20th November: Hangzhou, China
Not quite 13 hours but I’m starting to gradually feel a bit more rested. The sun even made a brief appearance this morning, which brought out the colours of West Lake and the surrounding autumn trees. Wandering its shores whilst drinking morning coffee felt incredibly peaceful.
We caught a bus from the northern edge of the lake, which followed its northern and western fringes into the hills beyond. At the end of the line in Longjing, towering bamboo shadowed tea bushes. We wandered up a small trail where on one side there was a bamboo forest and on the other, lines of tea plants. It felt like the most stereotypical view of China we’ve seen yet and perhaps the only one which is true!
Down in the village, we stopped at a tea house to try the famous local Longjing green tea. We plumped for the slightly latterly harvested Yuqian leaves, which is fuller bodied (and cheaper). It was warm and hyper local but grassy with hints of seaweed. We won’t be buying any to take, but it grew on us to sit and drink whilst snacking on delicious cardamom infused sunflower seeds and tea flavoured sweets.
The caffeine levels must’ve been through the roof because we were both bouncing within half an hour and positively sprinted uphill through one of the tea plantations. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t anticipate seeing tea growing this far north or east in China. I think this is due to a deep geographical misunderstanding how far south much of the country is – Hangzhou is on the same latitude as Delhi, Shiraz, Tenerife, and Monterrey. Regardless, rows of tea plants stretched out before us in every direction, up to the top of the steep hills. They were currently at the end of flowering, with plenty of bugs. The fresh leaves are picked in the spring and there didn’t seem to be any sign of them yet, at least to our untrained eyes.
We found another bus to take us around the south of the lake towards the Qiantang River. From here, the first two tier bridge built by China in 1937 was visible. This was seen as a major engineering achievement at the time across the volatile Qiantang at a location foreign engineers had deemed impossible. More modern engineering marvels sat along the river in the form of other bridges and towers of all kinds of shapes and sizes. Another 8 km downstream, the new CBD took this to another level. A giant gold sphere and various twisting postmodernist skyscrapers give the centre of Hangzhou a unique modern skyline befitting of such an historically beautiful city.
Dinner once again was another delicious rainbow coloured buffet, this time in Wulin Square.
Once more, the architecture in this area was astounding. The kind of well laid out civic space with a great sense of occasion that you might be lucky enough to find in one place in a major western city occurs seemingly in multiple districts of hundreds of cities within China. Here, a grand pedestrian bridge over the historic Grand Canal lined up perfectly with a skyscraper which itself drew inspiration from the pagodas which one day stood nearby. These are cities built for people.
