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