Oh my goodness, my poor aching everything. I went to Hangzhou this past weekend and it was a fantastic time. I am so glad that Luna, my student went with me. She is a sweet girl, and part of the reason I am so fond of her is because she chose her English name after Luna Lovegood, from the Harry Potter books. Nerds, represent!
On Saturday morning, I got up early... early for a Saturday, anyway. I set my alarm for 5:30, which is the time I normally get up for school. I had my coffee and got ready to the not-so-soothing sounds of CNN, and made sure to get to the train station early. I always get so nervous when I need to make connections while traveling. My stomach was all tied up in knots, as usual, but, again, as always, I needn't have worried because I made my train in good time.
I am really glad that I had the travel agent book the tickets for me, I went to the wrong building at first, to the ticket office, which is in a different building entirely from the main terminal where the trains come in. The lines were very long, people were ignoring the lines left and right, there was very little pinying (romanized letters) and even less English. I think that if I had tried to buy my own tickets, I would have been entirely lost. It was a 10 RMB (the English letters that stand for yuan, I don't know why) fee for t he travel agent, and it was money well spent in my opinion!
Once I fought my way through the lines of people crushing at the gates and popped out the other side of the turnstile, I found my seat and breathed a sigh of relief. I was on my way! The train from Shanghai to Hangzhou is about two hours, so I read a little, and marveled at the people who bought the standing tickets. I don't think you are allowed to do this on trains in America, I'm not sure-- Chinese trains sell a certain number of standing room tickets for each car, and people will stand or sit in the spaces between the cars where the doors are. However, those people are also always on the prowl for a real seat, and so you will frequently see new arrivals checking their ticket and then haranguing the seat-predator who got there before them.
On the train ride there, my student, Luna, found me--she was one of the people who had bought a standing room only ticket. We got off together in Hangzhou and waited online for a taxi, waving off the extremely persistent efforts of the gypsy drivers. If Jamaica taught me anything, it is to wait for the official taxi!
We got to our hotel and checked in. They did not ask me for my passport at the reception desk. Please take note of that, as it will come into play a bit later in the account.
Our room was nice, but we wanted to get out on the town, so we just dumped our stuff and headed back out again. We walked from our hotel down to the lake and... wow. West Lake is amazingly beautiful. There are mountains all around, and you can see the roofs of temples and pagodas jutting up from the trees all around the lake.
Luna found us a bike rental place and I gave them my driver's license and 300 RMB and they gave me a bike rental card that is good at the literally hundreds, maybe thousands of bike rental racks all around the city. Hangzhou is filled to the brim with bicycles. It costs 5 RMB to rent a bike for the first two hours and then it is 1 RMB for every additional hour. You swipe your bike card and the rack unlocks the bicycle. When you return it, you swipe it again, the bike locks in place and then you register your card at the rental station's kiosk (it looks like an ATM) and the correct amount is deducted from your card. Simple, efficient.
We rented a couple of bikes and rode our way up the east side of the lake, stopping at various tourist places along the way. We had lunch at a cafe by the lake that used to be a house belonging to a Professor who loved music. He donated it when he died, and now every table has its own sound system and headphones and the cafe has a library of over 6,000 CDs to choose from. We also visited the Hangzhou Museum, where they keep artifacts found in or from the area. They had everything from modern paintings, to antique pottery to ancient (like, caveman ancient) stone tools excavated from a local archaeological dig. Fascinating stuff. We rode all the way to the north edge of the lake, and then turned and rode down the Su Causeway, which is a road running through the middle of the lake, built by one of the first governors. And last, we visited the Jinxi Temple.
I loved visiting the Jinxi Temple! Luna is apparently a practicing and rather devout Buddhist. We stopped at each statue and she would kneel, fold her hands, then press her head and hands to the pad, then turn her hands so they were palm up. This was repeated three times for each statue, and she asked me not to take pictures inside the buildings because it was disrespectful to the gods. I was fascinated.
I also got a chance to ring the bell at the Temple, which grants me protection and good fortune. The grounds were tended by monks young and old and the whole place had an air of cheerful productivity. Some places were a little shabby and looked a bit worn, but then, it is a practicing temple and it was clear that the place was lovingly tended, but rather old and a little poor. The only place that looked vibrant and expensive where the statues. Jinxi Temple also has a miracle well, that produced timber once when the monks prayed for the gods to help them after part of the temple had been destroyed. It was wonderful.
After the temple, we rode farther around the lake, back toward our starting point, until Luna got a call from her father. We returned our bicycles (which you can do anywhere, not just where you got them from!) and took a taxi to a restaurant. We met her father, uncle and cousin and they insisted on treating me to dinner. I tried to protest, but Luna's uncle would have none of it. He said (Luna translated) that I was a guest in China, and tonight he was my host. This is one thing that I have noticed, most Chinese are very gracious and will do you favors and offer you assistance if you need it. I tried to accept just as graciously. I tried my best to thank him in Mandarin, and while I didn't get it quite right (Luna corrected my pronunciation), he laughed and accepted my thanks.
