pilot the boat in a straight line. Instead we’d travel in a series of ‘S’ shapes. I think she did this on purpose because I have been eating too much lately.

Returned boat, recovered bond. Bored of the park now, we headed to KFC. On the way to KFC we passed a kid carrying a rabbit in a tiny cage. I took photos so I could give animal rights activists another whine item. The kid obviously loved his pet, and was very cute. Yvonne asked him what the rabbit’s name was, and the kid said it didn’t have one. Yvonne suggested he call it “rabbit”, and the kid nodded his head. I thought it was a good name. The rabbit-sized cage was another thing one wouldn’t see in New Zealand. Oh the joys of China.

KFC in China, like I’ve said before, is quite a different beast. For NZ$10 we were able to buy the equivalent of two burgers, chips, a potato & gravy, another side, and a pepsi. I think that lot would come to about NZ$20 if purchased from one of the filthy New Zealand stores. Because we’re in China though, the meals are also very different. I had a combo which consisted of: A “twister” as they like to call them (burrito style wrap), that was some strange flavour entitled “Beijing Sauce”, three fish … things, two chicken nibbles and a drink. Yvonne had five chicken wings, some soup and a strange pudding tart thing that I don’t like very much. While we were eating a dog came into the shop, which obviously made the manager’s day. There was a lot of yelling and chasing before it was expelled. It must have fled into KFC in an effort to escape the crazies outside singing their heinous christmas carols. Yes, they have christmas carols in China, and yes, they are just as terrible as the New Zealand ones. I really hate christmas carols.

KFC being eaten, we walked to the Grandma’s house, where dinner was to be had later that night.

Dinner was fun, I was given beer. According to Yvonne, I am an alcoholic, therefore having dinner with her family is the highlight of my trip, as I at dinner I am given beer. I managed to speak with the relatives somewhat successfully this time, as I am no longer afraid they will challenge me to a duel or whatever. Actually I just wasn’t very confident before, as they all speak very swift Shanghainese, making my attempts at conversation feel like I am butting in, since I can’t understand what their conversation is about. I’m still not very confident, but they don’t seem to get angry when I try to talk to them, so I try more often. I’ve managed to crack a few jokes, but as they have to be explained afterwards in fine detail, none of them have been successful yet. I still think they’re funny though, which is the main thing.

Honestly we really are going to the big fish tank tomorrow, so I’ll have some awesome pictures of fish to upload tomorrow night.

*I don’t have any idea how big a hectare is. What I mean is: “the park was pretty big”.

Tags: China - 中国, Culture - 文化, Shanghai - 上海, Travel - 旅游

I have been writing this on my MACBOOK while in Hangzhou. Yes, I have a MACBOOK. I have a MACBOOK because they are cool, and I am also cool. Also the interface doesn’t suck, though that line that everything “just works” is arse. Sure, everything “just works” for me, but I have to do programming papers. Everything “just works” for me in Windows and Linux as well, because I have the pasty skin and thick glasses of a computer nerd. I assure you, if you are Mr./Mrs average Joe, you’ll find something to get confused about with a MACBOOK. One thing that is far better is that the OS is based on UNIX, so the terminal is available, if you swing that way (I do). Also, there are about 1~2 viruses. Not that you shouldn’t have a virus scanner anyway, else you risk sending viruses to your less fortunate friends, who aren’t cool/rich enough to own a MACBOOK.

One thing PC users can do that MAC users can’t

I’m tired. Ignore that which is above. Below is a half-hearted attempt at a blog entry, and below that you will find two more entries that I wrote while away.

Found a funny brochure in a drawer in the hotel today, all about AIDS. Glad I don’t have AIDS. According to the brochure AIDS is a star-shaped scary face, that can live both inside and outside a pregnant woman’s womb. If this happens the AIDS will generate a blue and a red arrow, I’m not sure that they are supposed to indicate. Also it is either good or bad to observe a clean person using a needle while a dirty person grins at them. The brochure wasn’t that informative, but that is probably because I couldn’t read every third character or so.

