1.5years in Hangzhou

Arrived fresh off the boat 1.5years ago in Hangzhou and started work.
Looked back at my Feb 5, 2007 post and laughed my head off.
http://travelpede.blogspot.com/2007/02/hangzhou-survival-101.html

All that excitement, panic and anxiety i experienced relocating to a new place, my communicado problems, that terrible weather, navigating around the city, colleagues, protocols, landlords, agents, etc seemed so long ago.

So i've came some way in improving my Chinese. Actually, i don't know if its an improvement or an actual deterioration of my language skills when these days, i sometimes blank out and can't remember an English word, but can find a word in Chinese to perfectly describe something (!!)

I know now more about working in China - not the expert but suffice to say the more i know, the more i realise i don't know. when i say Chinese protocol and working culture = Lake Baikal, its an understatement.

Time to take stock - what i have accomplished thus far, what i need to do next.

Time to move on - do something else, be something else, try something different.

Time to leave Hangzhou, and move on to other pastures.

Suzhou snapshot

Dad visited Shanghai on a business trip in June and yours truly went up there and spent a weekend with him. We decided on a day trip to Suzhou since neither of us have been.

To be honest, Suzhouw as a bit of a disappointment, and we didn't get to see everything we wanted, in part due to my own balls-up with the return train tickets.

Nevertheless, it was nice to spend time with the old man. He seemed quite taken with the trishaws and we went everywhere in them, paying 10-15kuai a pop each time (probably ripped off!). Helluva fun as we weaved in and out of the streets dodging cars, people, bicycles and other trishaws. Dad keeps getting mistaken as a Japanese tourist and I, the translator for some reason - perhaps its because i'm doing all the navigation and bargaining! Plus we tip them extra. And then he says to them in broken chinese "We are from Singapore, and she (pointing to me) is my daughter!" somewhat indignantly.

Cue aplogetic look from trishaw riders. i didn't think too much about it until they apologised effusively. Maybe, there are, um, other sorts of older Japanese tourists accompanied by other sorts of younger multi-tasking translators. Who knows?

Dad remarks that Suzhou city looks similar to Hangzhou but as a sign that i'm now a seasoned Hangzhouvian, i immediately rejected that idea - Hangzhou looks mucho better!

We visited a couple of the requisite tourist sites (pagodas and temples) , strolled around leisurely and then had lunch at a local noodle eatery - cheap and deeeelicious. After that, we both telephatically signalled to each to other it was time for coffee, spotted a Xing-ba-ke and made a beeline for it. Always count on the MickeyD's of coffee when you need a caffeine fix.

The Suzhou museum had a long queue snaking out of its entrance and we both decided it was too much of a hassle to wait. It was the "wrong season" to visit the famed gardens apparently because there are't too many flowers in bloom - Ugh.

We got the train back to Shanghai, but not before his camera got picked amidst the heaving crowds at Suzhou train station. Dad sulks for about half the journey back but he quickly regained his jovial mood and persuaded me (it wasn't difficult) to go to the hotel bar for a couple of pre-dinner drinks. That was followed by a quick dinner, we said our goodbyes and i hopped back on a train to Hangzhou.

Ah well, i'll have to visit Suzhou again. Maybe better luck next time.

L: Austere-looking Suzhou museum designed by I.M. Pei. Very distinctive - i like.
R: Dad smiling... until his camera got picked at the train station!

L: Cheap tricks: A wooden clothes-peg solves the age-old problem of flapping trouser-cuffs when you're riding your tri-shaw.

R: Boat-woman paddling and singing along one of the canals.

Taishan & Jinan, Shandong

Summer trip to Taishan & Jinan in Shandong

Took a weekend camping and hiking trip to Shandong during the Dragon-boat festival break to climb Taishan and spend a day in Jinan.

