china was rather different from what i expected. actually in the first few days it was more or less the extreme opposite of everything i expected. for a start nobody tried to rip me of, and everybody was smiling and helpful. and going from pudong to song jian i expected congested streets, jam packed with 1.3 billion people, yet there was less traffic on the nightly motorways that in singapore, and the next morning, walking along the streets of song jiang i saw 2 bicycles, 3 electro-motorbikes and 1 pedestrian on my 20 min walk to one of the 5 song jian universities. hmmm i wonder what happened there? my question was an obvious one, where did all the students go? i saw nothing but empty streets and monumental architecture of the dull communistic style. and all this one week before golden week, strange indeed.

coming to china i was on a mission, the mission to visit as many friends as possible, and furthermore to spend golden week with christiane. thus i visited her first in song jiang, did a day trip to shanghai to catch up with tandy, who evolved into a real streetwise shanghainese kid, despite the fact that she is a singapore educated indonesian chinese ;)

the following day then saw me turn my back on ever so thriving and heaving – not – song jiang when i decided that it is time to exchange student emptiness for holiday tranquillity in hangzhou, where i was to visit my good friend jian ping. and this is where i found them, all the 1.3 billion chinese, they were all there with me in the one train from song jiang to hangzhou, or at least so it seemed considering my temporary experience as a sardine in a industrial sized tin :|

well once unsquashed in hangzhou i was super happy to see jian ping, who in terns took me to the other end of town, past the west lake and into the quiet area where he and his friends live. the best thing about all this was that i was able to stay with one of his artist friends, xiao ling, who rents a huge house and who let me, and a couple of days later also christiane stay in one of his guest rooms. so the first two days, the days before the official begin of the golden week, when all of china goes on holiday, jian ping and i wandered along the banks of the idyllic west lake, explored the temples in its urban hills, visited museums, chilled in tea houses, and ate smelly tofu.

and then christiane arrived, and with her all the 1.3 billion chinese, or so it seemed. all of a sudden the walkways on west lake looked like ant streets, and gone was the tranquillity, or so one would think, but strangely enough it did not. hangzhou was obviously not for nothing voted the happiest city in china, it is simply charming, and that with 4 million residents, and maybe just as many tourists. there are only some who do not find it tranquil, and that are the ducks, they do not find hangzhou at all, on accounts of being dead, because the chinese ate all the ducks. believe it or not, there is a huge lake, with lotus, willows, marshland, and all, and not one single duck! they ate them, honestly, they went and ate them, i am telling you! ;)

but despite the utter lack of ducks hangzhou was great, so great that christiane and i decided not to leave it at all, apart for our rather eventful daytrip to the ancient canal town wu zhen. wu zhen is tiny, picturesque, and was jam packed with chinese tourists. basically all the buses stopped there and spilled their load into the little chinese venice. the situation spurred christiane and i into a competition, of who would be able to take photos of wu zhen without a single tourist on it… i won, thus you get the impression of a rather sleepy village versus a tourist haven ;)

another day we ventured to the lingyin temple, a complex comprising the temple itself as well as the hundreds of buddha carvings in the grottos and rock outcrops of the peak flying-from-afar – interesting name i found. the grottos’ human density index was roughly as high as the one in the train, and yet it was an amazing experience, one of the sights of hangzhou that come highly recommended. another place that enticed me was the local antiquity market. this is a weekly affair, and on going their twice with jiang ping and xiao ling i managed to get a small bronze statue of manchusri and a 200 year old qing dynasty silver hair pin.







the other excursion we did took place on foot with the entire band of artists that form jian ping’s friends in the western hills of hangzhou. there we walked a large loop that brought us along the ridge through forest and tea plantations, along pagodas and temples to the southern end of the lake. it was wonderful, we had so much fun with the guys, who provided as usual copious amounts of food, as well as plenty of laughter and entertainment. actually, i felt a bit like home up there in the hills, because if you were to subtsitute the tea plantations with vineyards you would get pretty close to area i come from, well visually at least, if you can successfully substitute in your mind the sino language for the ‘palatinian dialect’ and the fried tofu skin for ‘handkaes mit musik’, a doddle for the creatively inclined :D

well all in all we simply spend more than one week in hangzhou, eating far too much yummy vegetarian chinese food of the local variety, drinking copious amounts of local light beer, going for nightly gatherings to the pagoda on the lake, and in general having a fantastic time in the company of the artists and friends of the art club.