Day 28 “Take the last train to Shanghai and I’ll see you in the morning…”

Day 28 “Take the last train to Shanghai and I’ll see you in the morning…”

We took a train to Hongzhou for the day; it is a small town outside of Shanghai. The fast train takes you there in about two hours (the old, slow one brings you home in about 3 ½ hours). When I say it’s a small town, it’s all relative. 1 million people live in this small town; it was NOT small, nor uncrowded. Hangzhou was the original capital of China, but when the Mongols conquered the capital was changed to Beijing in 1279. Emperor Qianlong, the emperor who had the Summer Palace made for his mother’s 60th birthday present designed the palace after the lake area in Hongzhou because he enjoyed it so much. We spent the day walking around the lake (or a portion of it, it is really large).

We took a small boat ride to a famous bridge that leads to the island. The bridge is called the broken bridge and it wasn’t broken, and apparently never has been, but there is a story (as with everything in China) about a snake, a high official man and a women and the heart break that they endure during a fable that I didn’t quite follow completely.

West Lake is the center of the city; it is very polluted. You couldn’t swim in it or even wade; although it was so hot it was very tempting. We had our hired friend Farah with us that day. Hangzhou is her family’s home town so she knows all about it, or at least the places to eat (she had a friend named Coco along with her and she knew a lot of the history of the city, but was embarrassed to try her English out so the questions and answers were all interpreted and slow). She said you can’t swim in any water in China; they are all polluted and too dirty. Most Chinese adults don’t know how to swim because they don’t have opportunities to learn. I explained to her about all the lakes we have in our area and how pure and clean they are. She was amazed that my children all know how to swim. Another thing I take for granted I guess.

We spent the later part of our afternoon at the LongJing Village market buying souvenirs. This market was an outdoor market and was not like the other markets we had visited. It was a long road with many little stores, each specializing in different sorts of trades.

Some were your traditional Chinese trinkets, but many were more specialized such as the man that sculpts your face and head out of a block of clay (he was good!).

There were also several different shops that made wire into art. They twisted the wire into various things such as bikes or musical instruments. One lady hand painted the inside of glass jars with a tiny paint brush. The images were mostly flowers or trees, nature type images. Pretty fascinating to watch each of them perform their talents right there in front of everyone.

Also there were several stores who were sorting and drying tea leaves. They use a big wok type device (heated with electricity I think) and shuffle the tea leaves back and forth through the pot for several minutes until they are dried. Then they sell the leaves according to their quality.

I liked this market over the others that we have visited. The others are obviously filled with products that the owners had bought at a good price and trying to sell it for a profit. This market was full of the actual artists and craftsmen. Also, this market had a great deal of silk available. There was everything from silk scarves (for $2 each) to lingerie to little girl’s traditional Chinese embroidered outfits.

When we arrived at the Hongzhou train station in the morning we immediately tried to buy return tickets to Shanghai. I had been unable to get a list of the return rides in English before I left so we needed to wait until that morning when we had Farah with us to speak to them in Chinese. Again there was no English or Pinyin around so we couldn’t buy our return tickets by ourselves. By the time we bought our tickets we were lucky to get a ride home. The trains were all sold out except the very last one. This particular train was very old and very slow. We almost had to stay the night in Hangzhou, but where and without any clothes or necessities? Luckily we did catch the train home; it was a long ride that we occupied ourselves with by teaching Farah a new card game. We taught her “Oh Copper Bernhardt”, for those of you who have played that game with us many times and know the history of how this game got its name in our family. Now it’s not just traveled to Italy with our friends the Browns, but it’s traveled to China too. Maybe years from now we will see a deck of cards with Copper’s name on it and we will know where it all started. For those of you who don’t know Oh Copper Bernhardt, you’ll have to ask us to teach you this fun game.