Like any other "famous mountains" and "must-see" attractions in China (e.g. Huangshan), the main "Imperial" route up the mountain was bustling. Tourist hordes with megaphone-toting tour guides, students, touts, sedan-chair coolies all blend into the melee that is a 6000-step artery all the way to the summit. Amongst all the goods on offer, notable ones peddled include gaudy red "I conquered Taishan" headbands, good-luck mini-statues of assorted Tao deities (pretty cheap luck at only 1yuan a piece) for people needing blessings for health, exams, lottery,etc. , T-shirts & flags (again in the same vein of "I conquered Taishan"), whistles (that sound like birds or crickets), towels, sun-shades, instant photo services etc. What amazed me more was the fact that people actually bought them.

Thankfully, we took a quieter back route up the mountain and it was virtually empty. It offered some great views of the rugged range, waterfalls, springs and swathes of pine forests. Here, you could stop whenever you want to enjoy the scenery, listend to birds chirping (real ones, not those bloody annoying whistles) or take a snack break in peace. In fact, there were few shops we passed and most of them called out lackadasically to you to buy something, have a rest or some tea but were never pushy. At one point we ran out of bottled water and filled our bottles with sweet, refreshing spring water. I did worry at some point about giardia and other nasty parasites (You can take me out of Singapore, but can't take the Singaporean out in me!) but decided to flirt with danger anyway .

5pm, almost sunset and a few hundred metres altitude to go. We had made slow progress in part due to the heat and heavy backpacks. A cable-car station loomed in sight and looked extremely tempting. It was a case of Cable-up-and-enjoy-the-sunset vs continue-heaving-reach-the-top-possibly-in dark.

Surely it would be extremely wimpish to take a cable up to the top after we've made it this far on legs! Wouldn't i be relegated to those "softies" (that i usually scorn) who take the easy way up? So weak! so wimpish! Ugh.

In the end, Cable-car won. To hell with pride. The cable (more like a ski-lift) zipped us and our heavy backpacks to the top in cool efficiency and for only 20kuai (4SGD). It was an awesome ride and definitely a different experience to feel the breeze, look down and see the tops of trees whizzing past beneath your feet. Made a mental note to try the soft option more often in future.

The summit offered -you guessed it - more souvenir shops, instant photo services and of course temples. It was almost sunset when we finally reached the top and we hurriedly pitched our tent, sat outside the tent watching the beautiful red and orange glow in the sky with a bottle of red. Dinner was a simple, hurried affair in a tiny eatery - as the wind howled outside, we wolfed down steaming bowls of noodles with fried vegetables and eggplant. And then we scurried back to the tent again to escape the wind.

Stars in the night sky - lots of them.

Early start at 4am after a particularly uncomfortable sleep (in part due to some other noisy campers) for the famed Taishan sunrise - but we didn't get to see it due to too much cloud cover.

Oh well - time to de-camp and head down!

We tried to weave through the crowds as quickly as we could via the "imperial" route. The route up was much more pleasant than the way down! I had a vague feeling that Taishan (esp the main route) isn't the sort of place to get away from the crowds or to have some quiet contemplation of the navel. Even the temples atop seemed rather commercialised and had lost its "sacred" aura.

6000 steps downhill wasn't a piece of cake like i envisioned, and after about 4000 of them, we caved-in once again to the comfortable option - a BUS!

And so, that was Tai-shan crossed of my long "To-do" list.

Clockwise from L (Sedan chairs to carry visitors up the mountain, Taishan, sunset with some satellite dishes camouflaged under a pagoda, and yours truly bringing my own bar up to Taishan)

"Webpage not found" ..or dare i say it...

So.. i'm messing around the settings in blogspot and pressed "view blog" just for kicks - even though i knew it would bounce back with a "webpage not found" type error.... and
OMG - it actually opened! Magic!!
For 1.5years now (which is, how long i've been here btw), i've been able to post via blogger.com but not actually open my blog on blogspot.com, nor keep up with any of my friends' blogs. Happiness!

I wonder how long this is gonna last though... as with the Great Firewall of China, you never really know when they'll randomly decide to pull the plug again. Is this some sort of Olympics amnesty? Youtube, Wiki, and BBC news have all been un-banned this year in China - now is this progress or what?

Rainbow-scape

It's not everyday you see a rainbow, and it's the equivalent of striking lottery when you see one in China.

What's at the end of the rainbow? Who knows, eh?