Travel China: Living Hangzhou

Travel China: Living Hangzhou

What life is like in a city which inspired a famous Chinese saying “Born/marry in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou and die in Liuzhou?”

Chinese believed that the most beautiful men and women were born in Suzhou, the best cuisine and food culture concentrated in Guangzhou, the best wood to make coffins which preserved your bodies long after you die grew in Liuzhou and Hangzhou, well-endowed with great natural beauty, offered great living condition.

I completely agreed. The second day I arrived, I desperately wanted to extend my visa for a couple more weeks. Hangzhou won the title of Capital of Leisure and Delicacy in China in 2011. This city on the Yangtze river delta, was the most pleasant city I had every stayed in China. For the first time in 20 days, I didn’t hear non-stop buzzing noises around my ears although this lasted during the weekdays until throngs of Chinese tourists flooded the city on the weekend. I had some quiet moment for myself and not got distracted by the noisy crowd. One the second day, I moved the funky, spacious 4 Eyes Village hostel located in Siyanjing, Donkey Village, west of the lake, I couldn’t bear the thought I would have to leave in three days.

The Donkey village snuggled between the famous silky West Lake and the green hilly region, the home of Longqing tea, China’s best green tea.

For the first time in my last three months of traveling, I developed a daily routine which made me feel more like a local than a tourist. In the morning, I had coffee or tea in the huge lovely front yard while writing my journal. Then I walked down to a small eatery run by an old, pleasant woman whose husband ran a convenient shop next door. She served only breakfast and cooked the same thing every day. Every morning I ordered one bowl of plain rice congee, one bowl of wonton soup and one Chinese long salty doughnut. The woman cooked lunch and dinner for just her husband and friends, but I showed up and pointed, and she nodded and prepared me a bowl of noodle soup. I returned to the guesthouse to update my journal for another hour and then took a public bike to do some sightseeing.
Hangzhou provided free public bike service with installed bike stations all around the lakes and the city center. Everyone can register for a swipe card after paying 300 CNY deposit. If you return the bike to the slot within one hour, it’s completely free. Then you take another one and so on.

After traveling for a few years, I noticed my increasing affinity for a place if I could ride a bike or a mini vehicle which let me explore at my own pace and allow me to go further, faster and see more than just by walking.

Hangzhou’s famous West Lake inspired many Chinese landscape paintings. It was the model for the artificial lake built for the royal Qing family at the Summer Palace in Beijing. West Lake itself somehow escaped the ever non-stop chaos which besieged every place in China. Despite the busy weekend and the presence of hundreds of people, the lake was still calm and quiet. Wooden boats slowly traversed up down and around the lake carrying people along scenic landmarks having names like verses from a poem or a title of a landscape painting. A bike ride along the lake took me past Leifeng Pagoda in Evening Glow, Orioles Singing in the Windows, Lingering Snow on the Broken Bridge, Precious Stone Hill Floating in the Rosy Cloud, Yuemu Evening Glow, Breeze-ruffled Lotus at Quyuan Garden, Hangzhou Flower Nursery, Yang Causeway Admirableness, Spring Dawn at Su Causeway, Three Pools Mirroring the Moon, Viewing Fish and Flower Pond, Evening Bell Ringing at Nanping Hill.

If you don’t like to walk or ride a bike, you can stop at the Pleasure Boat Quay and have a pleasure boat tour around the lake, therefore which by now you should have an idea about the pleasure Hangzhou.

I’m not even finished yet. The above only described the sights along the lake, separated from another world not far to the west dominated by green fields and mountains. Chinese poets must have walked the long curving roads and gave each sight they saw with visual names like Dragon Yellow Cave Dressed in Green, Twin Peak Piercing the Clouds, Peaks Flying from Afar, Nine Creeks Meandering through a Misty Forest, Dreaming of Tiger Spring, Clouds Scurrying over Jade Emperor Hill.

Hangzhou Silk and Tea

Nature isn’t the only specialty of Hangzhou. This former capital of China claimed to produce the best silk in the world. Walking among silk shops and looking at the silk, I thought I was looking at paintings.

Hangzhou produces the best green tea in China, and China has the best green tea in the world, therefore, as the best green tea in the world. The locals told me the tea village was ugly now because the tea had died and I should see it in the spring. But even during off season, the brown soils, the green patches of tea plants was still something beyond my expectation as I had never seen a tea plantation before. There weren’t many workers on the field; I saw only from afar women in big hat picking leaves and men watering the soil. If this was intoxicating in the offseason, it must be spectacular in the spring.

Food in Hangzhou

The food was the one thing I had always been fixated on everywhere in China. Here in Hangzhou, I didn’t mind being cut off from the food supply as I lived far from food streets. Even so, I could still enjoy excellent food when I rode my bike to the city center in the evening. I sampled various snacks, rice cooked in pineapples and bamboo trunks, beggar chickens, fried seafood. When my stomach was full, I paced back and forth along the food street beholding duck heads, pork fat, internal animal organs swimming in big soup pots and many local delicacies of Southern cuisine.

It’s unbearable to leave Hangzhou.

Hangzhou photos

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