Two Days in Hangzhou

West Lake at Hangzhou

Despite our taxi driver's confusion as to how to access the tour bus lot, we got on the bus for Hangzhou at 7:30am, crammed among happy chattering Chinese. We passed misty canals and orchards. "Ecological Harmony, Happy Homeland" a sign read. Rice fields flourished alongside dilapidated concrete developments. We passed close by another bus of lounging and sleeping Chinese. Jacques pointed out a sign for Hardened Verge (which in French means the male organ). It was a swampy, agricultural area, with bridge construction going on. Above the fields of bright light green, 10 meters up, were elevated trains, power lines and tall buildings in the mist.

lunch on the road

We rolled along in sleepy chatter for several hours till a tiny bright-faced gay guide bounded onto the bus and began a barrage of Chinese chatter till we arrived at West Lake. Next to us a couple from Liverpool (whose English was nonetheless poor, though she was second generation, and had the look of a European) interpreted the gist of our instructions.

The parking lot was packed with buses where we climbed the stairs for lunch. In this case my note from Dr. Li got us seated at a table of Germans from Hanover, a mother and her fashion model daughter (with a narrow body with a frighteningly large head, who had just finished Fashion Week in Paris), and a large German guy with his new Shanghai bride, who looked overwhelmed. The model waited for no one, but dug into the food with her horsey face (she'd probably been starving herself for a month, or was bulimic.) I had a bit of tender white fish along with tasty fresh cooked cucumber, pumpkin and greens. Next to us a huge young man from Taiwan had an occasional word in English but did not want to discuss the difficulties of getting a visa to China. Then we tumbled back onto the bus and were deposited in the deeply verdant woods and walkways by the West Lake.

The tea plantation

We boarded a "pleasure boat" out onto boundless smooth water in a mist, the humps of hills and pagodas smudged away. It was a classical Chinese setting, and very beloved of the people of China. The barrage of information continued, thick and impenetrably Chinese, while in the rear another Chinese guide spoke Russian for his charges. The beautiful scene is featured on Chinese currency, the one yuan note. Finally, having understood nothing but having loved the still lake's abstraction from daily life (where a few days earlier a Chinese woman had jumped in and been rescued by an anonymous American woman, which sparked a national internet debate), we walked among trees to a pen of peacocks. (Jacques pointed out, this could be Lake Geneva for all we know.) A bright male peacock came up to the fence to inspect me. A little girl from our group kept coming up to me, but shyly retreated and claimed she could speak no English.

Chang turned out to be a lucky draw for a guide. Frisky and communicative (but, "sorry, no English!") he loved tending to us, his flock, scolding shrilly like a palace eunuch, twitching his little rear end back and forth as he paraded us with his tattered red flag, joking, even carefully plastering Jacques' badge on his chest for him. These tours are heavily salted with visits to "museums", or "factories," really government-run shops where a hard sell ensues and obviously the guide gets a take. But Chang did not press us to buy. We did, nonetheless, get our share of "museums."

We were driven to a "very important" silk factory with even less pretense to pedagogy than the one outside Beijing. We were not even allowed to see the exhibit rooms, but were rushed straight to the the sales pitch. A few Chinese bought silk comforters while we desperately searched for the exit, which brought us through numerous shopping opportunities for sweet and knick knacks. It felt to us like adding insult to injury, to be waylaid by these fixed prices.

The Rock-carved Buddhas

The tea factory was an even quicker sell. We had tea in a glass (they called it a tea ceremony) and even before we finished the money came out. But the fields of tea and mulberry bushes outside were exquisite, stretching on and on as we drove endlessly to the Lingyan Temple.

Preceded by a tiresomely commercial shop and such thick Chinese chatter that Jacques and I missed buying the required tickets, we came, finally, to a remote, lush monastic retreat, reaching it alongside a rock outcropping on which were carved truly beautiful "Sanskrit-style" Buddhas from the Yuan and Song dynasties--from about 951.

Breathless with relief, we missed the goodies of a Chinese bible and hans, but were finally given free rein to climb up the ascending temples, which had been the site of a temple founded by the monk Huili in 326.  Chang indicated we were free to explore on our own by swirling his head around in a wanton fashion. He had been painstakingly instructing the others on how to light the incense, etc., but we were so enthralled by the carved rock Buddhas that we missed all the orthodoxy.

We were doubly furious about the time wasted at the "museums" as we took in the gorgeous site. Below, along running water, were 470 rock-carved Buddhas in niches and caves. Up the hill rose one temple after another, including the largest sitting Buddha in China (created in 1956 of camphor wood), at whose back was carved a Guanyin and an enormous mountain of novices becoming Buddha. 

The setting was the most beautiful we'd seen in China. Then young monks, evidently novices, paraded down the long stone stairways from the top, chanting. (On the way back up, they shouted to us "hello", skipping steps with their robes wadded in their hands.) 

