I remember sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean in Jeffreys Bay in SA, reading about China (it was actually when I looked up from reading about it that I saw the dolphins in the surf) and thinking that there was an awful lot of temples and large cities. Neither are really my thing but what I did read about were mountains and that really interested me. There were two in particular, Huá Shān relatively close to Xi’an, and Húang Shān, near(ish) Hángzhòu. We’d spoken to a Spanish chap who had been in Beijing for five years and had travelled extensively through China, and quizzed him on which mountain was best. The definitive answer came back “Húang Shān”. So, Húang Shān it was going to be. Problem was that it was almost half way across China from where we were. It was on our way to this mountain that we came to be in Hángzhòu and, as it happened, it turned out to be quite a pretty, picturesque city.
Thus far, we will remember China mostly for the throngs of people, their friendliness, kindness and their interest in us, the seemingly constant hazy grey sky and muted greens of the trees. Hángzhòu had a lot of the above and our short time there was very grey but we could see that, with all the water, trees, hills and temples, on a nice day it would be a stunningly beautiful place, particularly in the Autumn.
We were there for two nights and one full day and opted to get around on hired bikes. Hángzhòu conveniently has a great public bike system (presumably used in other cities around the world) where you pick up bikes from one of many bike stations around the city. Its fairly straightforward; you pay a deposit, get a bike and off you go. The bikes are really cheap (free for the first hour, then one yuan (about 8p) for the next two hours) and, as you can drop the bikes off at any station, it’s a great way of getting from A to B. The only thing was that the bikes were ridiculously small and Euan looked like he was on a little boys bike.
It wasn’t so bad for me and with the manic traffic and the need to stop suddenly, so I was happy to be nearer the ground.
As is always the case in this country, our first job was booking onward travel and as we only had a three-day window to get up Húang Shān Mountain (about 4 hours by bus from Hángzhòu), we needed to make sure we got bus tickets. The hostel staff have helped us book tickets thus far but we were on our own this time and man, was it difficult. I resorted to writing in Chinese as I got a better response than trying to speak Chinese! No matter how hard we try, we just can’t get the pronunciation right and it doesn’t help that different parts of China pronounce the same words differently. After about 40 minutes (I was in there so long that Euan brought the bikes to the door to see what had happened to me) I emerged from the post office, completely worn out, tickets in hand, pretty confident that the Chinese characters on the tickets matched our destination. Not quite as it turned out, but that’s another story!
Nearby was an alley selling some great looking food from tiny stalls. It was a cram and you ran a high risk of wearing someones squid on a stick, liver soup or whole chicken wrapped in leaves. If you managed to find a seat you were lucky but the food was great. The baby squid on a stick was particularly good. There were about four to each skewer and you got four skewers for about 70p. They were cooked on a hotplate with loads of seasoning (pepper, cumin, salt and an array of other things I couldn’t identify).
Even if you don’t eat, just being in these sorts of places is brilliant. I’ve not seen crabs devoured with so little wastage before or shrimps being eaten whole; eyes, heads, tails and all.
We biked round part of the City and all of West Lake and, because it was still the holiday period, there were loads of people. You can see how grey and hazy it is – we could barely see the hills on the other side of the lake.
We only saw a very small part of Hángzhòu and we’ve not many photos as it was just too grey and none of them were very good at all. Maybe its just the season we’re visiting in as we’ve seen some stunning photos of Hángzhòu and its by far the greenest, most pleasant city we’ve been to thus far.
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Thus far, we will remember China mostly for the throngs of people, their friendliness, kindness and their interest in us, the seemingly constant hazy grey sky and muted greens of the trees. Hángzhòu had a lot of the above and our short time there was very grey but we could see that, with all the water, trees, hills and temples, on a nice day it would be a stunningly beautiful place, particularly in the Autumn.
We were there for two nights and one full day and opted to get around on hired bikes. Hángzhòu conveniently has a great public bike system (presumably used in other cities around the world) where you pick up bikes from one of many bike stations around the city. Its fairly straightforward; you pay a deposit, get a bike and off you go. The bikes are really cheap (free for the first hour, then one yuan (about 8p) for the next two hours) and, as you can drop the bikes off at any station, it’s a great way of getting from A to B. The only thing was that the bikes were ridiculously small and Euan looked like he was on a little boys bike.
It wasn’t so bad for me and with the manic traffic and the need to stop suddenly, so I was happy to be nearer the ground.
As is always the case in this country, our first job was booking onward travel and as we only had a three-day window to get up Húang Shān Mountain (about 4 hours by bus from Hángzhòu), we needed to make sure we got bus tickets. The hostel staff have helped us book tickets thus far but we were on our own this time and man, was it difficult. I resorted to writing in Chinese as I got a better response than trying to speak Chinese! No matter how hard we try, we just can’t get the pronunciation right and it doesn’t help that different parts of China pronounce the same words differently. After about 40 minutes (I was in there so long that Euan brought the bikes to the door to see what had happened to me) I emerged from the post office, completely worn out, tickets in hand, pretty confident that the Chinese characters on the tickets matched our destination. Not quite as it turned out, but that’s another story!
Nearby was an alley selling some great looking food from tiny stalls. It was a cram and you ran a high risk of wearing someones squid on a stick, liver soup or whole chicken wrapped in leaves. If you managed to find a seat you were lucky but the food was great. The baby squid on a stick was particularly good. There were about four to each skewer and you got four skewers for about 70p. They were cooked on a hotplate with loads of seasoning (pepper, cumin, salt and an array of other things I couldn’t identify).
Even if you don’t eat, just being in these sorts of places is brilliant. I’ve not seen crabs devoured with so little wastage before or shrimps being eaten whole; eyes, heads, tails and all.
We biked round part of the City and all of West Lake and, because it was still the holiday period, there were loads of people. You can see how grey and hazy it is – we could barely see the hills on the other side of the lake.
We only saw a very small part of Hángzhòu and we’ve not many photos as it was just too grey and none of them were very good at all. Maybe its just the season we’re visiting in as we’ve seen some stunning photos of Hángzhòu and its by far the greenest, most pleasant city we’ve been to thus far.
View Larger Map
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