Today we are going to see a cave. Caves rank just below fish on the scale of awesome, so I’m pretty excited. I hope my photos are all sharply focused, so I don’t have to bother explaining everything in too much detail.

After finishing lunch, it turns out that we don’t have enough time to go to the cave today. That is OK because there are plenty of caves in New Zealand, and I have seen a lot of them. Instead we are going to see a different tower. Before going to the tower we went to some place with a bunch of small shops. None of the shops sold anything I wanted, but some of the wares were interesting. Yvonne’s parents bought a lot of tea from the tea shop, and spent quite some time looking at all of the dried leaves. While this was happening Yvonne and I watched a street artist draw pictures of a very vain looking couple. The same artist had pictures of some famous people stuck on his wall. The only one I recognized was Jet Li. Jet Li was smiling, probably because he had just had a look at his bank account, which I am sure is filled with money.

Further down the street there was a stall selling toffee sculptures, which were very nice. I took a few pictures of them, and one of Yvonne and the chef. Like all of the China that I have seen, there were a lot of statues of lions around, and I diligently photographed them all. China seems to have a lot of statues in general, a large proportion of which portray normal people doing normal things. There is one of a white tourist using his camcorder, but I haven’t found that one yet. I think there were about two shops selling fake swords.

The second tower was next. This tower is much older, and much taller than the other one. It differed in that it lacked an elevator as well. Yvonne and I agreed to have a race to the top, which wasn’t very fair really. I won, surprise! We were both very tired by the time we reached the top. The stairs were very steep. The view was very nice, it was a shame that the wind didn’t pick up, which would have shifted the “fog” as Yvonne calls it. Still, nice tower.

Went to some flash hotel restaurant for dinner, which was tasty. I have yet to eat a meal that was not tasty.

Train time, which was awesome for the first five minutes, then boring. The train is fast, did I mention that? Fast.

I’m tired so I’ll just ramble on for a little while to pad out this post, then upload.

The subway station was packed, as everyone from the train wanted to go in the same direction. We waited for the next one, which was OK because they come every five minutes. Subways are fun to ride, and maximally convenient. I can’t wait until 2050, by which time Auckland should finally have one. At one stop someone almost got crushed in the door, which was amusing.

The bus ride back was totally packed, and I really do mean packed. Like, people were almost sitting on each other. We never have public transport operating as efficiently as that in New Zealand. We got on at the first stop, so we all had a seat, ha ha ha. The bus driver smoked the whole way, like most public transport drivers. When we arrived home I immediately began ignoring everyone, as I had been without the internet for three whole days (apart from the few minutes here and there that I could steal from that moron who didn’t have a password on his wireless account).

Hangzhou is very nice, and has some interesting places to see, but I like Shanghai more. Going to the big aquarium tomorrow which I guarantee will be awesome. Then, if Yvonne can peel me from the glass walls of the tanks, we’ll go to the technology museum.

Tags: Apple, China - 中国, Culture - 文化, Hangzhou - 杭州, Macbook, Travel - 旅游

Today we weren’t required to get up quite so early, seeing that we were already in Hangzhou.

Yvonne’s parents have decided that we will stay in Hangzhou for another night, so I’m going to buy another USB cable. We’re going to go look around the shopping malls today, I don’t know what else. Breakfast in the hotel was nice. There was no milk, and the orange juice was hot. Yvonne says that this is because Chinese people don’t like to drink cold beverages during winter. I’m going to have another coffee.

Last night, when I figured out how to change the exposure, I also learned that all the photos I’ve taken so far have been less than 1024 x 768 in size, some of the best ones have been less than 640 x 480. That irritates me somewhat, as low resolution images have limited uses (one can’t use them for desktops, the photoshop options are limited, they are small). I’ve changed it so they’re all 1024 x 768 now, but that doesn’t fix the ones already taken. Sigh. At least they’ll still look good as thumbnails.

