Heaven on Earth – Hangzhou

Having never been to China, I felt like I was the last Chinese person who hasn’t visited my heritage yet.  Needless to say, I was very excited about going.  Our plan was to fly to Hangzhou from Taipei, then train to Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an.  I’ve seen pictures and images of Shanghai, Beijing, and Xi’an before, so I knew what to expect for those cities.  However, that was not the case for Hangzhou.  I only knew that there were numerous beautiful poems written by many famous Chinese poets back in the day about the beauty of West Lake in Hangzhou, but that was the extent of it.  And there’s this Chinese saying about how Hangzhou and Suzhou are heaven on Earth – "Heaven Above, Suzhou and Hangzhou below" (上有天堂，下有苏杭).  Marco Polo also described this city in his book as “beyond dispute the finest and noblest in the world”.  I was looking forward to seeing this with my own eyes, and this might sound strange coming from the princess me but it was nice to be on the road again after having been stagnant for the past 3 weeks.  If I stayed in Taipei any longer, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to move again because it was so comfortable staying at home and it was heartbreaking to leave my adorable niece.

We arrived in Hangzhou after a short 1.5 hour plane ride from the Taipei airport.  Hangzhou is the capital city of Zhejiang province and is well known for its beautiful natural scenery, the most famous being West Lake (Xi Hu).  After arriving at the brand new Hangzhou Xiaoshan International airport, we took two nice air-conditioned buses to the Hangzhou zoo near the southern part of the West Lake where our hostel was, and walked around for about half an hour in the unbearable humidity before finding our hostel.  By the time we got to the hostel, our t-shirts were completely soaking wet.  It was not the most pleasant feeling.  And there was an old friend from our Libya hotel in our room, hi again cockroach!  Ugh…  But as soon as we sorted out our itinerary for the day and took the bicycles out to see the West Lake, all these annoyances were gone with the wind.

West Lake is in the city and has a lot of scenic points: pagodas, temples, gardens, paved walkways, and you can hop on boats to go around the lake as well.  I admit the colour of lake itself isn’t the clearest or the prettiest, but the scenery around it is picturesque and calming.  I thought I was looking at a Chinese painting when looking out to the lake and its surroundings.  Eug almost wanted to recite Chinese poetry right there like his ancestor Tao Yuan Ming.  The centre of town is also very close to the lake too.  We biked all the way around the lake and to the centre of town and tried a few delicious meals.  One of them was at Grandma’s House – a local favourite for some tasty Hangzhou food.  Tong Po pork meat is a famous dish that originated from this city.  And if you are into tea, Longjing (dragon well) tea is also from here.  One evening, we watched an amazing show on the lake directed by Zhang Yi Mou. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s also the guy who directed a little spectacle you might have seen, the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.  The show we watched live was called “Impression Hangzhou” and it was spectacular.  I don’t want to ruin it for you but it’s definitely worth seeing if you ever get the chance.  We sat next to a very cute grandma and grandpa from Hangzhou and it was their first time seeing the show too.  Their son had seen the show and asked them to go see it.  I smiled each time they wow’ed and commented on how great the performance was, very heart warming indeed.

I was very impressed by the infrastructure of the city too.  The centre of town has countless ginormous department stores selling international brand names, high-end hotels like Sofitel, most chained coffee shops (Starbucks, Coffee Beans, Costa Coffee); anything you both need and don’t need can be found here.  The buses are new and have air-conditioning and LCD TVs playing Chinese pop music videos.  There are tourist information booths almost every block.  The roads are clean.  The traffic moves in an orderly fashion.  The list goes on and on.  And contrary to popular belief, not very many people spit, not very many people walk around with their shirt rolled up to their chest so only their tummy is showing because it’s too hot, and not many people cut in line or talk on the phone really loud.

I really enjoyed Hangzhou, and since we’ll come back to Taiwan once a year and China is just a short flight away, we’ll definitely visit Suzhou and other nearby places in the future.  It’s my first visit to China and seeing the gorgeous sights and the rapid development of the city really makes me feel proud to be a part of something so great.