Weekends in Hangzhou

This is actually a couple different weekends in Hangzhou combined into one post.

Hangzhou is the bigish city neighbor that competes with Shanghai for local excitement. Now, I use bigish in Chinese terms, Haining is a small town of just under a million people, and Hangzhou is medium at 8 million people. By comparison, the small town in Illinois we lived in before this had roughly 130,000 people (if you count the neighboring town that is connected, and I think the student population too). So I always laugh a little to myself about the medium town with 8 million people.

While Hangzhou is nearby, we really hadn’t gone in for fun since our original visit to China before our move; we’ve been there for meetings at the main campus, or to turn in paperwork. We had a long weekend for tomb sweeping holiday, and decided to spend it in Hangzhou.

There are several professors at our university who live full time in Hangzhou and commute into Haining for teaching, so when we said we’d be in Hangzhou for the weekend we received several offers to hang out.

One of those offers was from our friends Simon and Lily, and while she wasn’t here this day, they also have an adorable little girl Electra. They met us in Hangzhou and took us to the local tea plantation, where the famous green tea Longjin is grown and produced. I will admit, I’m not a huge green tea person, but Mark loves this green tea- and it smelled lovely.

This was such a beautiful area, there was a walking path nearby- Alex and Lily took a walk and found fencing sticks for everyone while Mark, Simon and I stayed back to drink tea.

Uncle Simon is the best, he bought Alex ice cream and a giant cotton candy! They also bought him a balloon (and one to take home to Electra).

That night, they took us to a fantastic restaurant, which has since become a favorite for our group. It’s an all you can eat sushi place, and at the one in Hangzhou Alex is free, at least for another 5 cm or so. There is a similar place close to our house that we have been going to, but he isn’t free there (which is kind of ok because this kid can eat his weight in salmon sushi). I didn’t take any pictures here because I was focused on good food and great company (and fighting Alex for salmon and tuna). Two of the really cool things we had never had before were a lobster sashimi and scallop sashimi. This has become Mark’s favorite thing now, and isn’t available at the one closer to our house, so we may have to head back into Hangzhou just for that.

The next day we were on our own, and we went to a famous place for Baozi,the breakfast bun. Baozi are one of Alex and my favorite foods in china, it’s a steamed bun that can be filled with lots of things, but our favorite is pork. While the pork cooks and the bun steams, a lovely gravy is created and it’s define. Another popular version of this that you may see in Chinese restaurants is one with barbeque pork inside, this is fantastic too if you ever have the option to try it.

At the place we went in Hangzhou, there are only two options, pork or black sesame- and each bun is 2RMB or roughly $0.28. We get two each, and head for a nice spot to sit.

You’ll notice in the picture above, Mark is leaning way over…. it’s because we’ve learned our lesson on the first buns. The baozi are so juicy, that they overflow and the juice is hot!! It was a bit of a wait for the baozi, but definitely worth it.

From the baozi place, it is a short walk to get to West Lake, one of Hangzhou’s most famous locations. Alex and I went there on our first visit to China (which I just realized was before the blog, so I will add some pictures from that first trip here too)

This trip to Hangzhou was during a national holiday, so West Lake was packed! We didn’t stay long because it was too hot and too crowded, but we did see some interesting things. The gold dragon boat above was a way to travel across the lake, but in style! I just really liked this boat, I feel like it just fits this area of China well.

West Lake has different people playing music, doing dance routines, working out, just enjoying the outside. As far as we can tell, this people don’t get paid for what they’re doing, they just genuinely enjoy and want to share that with other people. The people above were very nice, and Alex loved hearing them, I don’t know the name of the instrument that the man is playing, but it is a traditional Chinese instrument that is popular in the older generation. I don’t think we’ve seen anyone under 50 playing it.

This picture above was to show the crowds…. but also, every one is crowded around this tree because it has 3 squirrels in it. There aren’t really squirrels here, so everyone gets really excited to see them.

The lady statue is a famous spot in Hangzhou, at one of the oldest pharmacies.

At a famous West Lake restaurant, Grandma’s House. This was while we were waiting for our food to come out, when it did come, I was too excited to remember to take pictures- but we had a dish of beggar’s chicken, which was hands down one of the best chickens I’ve ever eaten. It’s braised for a long time with spices and cooking wine, wrapped in a lotus leaf and then presented. The chicken falls off the bone, it’s so juicy and lovely, and while all the dishes we got there were excellent, this one we enjoyed so much that Mark has been trying to perfect it at home. We’ve had two successes and one didn’t taste at all like beggar’s chicken but was still fantastic.

A big draw to West Lake in the late spring early summer are the lotuses, which while there is no scale here, the flowers are as big as dinner plates or larger. The leaves can be worn as hats, (a la Swiss Family Robinson) and it would cover your whole head and shoulders. The lotuses are such a beautiful motivation to make it all the way around the lake!

This is our friend Candice, she worked at the University in Mark’s institute and recently left to start a job at a different university in Hangzhou. While we were sad to see her go, we can absolutely understand because her home is in Hangzhou and she was commuting 3 hours everyday. We met up with her in Hangzhou and had a nice dinner and a lovely visit with her. This is her and Alex doing a picture app on her phone, and some of the highlights of the many that they took.

These pictures are from our visit 2 years ago. The day we went was very rainy, but it gave everything a beautiful atmosphere. It felt like China that you see in the movies.

June is a good time to see the lotuses on West Lake, these are relatively small, there are some as big as your head!

7 year old Alex, not amused with taking pictures, and the lovely grad student showing us around didn’t want him to get wet.

A view across the lake, this is really just one half of the lake as well, it’s much bigger than I thought it would be.

I can’t remember her name (although I’ve seen her since then too) but she was a wonderful host, and we rode the boat back across the lake because Alex wanted to (and I was developing a giant blister)

We were riding a boat just like this when I took the picture. While the gold dragon boat is cool, these are the more common way to get around the lake.

Alex was taking a mental picture because I wouldn’t let him use the camera– he wanted to hang it out the window.

Nothing really to do with Hangzhou in particular, but Alex thought the hotel robe was hysterical and that it was like tae kwan do clothes. So he was practicing in the hotel every time we were there.