Our trip to Hangzhou and latest news

Last week we had a fabulous trip to Hangzhou, an old city 120 miles or so from Shanghai.
Hangzhou is very famous in China - it has a wonderful lake dotted with temples and pagodas - here is a dragon boat on the lake.

 We sat in the evening and watched the sunset over the lake. Later, fountains appeared in the lake with colored lights and music - very pretty and romantic.

 There are many parks and gardens around the lake, and it was very pleasant strolling around and sitting and watching the world go by. We stayed in a small hostel next to one of the big temples and pagodas, but now, feeling a bit templed out, we decided not to visit.

However, we did visit the old part of the city too - many tourists there, but one street is famous for the many Chinese medicine stores along it - some very old. Here is one of them, still busy and widely used by the locals.

One of the exciting parts of the trip was riding a bullet train to and from Hangzhou - the tickets cost a little more, but it was very cool to ride in a super-fast train - up to 200 mph (displayed inside the carriage) - in fact we covered the distance in about 45 minutes!

 Other news - work remains fine. Spent this weekend in Shanghai - today we went to a holy mountain - She Shan (topped with a Catholic monastery!) and yesterday wandered the riverfront at night. Andy went out with some of his students the other night - real Chinese food (frog, bamboo, goose, fungus and strange eggs ...) and another go at karaokee.
We have also booked a weekend trip (and another bullet train) to Nanjing - at one time, the CHinese capital and site of the massacre in WW 2. We have also booked a longer trip in July (a week's vacation) - to spend 4 nights in mid-west China - Chengdu - home of the pandas! and a further 5 nights in southern China - 3 in Guilin (famous mountains/river) and 2 in the Dragon's Backbone rice terraces in a village.
We plan to take some pictures at work to share. Hoping to have some visitors soon.

Back from Beijing - fabulous time ....
Tiananmen Square and the Gate of Heavenly Peace with the famous large portrait

 Our day on the Great Wall - we chose wisely and went to a less touristy section where we hiked for a few hours. Caught a ski lift up to the top of the mountain, and rode a toboggan down - very fast and a little scary!

 We spent several hours at the Forbidden City - an amazingly huge area originally only for upper classes/emperor.

One of our favorite spots - Ghost Street - packed with restaurants and lit up with thousands of glowing Chinese lanterns ...

 Rush hour on the Beijing metro - has to be seen and experienced to be believed.

 Walking along one of the many hutongs in Beijing - old alleyways and streets filled with character and interesting nooks and crannies
















At one of the food markets - these are called bingtanghulu - icesugarthing - look delicious. The market also had sharks, snakes, snails, spiders and sheep penis for sale too.

 Another fabulous street full of interesting things ...!!!

 Here we are at the Summer Palace - the country (ish) refuge of the emperor and his clan

 So we had a great trip - really enjoyed Beijing. In addition to these experiences, we tried original Peking (Beijing) duck, drank beers with some Australians we met, studied bizarrely mutated carp/goldfish at a breeding center for creating 'collectable' fish, and visited the 2008 Olympic venue and saw the famous Birds Nest.

On to planning our next trip ...
All is well.
Oh and more strange things on bikes -
3. A kebab barbecue (very portable)

We go to a music festival and start an improv class

Update time - we're off to Beijing tomorrow for a few days - including a day's hiking on the Great Wall and another day at the Forbidden Palace - very excited. Details and pictures to follow next week.

This week we went to the Shanghai Music Festival - a huge rock and pop music open air music festival - 4 stages and loads of bands - many international ones. Had a good time. We also went to a new area of Shanghai with some friends from Evan's work - sat outside in the balmy evening weather eating pizza and drinking beer - was really like being back in Davis or Sacramento in California - weird. It was in a posh/modern area, so very California feeling - we both felt a bit homesick.

Work is going fine - both got through our supervisor teaching observations successfully - makes you a bit nervous but all went well. Andy has been working on developing an improv class in English!!! Starts in a couple of weeks ... there's many a folk who'd say he has no business doing the jokes and that - what with not being very funny. But maybe his humor will go down better with non-English speakers .... Also has to watch his tall stories as the rumor went around at his school that he had actually been in a band at the music festival because of some off the cuff remarks he made ...!!!

Anyway will fill you all in on Beijing details next week.

Bye for now.