After breakfast we went for a walk around the main center of Hangzhou. Hangzhou is minuscule compared to Shanghai, which is a province in itself. Hangzhou is merely a city within the province of Zhejiang. It appears that 95% of Hangzhou’s shops sell only women’s clothes/makeup, 2% men’s clothes, and the rest either cellphones or food. I managed to prevent Yvonne from entering all but one store, a makeup store. She didn’t spend too long in there, and didn’t buy anything though. We came across a small food place, and Yvonne decided she was hungry. While she ate I wandered around looking for another USB cable. I walked down one street, which was full of woman’s clothing stores. This city is Gemma heaven. Unless Gemma had thousands of dollars to burn – in which case Shanghai would be Gemma heaven. At the end of the street I found a strange chromed sculpture, and took photos of it. That night I saw it again and took a night photo of it as well. I walked down another street, and still didn’t find a store that looked like it sold USB cables. I did find a tattoo studio though, and took some pictures of the sign. I went back to Yvonne, and demanded we be allowed to enter the tattoo studio so I could photograph the owner, to show Stephen that the tattooists in China are the same as everywhere. The store was identical to all of the ones I’ve seen in New Zealand, in all but size. This one was smaller, which is pretty normal here. I flicked through the design book, and found that they catered for all tastes, Old English, “Celtic” tribal, and custom. Some of the custom tattoos were interesting, one especially so was a headshot of Mao. The tattooist looked like a nice guy, and it turned out he was. He agreed to let me take some photos of him, and after I showed him my tattoo he showed me one of his. It was really nice, incredibly detailed and smooth. The tattoo was done by the artist that trained him. The pictures are in the gallery. Unfortunately the photo I took of him standing by the counter is bad. I keep forgetting that Yvonne’s ancient camera can’t take inside photos without the flash. He thought my tattoo was awesome, and thanked me for letting him see it. Yvonne’s mum also saw the tattoo, because she had come with us to the tattoo studio. She asked a lot of questions, like did it hurt, how long did it take, and then told me her hand hurt just thinking about it.

Click the picture below to go to his website:

Yvonne’s mum went back to the hotel then, while went to the supermarket. They had a bunch of live fish in big buckets, but I didn’t take any photos because apparently that is normal in China, so I’ll see some more back in Shanghai. It made me think of the big aquarium we’re going to on Friday, which is definitely going to be awesome. The supermarket sold Zespri Kiwifruit, at a low price of 3.60å…ƒ each. The rest of the supermarket was pretty standard, imagine a massive New Save and you’re there.

Had lunch in the hotel restaurant, which was nice. Had sweet & sour pork, which blew the crap one gets in New Zealand out of the water. I ate most of it.

Then we walked to the mountain and climbed it. It was nice, and had a small tower on top. The view from the top was nice, I took some photos. Yvonne’s dad and I did some Taichi while we were up there, and Yvonne took photos. I am sure the other climbers enjoyed the show, and will pass the story down from one generation to the next, until we become legend: “Foreign Fist and Thunder Foot, protectors of Hangzhou’s glorious mountain.”

On the way down we passed through a tiny village, which was dilapidated and not very inviting. The inhabitants seem to earn money selling food to tourists, which couldn’t have paid very well, especially in winter. Yvonne’s dad exclaimed about how lucky they must feel living there, which didn’t seem to impress the woman he was talking to. Past the village we went through a small stand of trees, which I took a photo of. The photo was all out of focus though, so I deleted it. Now it is but a memory. I’ll describe it to you: some big trees, with some smaller trees/brush around, then the ground, which was brown where not obscured by leaves. New Zealand is covered with exactly the same stuff, and is therefore not a novelty.

Dinner time, which was again taken in the hotel restaurant. It was nice, as usual.

