A Journal, with Pictures

Hangzhou was the cap­i­tal of Chi­na dur­ing the Song dynasty which was a time of explo­sive inno­va­tion in the sci­ences and arts. It retains this spe­cial feel­ing with the city sur­round­ing beau­ti­ful West Lake, where our hotel, the Four Sea­sons, was locat­ed. We start our first day learn­ing about taichi, from a mas­ter, we then take a pri­vate gon­do­la ride on the lake, while being ser­e­nad­ed by Guzheng (ancient Chines instru­ment)  play­er in anoth­er boat.

We toured a tea plan­ta­tion and learned about tea grow­ing and mak­ing. We toured the gar­dens of a wealthy Chines indus­tri­al­ist now a pub­lic tourist des­ti­na­tion. We vis­it­ed a Bud­dhist tem­ple and saw a lime­stone rock face dec­o­rat­ed with more than 3000 Bud­dhist effigies.

The Chi­nese have become the largest group of tourist on earth, both with Chi­na and abroad. In Chi­na they have shared bikes, mil­lions of  bikes that you pay a ini­tial fee ($15), then with your smart phone you locate the near­est bike, scan the code on the bike and use the bike and check out by smart phone and pay a small fee for use leav­ing the bike for the next user.

Final­ly, we were treat­ed to a pri­vate les­son on the “Five Dis­ci­plines”, tea, incense, flower arrange­ment, music and cal­lig­ra­phy, those things a Hangzhou gen­tle­men were expect­ed to excel in.