Hangzhao – Escape from Shanghai

Saturday morning, I joined a colleague from Boston on an impromptu daytrip out to Hangzhao, a pretty city on a lake about 1.5 hours on the high speed train outside Shanghai. Getting down to the hotel lobby 20 minutes after his text, we raced to Shanghai South station. At the station, we faced a ridiculous line that made sure we missed our train. Given the options of the 12:10 PM slow train (standing only) and the 1 PM fast train, we made the somewhat dubious call of taking the earlier train. This ensured that we would spend the next three hours in stolen seats (we found two after being kicked out of multiple pre-reserved ones) watching the countryside go by at various speeds (read: sat in one place for an hour) and snacking on random Chinese junk food – peanuts, dried plum things, and squash seeds.

Finally arriving in Hangzhao, we picked up our guide for the day, a recent college grad teaching English there who my colleague had met on the plane ride over (having gone to the same college as my sister, he said he’d heard of her – Baby B., what HAVE you been up to?). The city is quite large (6M people) and under construction – the ride in from the city was full of half complete skyscrapers. Having had our fill of big buildings in Shanghai, we decided to head straight for the lake and the Buddhist temples surrounding it.

Masses of people and closed roads foiled our easy getaway. Apparently it was festival weekend in Hangzhao. The city had bought a ton of fireworks for the 60^th anniversary, but had been forced to move the display date after the government decreed only Beijing could have a fireworks display on China's birthday. As a result, the normally bucolic lake setting – a truly beautiful, misty expanse with the city on one side stretching out to green, temple-dotted mountains, was thronged with holidaying Chinese. Our attempts to get out to the island in the middle of the lake came to naught, as did our attempts to climb a hill for a great photo-op. Instead, we wandered through back alleys, munching on street corn-on-the-cob and enjoying the feeling of being out of the city and the ex-pat bubble.

After we had our fill of strolling past street meat sellers and secluded stone villas, we hopped on the last bus up to Linyin (sp?) temple, a pretty oasis of paved paths, temple buildings, and souvenoir shops up in the mountain. Of course, like everything else in Hangzhao that day, it closed early, so we only had time to snap the obligatory shot outside the closing gate (literally). Still, it was beautiful and zen (yes, I know, wrong religion) to walk among the quiet trees and laugh at the ridiculous Chinglish of the signs (Reak of the Far Away Place was one highlight).

Given our difficullty in getting around, our host had the foresight to arrange a “guy with a van” to pick us up and drive us to Green Tea House, a rambling, half-outdoors restaurant complex with some of the best food I’ve had here to date. We feasted on barbequed, cumin-dusted mutton and chicken, salted greens and chili potatoes, washed down with lemonade and cold beer, and followed by peanut butter ice cream. Then back into our van to take a super-secret James Bond-esque path through the backroads to get close to the lake for some spectacular fireworks.

Full confession – I am not a huge fireworks fan. It’s all very pretty, but its kinda like Ballet for me – I don’t know enough to appreciate the technicality and I get bored if there are no words in a story. Still, the experience of running through thousands of Chinese, getting tickets to the special viewing area (randomly, for free) and watching millions worth of fireworks blow up into smiley faces, hearts and all sorts of colored sparks, was a pretty serious reminder of how cool unplanned travel can be.