After dinner, Luna's dad asked if I had any plans for the night. When I said no, he decided to take the two of us to Wu Shan Square, which connects to the pedestrian-only shopping street. It was amazing! Out in the square, there were women dancing, very much like the do every night in front of the bank in Shanghai, but here there had to have been 500 people, all in lines, dancing together. I have never seen anything like it.
There was also a young man teaching little kids how to roller blade and orchestrating speed skating races. Children were running all around with light up toys, flinging them into the sky and chasing them to where they fell, mothers with babies chatting, men having a smoke and talking together in little clumps in the middle of the square.... it was a busy, happy scene.
The pedestrian street was even cooler. There are shops to either side selling everything from candy to Chinese medicine to the classic kitschy souvenirs you can find just about any place. But in the center of the street were stalls where artisans practiced their craft right before your eyes.
I can't think of any better word than enthralled for how I felt walking down that street. Every 30 feet was another thing to marvel at: here a man painting characters on a piece of ivory so tiny that you need a magnifying glass to read them; there a glass-blower creating a dragon bowl out of a lump of glass; here a portrait artist painting you as you sit; there a sculptor, sculpting your likeness from clay as you sit (!). There was a puppet show, and a man who made works of art from dripped caramel. There was a bean bag game, and a woman who sculpted little cell phone keychains out of clay on demand. There was a costume booth, where you could dress up as characters from legends about Hangzhou and take a picture with a fake horse, and a man who painted the insides of beads, allowing you to craft your own custom jewelry by stringing together the paintings of your choice.
There was so much to see, so much to take in that I felt a little overwhelmed. Frankly, I gawked at everything, but I think Luna and her father enjoyed my wonder. They had a fantastic time pointing out all the new sights and urged me to buy all the specialty food and candies to try.
They also bought a little painting as a gift for me and Tom. It is a picture of a married couple, and we are meant to hang it in our home on our wedding day to bring us good fortune in our marriage. It was a great night.
Exhausted, we took a taxi back to the hotel and went up to our room. Okay. Now, remember how I told you to take note of the fact that they did not ask me for my passport? Well, here's where that comes in.
In China, everyone has an ID card. You show it anytime you travel or check into a hotel, I'm guessing so that the government can keep tabs on its people. Well, in China, there are local hotels and then there are foreigner hotels. They like foreigners to stay at the unofficially designated foreigner hotel and it's kind of frowned upon to stay at the "local" hotels, mostly because the local hotels are less expensive. Earlier in the week, Luna's dad had found a much cheaper room than the one the travel agent booked for me. He reserved it, and when we checked in, Luna gave them her ID and the reservation desk let us go up.
That was bad. They were supposed to ask me for my ID as well, once again because they like to keep tabs on everyone.
Now, Luna had been in contact with her dad all day. He called every half hour or so to check in on us and make sure that Luna was showing me all the sites he had written down for her. The problem was that no one had told her mother. Apparently, Luna was supposed to call her mother. She assumed that her father had done so, since he kept checking in on us. Luna's father assumed that she had done so, because that was the original arrangement. Neither of them called her. It is important to note that Luna is thirteen, and so her mother was understandably worried when she had not heard from her.
This is where my understanding ends, though. You can only take grace so far. Here's why: At midnight, I was nearly asleep and Luna was in the bathroom when a knock sounds at the door. Groggily, I stumble to the door and open it to reveal two members of hotel staff, one member of hotel security and a police officer. The police officer starts speaking to me, and I can only stare blankly.
"I'm sorry, does anyone speak English?" I ask, confused.
The woman from the hotel says "Oh, English? Um..." she confers with the policeman for a moment and then says, "He say you need go with him."
I take a firmer position in my doorway. "I'm sorry, what is this about?"
At this point, poor Luna opens the bathroom door and all four adults launch a barrage of words at her. I feel really bad because I can't understand what's going on, she is wearing blue sheep-printed pajamas and looks confused and forlorn and this apparently has something to do with me.
"They say they need your American ID," she finally tells me. I go get my driver's license, which is not good enough, and then my passport. Thank god I carry that thing with me at all times.
After more conferring between the police officer, the woman from the hotel, and Luna, the woman from the hotel says to me, "You come, bring ID." Then she turns to Luna and tells her, "Call your mama."
I go downstairs, they copy my passport and my visa while the police man watches, and then he leaves and they hand me back my passport, apologize and let me go back up to bed.
APPARENTLY, when Luna's mother hadn't heard from her, she decided the best course of action would not be to call her, but rather to call the police and tell them that her daughter had checked into the hotel with her foreign teacher. The police called the hotel and discovered that while a girl had checked in, they had no record of me. The staff admitted to seeing me come in with her, though. This prompted the police to dispatch an officer to handle the situation.
Luckily I had my passport with me and the officer was content with simply having the hotel copy it and register me properly. But by all accounts, I came this close to getting arrested.
Yikes.
Luna apologized profusely, she was very embarrassed that her mother had almost gotten me in so much trouble. I told her not to worry about it, it would be a funny story later.
And now it is!
An account of my second day still to come.
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