Hangzhou and back to Shanghai

Nov. 8


The little gal in the photo above was our guide in Hangzhou, Fiona, and she certainly typifies the fashionable young women of China.
We woke up this morning to tai chi lessons across from the hotel.

After evening in another excellent hotel, we headed out to cruise on West Lake, a natural lake in the middle of town. Morning rush hour has been pretty interesting all over China.

We cruised for about one hour, taking in the views of the city and other boats on the lake.

Currency in China is called the People’s Money – RMB – and the one yuan note features a scene from this lake, part of which is shown below.


Following West Lake, we were off to Dragon Well tea plantation. This was our first actual country excursion.
Anybody know how tea grows? I didn’t. Turns out, it’s a bush and it was planted on terraces all over the hillsides.

The famous green tea here is only cut once a year from March to May and they only cut the top leaves for this special green tea. Dawn is now certain that if we drink green tea that we would be much healthier. I’m not convinced.


Then we headed back to Shanghai for some more sightseeing and shopping. The drive was three plus hours.

Once in Shanghai, we had the choice of shopping on Nanjing St. or sightseeing on the Bund. We actually opted for both. We did some shopping with serious bartering at Shop 61, walked further down Nanjing to the walking street section and then headed back for some nighttime shots on the Bund, which is a walkway along the river overlooking the ultra modern financial district of Shanghai. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.



The miniscule woman above sold Dawn some shoes and the next pic is Dawn discovering the shops within the shops within the shops. It appears as if there are 3 kinds of goods for sale here: the first are sold in most shops with no bartering; the second might be seconds or might have found their way out the back door of factories and one must barter for these goods; the last are counterfeits which are not openly displayed anywhere, but can be discovered in the closets behing the shops, like the one Dawn was entering here.

We had a lot of fun in the short two hours we were given and then we were off to our last dinner in China.
Following that, it was back to the Minya Hotel where some socializing was in order before calling it a day. And what a day it was!