Hangzhou Wednesday

Wednesday was a mixed bag - the sun was shining in Shanghai, but not it turned out in Huangzhou. I took the high speed train, not from the rail station my hotel is near, but another one nearly an hour out on the subway and Hangqiou - (Hang-Chow)

getting the ticket in Shanghai wasn't too bad at the rail station, finding the right seat was. I was talking to jeff on the cell when we left - the train hit 184KMH on the screen and the cell tower could keep up with that, but at 312KMH it cut him off. That may be useful for you :) Pretty smooth train ride overall - packed and crazy rail station, much more like an airport, but getting around here with it's electronic barriers and waiting at gates for boarding is not so 'English Only' friendly - but a world better than at the other end!

The lowered the speeds of the high speed trains here as there has been a few crashes lately. They were over 400KMH. Now over 300KMH.

Hangzhou is paired with Suzhou, which I may get to on Friday - the big thing with these two is that the Chinese believe they are both underneath heaven.

Hunagzhou probably would be  lot prettier if the sky had been blue. But it wasn't which gave a palour to the place… I had been accosted on arrival by people selling a trip around the famed lake, West Lake, and the surroundings, and since it was only 120 Yuan (less than 20 dollars) I said yes. After I departed the rail station though, in a beaten up van, I find out no one speaks any English. Till nearly 5pm I was in the world of the Chinese tourist, they were all from elsewhere, I did see one tour group of whities and I did hanker to join them, but knowing my luck they would all speak Russian. The trip was OK, drifting along with the small group, which after the 1st van ride was in a much nicer Mercedes Benz van, and a walk around and then boat ride. The exit via the gift shop thing was on though, we stopped at a silk place (expensive) and a tea place - they grow tea here - no one bought anything at all. They didn't speak ANY English, no signs in English, I bought a bag of chestnuts to eat from a woman on the street. It's getting dark here by 430pm - so I drifters back to the rail station - Huangzhou is not a small city, but it's a middle tier Chinese city, so not much is made easy for the tourist, and the new, big city is all concrete and steel - and LED lights… :(

The over saturated pictures make it look so blue... and the visitors look entranced..

In the dead of winter here and the maples are a nice red.

There are quite a few Chinese tourists here, but it is low season for this town.

The red carp pond:

There were 12 more pics to upload here but Blogger is being a pain in the butt...not sure why now.
Most of what you missed was the tea plantation.

I stayed till dark  in town and got the train back - there's less English at this rail station so it was fraught for a little while :)

Anyway, there's a little bit of heaven - I always knew I was closer to it than all of you... :)