Sat in the room for awhile, labeling photos, then dragged Yvonne out so I could take some photos of pretty lights, and play with the exposure settings on the camera. Though I told her we’d just walk to the edge of the lake, I kept quiet and she didn’t notice how far we’d gone until we had walked down one whole side. Took some photos, got harassed by a beggar. I kept telling her to go away, that I wasn’t going to give her any damn money, but she kept bothering us. Usually we’d just walk off, but I wanted to take a photo from that spot. She didn’t appear destitute, her clothes were pretty much the same as other 50+ women I’ve seen. When we finally shook her off she swore at us under her breath and called us selfish, which made me laugh. Also some kid mistook me for another foreigner, and came right up to us. Yvonne asked him what he was doing, and I turned around. He realized his mistake, apologized and left. Yvonne thought he was going to rob us. Don’t worry Yvonne, I’m quite capable of bashing a small child.

We saw some graffiti while we were waking around, which I took photos of. The funniest was: “Death. We will bring the death” which was obviously written by a very scary person. There wasn’t actually any graffiti written in Chinese, which leads me to believe that English is “hip”.

The night before I was accosted by an incredibly inept street seller, who was attempting to entice me into buying a flower from her. Apparently we are a couple I am required to buy every vaguely romantic thing I see, in attempts to prevent Yvonne from becoming bored and leaving. As if she’d get bored with me! Anyway, this woman’s technique was to loiter in the shadows, waiting for a couple to foolishly wander past. When this happens, she leaps out, bawling about how her flowers are the best, that I have to buy one at once. Shouts of “Don’t want them!, go away! My god get out of my face!” are impotent against her wild charge, which judging by the large bunch of flowers she had in her hand, yielded inconsistent sales results at best. I bring this up because tonight I was approached both by her again, and by an obvious colleague of hers, only this man was polite and left as soon as I made my disinterest known. His technique was the polar opposite of hers, and made me almost consider buying a rose from him, in the hope that he’d take the woman’s supply of food, and natural selection would remove her from the gene pool. She was really annoying. He walked up to us, offered the roses from an acceptable distance (the woman’s flowers were literally shoved in my face, I had to use martial arts to prevent them from stabbing my eye), just far enough so I was able to inspect their quality, and then I was asked politely if I would like to buy one for “the woman” – by that he meant Yvonne. Like I said before, a slight shake of the head was enough to send him off searching for the next couple.

Before returning to the hotel we went to a 24 hour dairy. I took a lot of photos of the liquor that they had on sale, because Richard wanted to know how much alcohol was in China, and what the availablity is like. Alcohol is very cheap and is available everywhere.

I went to sleep when we got back.

Tags: China - 中国, Hangzhou - 杭州, Tattoo - 文身, Travel - 旅游

Today we went to Hangzhou.

The train was scheduled to depart Shanghai South railway station at 7:50. That railway station is quite far from Yvonne’s parent’s house, so to get there we had to take a bus then the subway. This meant that we had to leave their house at 5:45. I set my alarm for 5:20, because I wasn’t sure at the time, when we were supposed to leave. I think someone tried to tell me, but I didn’t understand. I just didn’t want to make everyone late, so I set my alarm early. The alarm went off OK, but I couldn’t hear anyone moving about, so I set it to snooze and went back to sleep. It went off about five times, and each time the house was silent, so I assumed we weren’t due to leave. Turns out everyone had slept through their alarms, and we were late.

We rushed out of the house and dashed to the bus stop. The bus hadn’t left. On the bus we had breakfast, bread and water. The bread was way too sweet, and I didn’t want to drink much in case the toilets were totally appalling wherever it was be that I needed to go. The bus ride was uneventful, as was the subway. We arrived at the train station about half an hour early, and sat. The toilets there were OK.

The train that took us to Hangzhou was very flash, one of those with the long streamlined nose. It was also quite fast, the highest speed displayed on the small screen at the front of our carriage was 170 km/h. The trip from Shanghai South to Hangzhou took about an hour. The ride was so smooth that if one didn’t look at the speed display, one wouldn’t notice acceleration/deceleration. A few times I guessed we were going about 50~60 km/h, when in fact we were traveling at 100 km/h or more. The operators kindly provided passengers with a magazine and a sickness bag each. The sickness bags were somewhat misleading, being labelled “Airsickness bag”.

