Hangzhou was the first Chinese city that either of us had visited and our impressions and memories of the city are especially piquant. In some respects it is not easy to distinguish our impressions of Hangzhou in particular from our impressions of China in general. The distinctive charm of the city only began to become apparent to us once we had visited other areas of the country.

Prior to coming to Hangzhou, neither of us knew very much about the city. Mark had seen some pictures of Xi Hu from a friend’s visit to the city and had been struck by its beauty. As our reasons for visiting Hangzhou were not primarily those of tourists, we were more than pleasantly surprised by the remarkable loveliness of the city. Half expecting the dull drabness of a modern city, we had not anticipated the colourful gardens, parks and hillsides. Nor had we expected the wealth of historical interest that we discovered in the older buildings and streets and in the fine Zhejiang Provincial Museum.

Our favourite part of Hangzhou was probably Xi Hu and its surroundings. We spent a number of days exploring the lake and some of the sites around it. During our stay, we took a boat trip on the lake and visited some of the lake’s islands. It was wonderful to see so much beauty in the centre of a modern city. On the same day as we took the boat trip, we went to the top of Leifeng Pagoda, from which we were able to look out over the lake. Later on in our stay we also had the opportunity to visit Cheng Huang, from which we enjoyed a marvellous panorama of the whole of the city and the surrounding hills. We were quite surprised to discover that both of those buildings had only been rebuilt in recent years. One usually expects such buildings to come from an age other than our own. The buildings did not merely possess an imposing exterior; the artworks that they contained were equally worth the visit.

Much of our time was spent in various parks and gardens within the city. We especially enjoyed Liu Lang Wen Ying and the Hangzhou Flower Nursery, which both had outstanding displays of natural beauty. After visiting the Flower Nursery we went on to Guo’s Villa, which was wonderfully serene and peaceful. The villa and its gardens were quite unlike anything we had ever seen in Europe or America.

So much of what we witnessed in Hangzhou was totally new or foreign to us. Perhaps one of the strangest things for us coming to China was adjusting to the life of the Chinese streets. The rules of the road that we were accustomed to in Britain no longer seemed to apply. The car horn, which is seldom used in Britain, seemed to be used quite regularly. Crossing the road was also always an experience; one was never quite sure if the cars would stop for you! We were further surprised to see how lively the streets were. In Britain most shops close at about 5:30pm, so it was interesting to see so many people on the streets in the evening in the streets around our hotel. Exploring the various streets was a lot of fun.

The housing in the city was one of the first things that struck us. It was quite different from the housing in most British cities. In Britain most people live in separate houses, rather than in flats (with the recent trend being towards detached and semi-detached rather than terraced housing). In places within the city we were also able to see a degree of poverty that we had never seen before, something that was all the more stark when it was seen in the light of the many signs of economic progress and new wealth in the city. We began to become more aware of the affluence of our own society.

Qinghefang Old Street was one of the first places that we visited in Hangzhou and we also revisited it on our last full day in the city. The liveliness and colour of the street made it one of the highlights of our time in Hangzhou. The various stores offered a wealth of diversions and exotic wares; it was especially fascinating to watch some of the craftsmen at work. Qinghefang Old Street was the first place where we had to get used to bartering. In Britain one rarely barters for goods as one seldom finds items without a set price. Bartering made the acts of buying and selling into a sort of game, a game which we grew to enjoy, although I get the feeling that we generally ended up as the losing party!

On our first trip to Qinghefang Old Street we sampled some of the various foods on offer in the snack street. The English descriptions of the foods on offer in the various stalls were extremely helpful as we would have been utterly incapable of identifying many of the foods without them. We tasted rabbit’s head and frogs’ legs for the first time and enjoyed a few more familiar dishes.

During our stay in Hangzhou we had the opportunity to try many different types of Chinese food and also to sample some local delicacies, such as vinegar fish and Song soup. The chance to experience so many new foods was one of the most exciting things about our trip. In virtually all the countries that we had visited before coming to China, the food that we tasted was quite familiar to us, so the rich variety of new tastes in China added an exciting new dimension to our holiday. Seeing so many familiar international brands and fast food restaurants was also a strange experience. The fact that KFC and McDonald’s food tastes the same the world over seemed strange to us when we considered that almost all of the other food that we were tasting was so new to us. The predictability of fast food had never seemed so boring!

Despite the many interesting sights that we saw, the thing that we will most remember Hangzhou for is the warmth of the welcome that we received from the many people that we met. The hospitality that we received and the many friends that we made served to make the time that we spent at Hangzhou particularly memorable.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. It was posted by Al, who has posted 7 time(s). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.