Hello from Hangzhou!
I've learned some more words! Ren min - people, la - spicy, ba - eight, feng - peak, mei you - there isn't any, lin - forrest, zhan - station (train station), hao le - it's good/it's enough (particularly useful at dinner)
The typhoon kept us in for most of Saturday and we just had a lazy day. I played some card games and worked on a couple puzzles and Jeanette read. It was nice to relax a bit after going pretty hard for a week and a half. Luckily the weather was nice again on Sunday because it was our real day in Shanghai.
We got up and met with Jeanette's oldest aunt. We call her Da jiu ma . Da means big, jiu is uncle and ma means the uncle is on your mother's side (there is a different name for uncles on your father's side). We drove out to the countryside because one of Da jiu ma's favorite museums is out there. Turns out, it was closed to the public for renovations so we weren't able to go in. Instead, Jeanette and I decided to go back to Renming (people's square) to the Shanghai museum because the line was wrapped around the block last time we tried to go. This time, the line was pretty reasonable and we were right behind a few gents from Australlia. One of them has traveled around Asia quite a bit and gave us some good tips for our trip to Hong Kong (we leave tomorrow!!). We saw some really cool exhibits on jade, the evolution of calligraphy, ancient seals used as personal signatures (kind of like a stamp), furniture (some was built as long ago as 600 BCE!!), and minority groups in China and their art, clothes, customs, etc.
After the museum, we went to grab a snack before dinner. We went to a mall called Raffle City and they have all sorts of snacks, desserts, and other delicious things (in addition to regular shopping stores). We got a delicious lamb skewer to share then we went to the bread store. There we got this savory bun topped with dried pork called pork floss and it really did look like floss make out of pork! It was quite tasty. We finished our snack with a green tea bubble tea and made our way back to Xiao Jiu Jiu's house (uncle's house).
It being our last night in Shanghai, we had a huge family dinner with 8 aunts and uncles, 5 cousins, and 2 second cousins. As usual, the food was delicious but we did have a few new things! We tried pork intestines (not my favorite, but palatable) and a durian pastry. Durian is a stinky fruit that can be so bad it is banned in almost all train stations, airports and other major travel hubs. If you couldn't smell it, it might not be that bad, but I gagged at the smell and couldn't eat it. I also finally tried baijiu (the white rice alcohol I was telling you about from our first night in Shanghai). Jeanette, Xiau Jiu Jiu and I had a toast! It actually wasn't too bad - it tasted kind of like a VERY cheap whiskey - but Xiau Jiu Jiu was happy we shared a drink with him.
It was our last night so we had to say thank you and goodbye to everyone. Jeanette and I each grabbed our glass of tea and went around to each aunt, uncle, and cousin to show our appreciation. For every person, we tapped the glass on the table, tapped our glasses together and said "gambei!" (bottoms up!). Her family was so kind and many of them learned an English word or phrase just for this occasion! Some of the things I heard were welcome to my home, thanks for coming, come again, and our home is your home. I even got a tin of tea from one of Jeanette's uncles! After dinner, we headed back to the apartment and packed up because we had to be up bright and early for the train to Hangzhou (pronounced hong zoh) in the morning!
We got out of the house on time but we couldn't catch a cab during rush hour in Shanghai (a city of 23 million people) and we didn't really think about that so we had to catch a bus to the train station. We got there in time but we had bought our tickets online and needed to pick them up from the ticket office and the line was SOOO long! I stood in line and Jeanette walked toward the front and told someone our train was coming really soon and they were nice enough to let us in front of them. We got our tickets for an 8:10am train at 8:02 and ran to our gate! We cut the security line in a similar way and booked it to the departures floor. As we got to the gate, we saw the doors of the train close and we weren't on it. We missed it by a minute or less!! Luckily, it doesn't cost any money to exchange the ticket so we made our way back to the ticket office and exchanged our tickets for the 9:05am train - the only downside was that the tickets were standing room only. It could have certainly been worse though! Our ride was only 47 minutes long.
We got to Hangzhou around 10 and took the cab to our hotel. We dropped our stuff off then went out to grab some lunch. We found a Japanese place and had a mix of different foods. We had octopus, seaweed salad, and squid for an appetizer - I was surprised that I liked the ocotpus much more than the squid! We shared an eel sushi roll and and we all had ramen for our meal (REAL ramen) and it was really good!