The Hangzhou Station wasn’t as flash as the Shanghai version, which I’d say is the case with almost anything in China when compared with the Shanghai version.

As soon as we arrived in Hangzhou, Yvonne’s dad started talking on his cellphone, I thought he was just talking to a friend or whatever, but he was ringing the driver that had been arranged for us. The driver is Yvonne’s dad’s friend’s company’s driver, and had been loaned to us for the day. He was extremely professional, and really helpful. Before starting as a driver for that company he was a taxi driver, so his honking and swerving skills were second-to none.

He took us first to the hotel, where we checked-in. Turns out foreigners are supposed to take their passports everywhere with them in China, as we are not to be trusted and must be watched every second lest we ruin the “harmonious society” that consists of rich people, not-so-rich people, and beggars. The receptionists asked me for my passport, which was safely in a drawer in Shanghai. They weren’t very impressed that I didn’t have it with me. I had to fill in some form, and remember my passport number, which I must have recalled correctly, as no jack-booted police have yet smashed down the door and dragged me into a dungeon/torture chamber, like some people are worried will happen. Yvonne’s dad has friends in the company that owns the hotel apparently, so any problems would’ve been cleared up quickly anyway.

The rooms are nice, I would have taken more photos, but I left the camera’s USB cable in Shanghai, meaning I am unable to transfer photos from the camera to the computer to make more room for tomorrow’s photos. Because of this I have have been deleting crap ones as I see better opportunities. Photos of hotel rooms have a high crap quotient, and were among the first to go. The photo: “Woman bag” is one of only two photos of the room I saved. The Chinese text reads: “Woman bag” as well, we don’t know what it is for. They must have something to do with the toilet, as they were placed enticingly on the cistern.

After sitting in the room for about ten minutes, it was time to go. We went to the buddhist tower, I forget what the name, though I remember it has something to do with a snake woman.* It is very high, and looks nice. The golden steeple atop it is gold leaf. It is a reconstruction of a very ancient buddhist tower that was destroyed in the 1920’s. The original foundations are still visible beneath the new tower, and people through money at it, seemingly forgetting they have already paid an admission fee. From the tower one can see all of Hangzhou. Hangzhou looks like Hamilton, in that it is mostly trees. Inside the tower there are about two floors that have buddhist artwork displays. They were very nice, but I didn’t bother to photograph them all. The roof is gold leaf as well. The tower and surrounding area were very nice, like a large park. It was good that we went on a weekday, as there were few people about. Yvonne swears that the haze you see in the photos is fog, not smog.

Because our breakfast was so meager, we were all starving by the time we had looked at the tower and tower grounds. This forced us to go and get lunch. We went to some restaurant that had outside seating. Like all restaurants I’ve been to so far, the service was excellent. The meal was tasty as well. Yvonne tells me that she likes Hangzhou food because it is sweet, and our meal was. We ordered some watermelon juice, which tasted good. The driver, who ate with us (he was a nice guy) accused the restaurant of watering down the watermelon juice, an allegation that they denied. They brought us some more, and showed us that it has to be agitated, else the pulp and juice will separate, causing it to appear far lighter in the bottom half compared to the top. Whatever, it tasted good.

During lunch Yvonne’s dad asked me if I’d rather live in Shanghai or Hangzhou. I misunderstood him, thinking he had asked me which I liked more. I told him both, which got a confused look. Yvonne told me what he actually asked, and I said Shanghai, because most New Zealand cities are like Hangzhou, only without the buddhist temples. New Zealand doesn’t have a city with twenty million people living in it though, making Shanghai a novelty for me.

