Back from the Heaven that is called Hangzhou.

“上有天堂，下有苏杭。杭州真是个好地方。像杭州这样的风景旅游城市，在世界上也是不多的。”

That’s what the late Deng Xiaoping said about Hangzhou, and indeed, as far as I’m concerned, the two days I spent in Hangzhou was almost like spending in heaven. It was just so pretty.

We took a train from Shanghai to Hangzhou and what greeted us after a two-hour non-stop ride was snow! It was snowing in Hangzhou when we arrived and for the few of us who have never seen snow before in our lives, it was just so exciting. After we got off from the train, we just ran about on the platform trying to catch as much snow as possible. It seemed daft, but we enjoyed it.

Inside the Shanghai Railway Station Soft Seat Waiting Hall. (Will explain this concept in tomorrow’s entry)

The train that we took. It ran from West Nanjing to Hangzhou, and Shanghai was one of the stops along the way. Though I think the majority of the passengers got on here.

In the train.

Hangzhou Station – can you see the snow in the picture?

After putting down our stuffs in the hotel, we set off to West Lake, or Xi Hu 西湖 in Chinese, for a day of beautiful scnery. Apparently Xi Hu is about 2 km in diameter, so it was literally quite impossible to walk round the lake. In fact there were 10 scenic spots at the lake and I think we only managed to visit about 5 of them because the lake is just too huge!

Beautiful Xi Hu.

Another shot of Xi Hu.

Yet another shot of Xi Hu.

And yet another shot of Xi Hu. Now I’m beginning to dislike the nonchalant use of the name ‘Westlake’ in Singapore. I think it’s almost an insult to the scenery of the real West Lake.

Went over to Wushan Market 吴山市场 after a pretty sumptous dinner at this Xi Hu restaurant. Basically Wushan Market is a big marketplace that looks exactly like those ancient ones on TV. I didn’t do much shopping, but I think the rest had a nice time boosting the Hangzhou economy.

Inside the Wushan Market

The second day was spent going around places again – and it was snowing in the morning again! We went to Lingyin Temple 灵隐寺 in the morning, and while it was very beautiful and majestic, I was kinda disappointed at how commercialized the place is. Just admission tickets alone already cost me 45 RMB. Besides, some of these ‘tour guides’ apparently have no respect whatsoever for a religious place like that as they were opening touting their ‘services’ even within the temple halls. As far as I’m concerned, the best way to deal with these people is to simply ignore them. By replying to them, even saying no could give them a chance to let them rip you off.

Some of these stone buddha sculptures have histories of more than 1000 years. You just can’t tell, can you?

One of the many joss paper burners in the temple. You can judge how many people there were by just looking at the fire.

One of the few majestic halls in the temple. It was just so crowded…

After spending the entire morning there, we moved on to Yan’an Road 延安路, which apprently is the city centre of Hangzhou. Of course it was never going to be like Orchard Road or Nathan Road in Hong Kong, but for a place like Hangzhou, it really felt like the city centre as the shops were everywhere (and of course the people). After watching the girls do their shopping, we went to Yuewang Temple 岳王庙, which is the temple to commerate Yue Fei, the patriotic general in the Song Dynasty. If I didn’t remember wrongly, some pictures of the temple were on my secondary school Chinese textbook. And this time round I had the chance to look at the temple in person. Though the entrance fee of 25 RMB was a bit of a put-off, but I guess that kind of feeling subsided after I stepped into the temple because it was actually very grand and majestic. I remember reading in the textbook that the statue of the traitors that framed Yue Fei was being spit at in the temple compound, and true enough, the authorities must have been so fed up with that they put a sign 文明游览，请勿吐痰 above those statues. Well, I think nowadays, especially after SARS, the Chinese have really cut down on that spitting habit, so I didn’t really see anyone doing that.

Yan’an Road.

The entrance to Yuewang Temple.

The statue of Yue Fei – it looked exactly the same as the one I saw in my textbook many years back.

And the statues of the traitors that framed Yue Fei. I think the fences were built to prevent people from destroying the statues out of hatred.

We saw more of Xi Hu after visiting the temple as it was just besides the lake, took more pictures, destroyed the peacefulness of the place before moving back into town to do more shopping. After going back to hotel, the whole of us had a very interactive game session which I think was very useful in getting to know one another better. At least that was for me.

After checking out of the hotel this morning, we went to the Silk City 丝绸城, as Fionna wanted to buy some silk products. It was a pity that most of the shops were closed, otherwise I think we would have stayed there longer. Subsequently we made our way to the railway station, but not before spending 30 RMB each on a cup of coffee at UBC Coffee. The train ride from Hangzhou back to Shanghai was relatively quiet – I managed to read quite a few magazines on board.

Wanted to go to the supermarket to buy some stuffs at night, but my cousin from Fuzhou is in Shanghai to visit her husband, so I met them for dinner. I haven’t seen this cousin for almost 10 years and I was a little surprised that she could recognise me! We had quite a sumptous meal and I was definitely not doing my liver any good as I downed two big bottles of beer. But I guess I was getting better in drinking as I didn’t really feel anything after those drinks. We had a very good chat and didn’t leave until the restaurant’s closing time. My cousin-in-law was encouraging me to move back to Shanghai after I graduate from NUS, and to be honest, as far as these few weeks are concerned, I’m really tempted. Oh well, perhaps the next 10 months or so are going to make me feel otherwise, but I’m going to take things as they come. Some morale-boosting weekend tours to places like Suzhou, Nanjing and Wuxi certainly would help.

Firecrackers and fireworks were everywhere again!