What an enormous change a warm day can make. Sunday is a family day, and our little campus doubles as a public park. Families with young children, and couples with older parents, walk about, set up little tents, have picnics, stoop by the edges of the water and fish for tadpoles with small nets, fly kites, and take endless pictures of themselves and each other. We’ve seen several wedding parties taking their official photographs here amidst the pruned trees, and on the sloping walkways.
We, too, felt the need for quiet connections. There had been a proposal to fly us out next weekend to a large city in the middle of the country for the opening of an art center. At first it sounded exciting, an opportunity to see another part of China and spend time seeing art with our host. But as we thought about it more, having driven around Hangzhou a little more, and been to the Hotel gallery, we decided to pass it up. Our time here is short, and plopping down in another huge city (the largest in its region) for more socializing in a foreign language about art that is hovering on this strange line between authentic and mimicry, seemed overwhelming. Once we decided that we were not going, we began to get excited about the idea of taking a train on our own to the nearby city of Suzhou, where there are ancient famous gardens and a beautiful temple. We figure we’ve traveled through many countries in Europe without speaking the language, and with the kindness of the Chinese people, we ought to manage one night and two train trips! Of course we have yet to take the local bus here, and the toughest part of this whole idea might be getting to the train station right here in Hangzhou! So perhaps that will be our next Saturday.
The weather drew us out. It seemed like a good idea to try to show Rob the old market and try to retrace my steps around the market area, as well as up the stone steps and over the hill behind campus. Rob needed a breather from pulling slides for his lecture, and thinking about his students. He has been drawing every morning, working on ideas and sketches.
Courageously, we approached two different yarn shops in the market, but neither had a better match to my sock yarn. We also managed to find wonderful steamed vegetable buns from a small shop on a busy street. The most remarkable thing of the day was probably our lunch. We returned to a little restaurant where we had dinner a few nights ago, and the owner, who recognizes us, gives us 11 Yuan with an explanation that she had charged us for the wrong check the night we had come! Imagine that! She actually gave us money back! We enjoyed the meal even more for that feeling of honesty and friendship, but the food was also fine. The cauliflower here is a loose head style that is often served sautéed with onions over a hot fire in a brazier at the table.
We went in to the huge fresh market (Century Market) where meats, fruits, vegetables, oils, and condiments, dried spices and other things are sold. Wishing we had a kitchen, I approached a shop where a woman was obviously doing something with tofu. I mimed about eating the compressed slices in the tray and she shook her head, getting out a small package and selling that to me for 2.5 Yuan. Turned out to be delicious compressed tofu with a light flavor and great chew factor. We will definitely get more of that. It was a good addition to our dinner-in-the-room, which we started by making a lovely vegetable bouillion (a risky purchase at the grocery store) and ended with sweet crisp sliced apple. After so much oil yesterday and having had our oiled noodles this morning and all sautéed lunch, it is a pleasure to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
There are moments when we are using our phone dictionary and struggling to make sense of something and a person will appear next to me offering to help. This can take the form of actually taking my phone out of my hand and switching to Chinese in order to type in (or do this amazing writing with their finger on the writing pad) which happened at the hotel desk, to speaking the words I am seeking in Chinese because they understand the English, or as happened at the grocery store yesterday, the young man literally read the labels and found the non-iodized salt crystals that Rob will need when he runs out of his saline solution for his nasal rinse. Rob managed to find the baking soda himself, but the clerk saw us attempting to scan the labels with our phone and knew we needed help. It is true that the people here are, in general, friendly and really helpful.