After lunch we went to the Hangzhou Buddhist temple, which consists of a lot of temples built on the side of a mountain. To visit them all one has to slowly walk up the mountain. The Hangzhou mountain isn’t very high, so visiting all the temples isn’t very arduous. Each temple is like another room for the Buddha, so Yvonne tells me. One is not allowed to take photos inside the temples, but one of the temple’s doors was wide open, so I took some photos of the inside, from the outside. The interior of the temples is generally the same, a big open space filled with a massive statue of some figure, or a lot of less massive statues of Buddhist figures. Opposite the temples there are a lot of sculptures carved into rocks, most of which are over six hundred years old. They were smashed during the cultural revolution, but have since been repaired. The rocks on the path have been worn smooth with the feet of tourists, who must have been visiting for almost as long as the sculptures have been there. It was all very pretty, look at the photos.

We went from the temple to the lake, which is big. I don’t think it is as big as lake Taupo, as one can see the opposite side. Hundreds of years ago some Emperor decided he’d like to have a series of summer houses on the small islands in the lake, and so the three islands were terraformed and civilized. One of the islands is now reserved for birds, the other two for tourists. We rented a boat, which took us to one of the islands. The boat was powered by a person with an oar, and traveled about as slow as one would expect. We went to the biggest island, where the Emperor would go once every two years or so. It was very nice. The island is quite big, about an acre or so I estimate. Its center is a large lagoon, which is connected to the lake. The lagoon has walkways crossing it, and some large stones placed in it. There are some buildings around as well, which have been converted into either shops or the toilet.

Apparently whoever is in charge of whatever the Chinese equivalent to our city council has bought a huge water filtering machine, which has been placed on the river that feeds the lake. This means that the lake is getting cleaner and cleaner.

Boat ride back, drove back to the hotel. I slept for two hours, then we had dinner. Dinner was nice, I had abalone for the first time, which actually tasted nice, contrary to what one would expect from its external appearance. After dinner we went for a walk, and I took some photos. I finally found out how to change the language on Yvonne’s camera, and found the exposure settings. I got some nice photos of Hangzhou night. Now I know how to change the exposure, I’ll be able to get some better shots of Shanghai as well.

End of day one.

*If you’re interested, I’m sure a Google search for “Hangzhou snake tower”; or “Hangzhou Buddhist tower” would yield helpful results. I can’t check it now, as the internet connection I was stealing seems to have stopped working. Some moron has a wireless router somewhere near this hotel room, and hasn’t enabled any security features. It was working for me before, but I think I am just on the edge of its range, as it times out each time I try to connect now. We asked the hotel staff if they provide wireless internet to guests, and they told us they don’t, so it is definitely some close-by idiot’s.