We took a final look at the carved statues where an impish monk in gray pointed the way to a tunnel of exquisite carvings. But it was growing dark.

Then we were taken--miracle of miracles--to a sweet, clean, simple hotel sequestered on a vocational college campus. Before it was a classic rock garden built among serene landscaping of green and rock filtered from view by peonies, palms and trees.

It was now or never for dinner, so we left the oasis of the hotel for the uncertain dark rainy street, along a series of grand facades on our left that seemed to be university buildings and found a tile and cement open arch with a sad-faced woman who dished magnificent vegetables and tofu, cafeteria style in a poor man's setting, onto a steel plate. She was so amazed at all I took she stared and stared at me as I ate. (We shared, after all, Jacques and I.) It was where street workers go, dirty from their day, and we ate at the front, and it was delicious - for $2.70.

A night of clean, though spar,e comforts and then I went out to do my morning tai chi in the rock garden, where the Chinese congregated to chatter and I shared tai chi space with a slight man in black. Meanwhile Jacques learned, via TV images whose English words were overdubbed in Chinese, that Qadaffi was dead. Then we boarded our bus.

Chang was eager and impatient and cracked a few jokes, perhaps at our expense. We drove through mysterious highways, up through the leafy reaches where mulberries and tea bushes grew, where the ravishing monastery was, and then down by waters through thriving towns and shanty townd, vast construction sites and barrios that seemed to serve the inexorable machine of construction, on sad dusty roads by choked waters across from which mansions were being built, past a huge Buddha, large as a building, behind a very old wall, but we'll never know what that was. And finally in the remote sad edges of these lowlands we entered the gate to a "nature-viewing leisure park" that was still under construction.

View from the Pagoda

We were led via blaring megaphones (we were only about 10 people by then) down a cave to see the geologic processes of water and rock, which to the Chinese seemed quite remarkable although such caves are all over France. Up and down slippery steps among chimeric formations lit by colored neon lights we carefully inched, not understanding a single word. We came to the most gigantic chamber - you could also see the dynamite lines - lit in operatic colors, and descended to a temple to what looked like the God of Wealth, gargantuan as ever, where we were given a stick of incense, told to bow (this time Jacques refused) and asked for money (we declined).

Woodcarving: the White Snake Goddess

Still in the flaring neon purples we were taken to a boat where the underground staff were all eating, and ferried a short distance, then shown some salamander-like creatures. The 2 foot long one lifted its head, sensing something, and I grew very depressed for it, trapped under birght lights in a tank. But Jacques said it had no eyes. The megahone was amplified to unbearable decibels by the low ceiling. Then they took everyone's picture against hte bright rock light show. Eventually we were put on a small train back to light and air. I swung on a swing briefly which cheered me up.

At a dusty roadside place, staff and locals chatting and rushing around chaotically, we had the usual tasty food, fresh and abundant. (These meals cost each of us about $2-3.)

Then off again to the Pagoda of the Six Harmonies we had seen by the lake, lavishly restored by the army. Originally built in 977, it became the site of the White Snake legend in the 12th or 13th, when the tale grew to become an opera. It is told magnificently in wood carved friezes in the pagoda. A female deity descends to earth and marries a scholar, then became trapped in the pagoda till it finally crumbles during the Ming dynasty. But the actual tale is epic and many-layered. Other friezes on other levels told the story of the Buddha or portrayed the views from the pagoda, which are superb: the misty lake and its many pockets, a Buddhist temple climbing the next mountain, and on the other side urban industry and smog. We departed via Sakyamuni's relics, other pavillions restored of old, the pond of Freeing Living Things filled with turtles, and the Statue of Going Home.

Opera scene

Then on to the Garden of the Yellow Dragon Clothed in Green, a conglomerate of good luck gardens, with the Matchmaker God, a cute god of wealth dancing before a toad, one photo opportunity after another for the myriad Chinese who were steadily arriving busload by busload. And busloads still kept coming. There was a segment of Beijing opera which was too shrill to tolerate, a pavillion of couples dancing, another of card playing - still, in the darkening evening the busloads kept coming.

The Matchmaker God

I walked through the Matchmaker God's temples, enjoying the pretty and comical murals of girls in gardens and of men with wealth and the god's wisdom (the Matchmaker God is a wise old man peering into a book), though I had seen Jacques take a different direction. But as I exited I sensed someone behind me and turned - it was Jacques. "I'm sorry that it's only me you see at the Matchmaker's temple!" he said.

The long ride home took us to a different side of the Indoor Stadium where stood - gift of fortune! - a gigantic brilliantly lit supermarket, a huge emporium that had automated barcoded lockers for your bags and a sparkling (squat) toilet. The girls at the checkout counter were dressed like Air France Flight attendants with elegant silk scarves. And we found olive oil! And lemons! What a coup! We will survive!