From there, we went over to West Lake, which is a major Chinese tourist spot and used to be a summer residence for emperors. We walked around a bit and across one of the bridges but it was almost unbearably hot so we retreated to the shade. We decided it would be cooler up in the mountains so we took the bus up to Yinling Temple. Turns out, it was more than just a temple! It was the whole area, almost like a park. We started our excursion with the statues at Feilai Feng (pronounced fay lie). The different buddha statues were carved into the side of the mountain and on the cave walls. There were over 900 different carvings and some of them were over 1000 years old! We walked through a series of caves and saw these incredible carvings. Some of them were beheaded during the cultural revolution (remember, things with religious meaning or western influence were destroyed during this time) but they were all incredible.
After that, we made our way to Yinling temple. On the way, we crossed a creek and I was able to soak my hot feat in the ice cold mountain run off! Yinling temple was a massive collection of buildings, prayer halls, and pagodas. In each hall we went into, there was a large alter area, usually with a large statue of a buddha, and various statues and/or carvings around the outer walls. After walked around for a while, we were all really tired so we headed back to the bus stop. Good thing we did because when we were about 20 yards from the bus stop it started to sprinkle and about 30 seconds later it was down pouring! We made it to the shelter of the bus stop and took it back into the city.
We got back to hotel around 7 with the intention of cleaning up and heading out to dinner but instead all flopped onto our beds. We found the movie Gattaca on TV and watched the last hour of that before heading out to dinner around 8. We went to a place that's translated to Grandma's House or Grandma's Kitchen and the food was AMAZING!
On the way home in the cab, Ronnie and Jeanette began thinking about my Chinese name. It isn't just about finding the correct sounds, but also finding a meaning that fits. In Chinese, your family name comes first followed by your individual name. My Chinese name is Hua Mei Geng (pronounced whah may gen). Hua means magnificent or prospering. Mei refers the flowers of the winter plum so it means beautiful and elegant but also strong and hardy. Geng means honest and just. Ronnie thought long and hard about my name but was really happy with how it turned out and she said it was a strong name :)
Yesterday, we slept in late and Jeanette and I went out for breakfast and got some steamed buns (dumplings), boiled eggs, and fruit. For the 3 of us, breakfast cost a total of about $3 USD and it was TASTY! We also realized on Monday that we had lost our train tickets for the trip from Hangzhou to Shenzhen (near Hong Kong). We had to go to the train station and get a replacement ticket (and pay for it), which wasn't too bad because you have to give all your ID information when you buy the tickets so all we had to do was give them our passports and they could look it up. Then we were told we had to find the captain of the train and have him verify that we were in fact the people on the manifest. Finally, when we get to Shenzhen we have to go to another ticket office, give them our replacement ticket, and the receipt from the captain, and our IDs and we can get the refund for the second ticket we bought.
After that, we went back down to West Lake and took the boat across the lake to one of the islands. We walked around a bit, saw some of the old emperor's rooms then decided to take another boat to Feifeng Pagoda. The lake is surrounded by at least a couple dozen pagodas and temples but Feifeng was definitely one of the tallest ones. We walked in where they had some of the original foundations of the pagoda that were hundreds of years old. The rest of the pagoda was beautifully restored and we walked all the way up to the top (9 flights up). From the top, we got a beautiful view of West Lake and the city of Hangzhou.
Then we grabbed a cab back to the hotel and headed off to dinner. We had such a good meal the night before, we decided to go back to Grandma's House again! We had completely different dishes and they were just as delicious - we had eel, lotus flower, duck, eggplant, noodles, and watermelon juice. Then we got green tea ice cream for dessert. We went back to the hotel and packed up for our early departure the next morning.
This morning we were up and out of the hotel at 7:15am and on our way to Hong Kong via Shenzhen. The train ride was pretty uneventful but it was cool to see the scenery change so much. It was very clear by looking at the vegetation that we are officially in a tropical climate! We got in to Shenzhou around 7:20pm. Shenzhou is a city in mainland China and we took the metro to Hong Kong. We went through Chinese immigration, cleared Hong Kong Customs, hopped on the metro again, transferred 3 times and finally made it to our hostel, yesinn, around 10:30pm.
We checked in, put our stuff in our room then went out to grab our first real meal of the day. It's late so we went to the first restaurant we saw that was open and it was a Korean BBQ place. We had beef hotpot and blue lemonade and it was delicious. We went back to the hotel, showered up and now I'm writing you this email!
I've decided that instead of sending emails, I'm going to make a travel blog. Once it is up and running, I will send you all the link! Internet is much more reliable now that we are out of China which makes things much easier.
Goodnight from Hong Kong!
M