Tags: China - 中国, Hangzhou - 杭州, Travel - 旅游

1 It is filled with Chinese people.
2 Shanghai, at least, is not as dirty/crowded as I was led to believe. Sure there are piles of rubbish around, but one only sees those from the bus/taxi/train, when traveling from a nice area to another nice area. So long as one doesn’t accidentally wander into the “affordable housing” zones, one doesn’t see much rubbish.
3 The selection of ludicrously expensive clothes is vast.
4 I’ve been here for ~2 weeks, and haven’t seen a fight. Not even a shouting match, and I haven’t been pick-pocketed.
5 The police force must be absolutely massive, more often than not there is at least a police car visible. The police often park on a corner and just sit in the car with their lights flashing. In fact, they almost never turn their lights off, just drive around with them flashing all the time. Apparently one is expected to wildly swerve out of the way only if the police car has both the lights and the siren engaged. There are a lot of police on motorbikes here, and pedal-powered officers. I repeat: there are a lot of police here.
6 There are a lot of security guards, everywhere. The housing compound where Yvonne’s parents live is patrolled twenty-four-hours by ex-military security guards. They look mean and carry batons. They also have walky-talkies, which they jabber into non-stop. They are very serious, and don’t seem to take chances. If a delivery vehicle arrives at a gate, for example, the guard there will wave him down, ask the driver where within the compound his delivery is for, then give the driver a time limit to arrive at that residence. The driver is then allowed to proceed. The guard will then radio a fellow guard, who will wander over to the delivery driver’s destination to check that he has indeed gone where he said he would. I don’t know what would happen if the driver was late or got lost, but I doubt it would be fun for him. There are a lot of guards, and I imagine they get bored patrolling, and would relish a good bashing. I doubt the police would take the delivery driver’s side in this instance, either.
7 There are “crossing-wardens” at almost every zebra crossing in the shopping areas. They stand on either side of the road with whistles in their mouths, augmenting the red/green crossing lights. If someone attempts to jay walk, the warden will grab them and push them back onto the foot path. When the light goes green the warden checks everything is OK, then waves the crossers over the road. All of this is necessary, given the complete lack of attention drivers pay to pedestrians. They will just drive slowly through the crowd of people crossing the road, beeping their horn wildly. It’s not so bad when the cars do this, what one has to watch out for is the scooters and bikes. They go much faster, expecting to be able to weave through the crowd. I told Yvonne that if it looks like one is going to hit me, I’m going to do my damnedest to jump out of the way and then kick them off their bike/scooter.
8 To qualify for a drivers license in China, one must be competent at controlling one’s vehicle, have good eyesight and hearing, and be totally insane. A couple of days ago, Yvonne and I took a bus home from town. The bus was pretty standard for that route (different routes have different buses, depending on who runs that route), big dents all up the walls, scratched windows, brand-new LCD screens displaying adverts, coughing wheezing raving-lunatic driver. Not only did the driver speed (it seems buses/taxies are given some leeway with regards to the speed limits), he weaved in and out of traffic! He passed other buses, trucks, cars… Oh and like all drivers in China, he honked the horn incessantly, even when there was nothing in the way. As far as safe driving goes, all of the above is pretty far out, but this is the best part: the driver would drive in the center of the road (where the left-most right and the right-most left lanes ran side-by-side), for long stretches of road. A few times other buses/cars had to swerve out of the way, when they realised this guy wasn’t kidding around. During all this, no-one batted an eye. Before I return to New Zealand I’ll rent a taxi and take a five minute video of “normal” driving in China, to prove I’m not on LCD 24/7. Seriously, forget amusement rides, come experience the real thing.
9 If one is planning on spending the day in town, one needs to plan when and how much to drink. The toilets in China range from luxury to hole in the ground. In most public toilets that are not inside a large mall, one is required to part with coin, or not wipe. There is usually a happy “sales attendant” sitting at a table in the “lobby” of the public toilet who sells toilet paper.
10 Chinese people never cease to be amazed at a white person using chopsticks as well as them, and will always say so. This gets old quickly. Humans are creatures that are able to learn things, motor tasks can be learned especially well. The use of chopsticks is a motor task. Ergo any human, with practice, should be able to master them without too much difficulty. Using chopsticks is not an art.

I could probably make more observations like that, but they’d get increasingly lame so I’ll stop there. We’re going to Hangzhou tomorrow. I know nothing about Hangzhou, it is a place somewhere in China that we are going to travel to on a train. I’m looking forward to the train ride.

Tags: China - 中国, Culture - 文化, Shanghai - 上海, Travel - 旅游

The plan for the day was to go look around a museum in Shanghai, then wander around looking at the lights around the city when it got dark. Yvonne wanted to go to the Art Museum, so that is where we went.

The first exhibit was paintings, which were yawn. I think they were Rembrandt’s work, but I don’t really care about painting so I didn’t pay attention. The only one I liked was a painting of the same skull from six different angles, and I only liked that because skulls look great. It may have been technically wondrous from a painter’s perspective, but I’m not a painter, so I just saw skulls. To be honest, I like CGI art better, partly because none of the old painters painted pictures of space ships or aliens, which I like. Maybe there is a painter who painted pictures of fish? If there is, then I like his/her work.

The next exhibit was of ancient Chinese bronze work, which I know Kenneth adores. Most of the photos I took were from this exhibit, because the others were similar to the paintings exhibit, in that they were yawn. There were a lot of pots in this exhibit, which is good because it means that the ancients had things to cook in. A lot of the pots had nice designs on them, but at the end of the day they are still just pots, and I’m not quite lame enough to photograph pots, no matter how old they may be. Among the pots were appeared at first to be upside down pots, until I read the labels. They were in fact, bells. Bells are cool, so I felt no shame in snapping a few shots of them. Also there was nice bell music playing around this area, getting us all excited about the bells in the glass cases. Good thing there were glass cases, actually, such was the excitement generated by this part of the exhibit. Around the corner, and we came upon the diamonds in the rough, weapons. Though the weapons were all very old, I’m sure they’d still be deadly. They were great, so I took photos of them. You can skip the rest and go drool on your keyboard now if you like Kenneth :P.

That was floor one, up we went to floor two. I’m pretty sure I’m getting the order wrong now, because as none of the upper floors held any interest for me, I didn’t pay much attention. In fact some of them we didn’t even bother to look at. There was a pottery display, from which I present two photos; a display of stone work, from which I present one; a display of calligraphy, which we didn’t look at; a display of old currency; a display of masks and clothes; and a cafe. There was also a jade display, but that was closed. I would have liked to look at the jade display, and will return to the museum in a month or so to see if it has been reopened.

There you go: Shanghai Art museum, mostly yawn with a smattering of death.

After the museum we went to the underground mall, which is just like an underground carpark, only with shops instead of carparks. It was quite full, and the shop Yvonne wanted to look in was playing that hideous christmas music everyone loves for some reason. It drives me insane, so I stood outside. Among other things, we got some ginger ale from this shop. We were pretty excited, as ginger ale is great. This ginger ale, however, tasted like schwepps ginger ale that had been watered down then mixed with dirt. We threw both cans away.

Pizza Hut was next. The fast-food chains in China are not the same as ours, being generally cleaner, with better service and food. Pizza Hut was no exception. The pizza was like Domino’s, the desserts actually tasted nice, and the drinks were quality. See photos.

Dinner being over, we exited PIzza Hut and walked slowly to the place from which one gets the best view of Pudong, which is the area filled with big tall buildings, including the “kebab stick” tower of Shanghai. It takes a long time to get there from the Art Museum, and my feet were sore far before we reached our goal. I took a lot of pictures of the pretty buildings on the way. In Shanghai, at night, EVERY building is lit up. The amount of electricity used must be immense. 70 of China’s electricity comes from coal power stations. To get to the viewing area, we walked down the pedestrian-only street, which was packed. There were much more people out at night than there were out during the day. A few areas had blaring christmas carols, which I despise. We passed by a bunch of old people dancing to live jazz, which held our interest for about 10 seconds. After one has played Zelda/Paper Mario/Metroid/BF2142, reality has to try pretty damn hard to keep one interested for any length of time, and old people dancing didn’t quite cut it. Flashing lights do though, because they are just like games. We looked at the lights for awhile, and I took lots of photos. There were a lot of boats going up and down the river, and the passenger boats were covered in gaudy neon lights. It cost 78å…ƒ to ride on one, which was too expensive for what it was. One boat had a massive screen on it, and every time it passed the view was obscured by advertising. The screen was incredibly bright, I took photos of it, and one of Yvonne and I basking in its glow.

On the way back to the bus terminal (yes, we had to walk ALL THE WAY BACK AS WELL!) the camera ran out power. This meant no more photos, obviously. I wanted to ride the slow train down the pedestrian street, but Yvonne refused to potentially miss the chance to look in any shop that sold makeup caught her eye. As we were going through an underpass I noticed a sign advertising “Fish World” or whatever it was called. We’re going there on Thursday, the day after we return from Hangzhou. Oh yeah, we’re going to Hangzhou tomorrow, on a train. Apparently the train is flash, I’ll take a photo of it. Hangzhou and Suzhou are known as the “Heavens of China”. We’ll see…

Obviously I won’t have the internet while we’re there, so I won’t be updating this. I will be taking plenty of photos, and writing this as we go. I’ll upload it when we arrive home.

Tags: Art - 艺术, China - 中国, Culture - 文化, Museum, Museum - 博物馆, Shanghai - 上海, Travel - 旅游