My Winter Travels, Part 13: Huang Shan

Huang Shan Picasa Photo Album

After spending two days in Hangzhou, we took a 5 hour bus ride to Huang Shan on February 14th. Huang Shan means "Yellow Mountain" (although it's actually a mountain range) and is one of China's most famous mountain ranges. We stayed two nights in Tangkou, the little town at the base of the mountain. This gave us a full day to hike around Huang Shan and enjoy the scenery. Overall, I'd say I enjoyed the scenery at Chang Bai Shan more (particularly the heavenly lake), but Huang Shan is justifiably famous and was well worth the visit. Let's go straight to the pictures...

My Dad and I at Huang Shan.






I like how this rock formation reminds of a hand with five fingers.








If you look closely, you can see a bridge in the bottom left corner, and a staircase carved into the mountain in the center.


My parents at Huang Shan.


There were several restaurants and hotels at Huang Shan. Everything has to be brought up by one of these guys. I sure wouldn't want that job!

Next, we took a bus back to Hangzhou and flew from there to Beijing, just in time for Spring Festival.

My Winter Travels, Part 12: Hangzhou

Hangzhou Picasa Photo Album

The day after we visited Suzhou, we took a train to Hangzhou. Hangzhou is a famous tourist location. There's an ancient Chinese saying that goes, "In heaven there is paradise, on earth Suzhou and Hangzhou." Hangzhou's fame comes from the West Lake, a large lake that has been a tourist attraction since ancient times (Marco Polo visited it and praised it). Maybe it's just because I grew up seeing lots of lakes in and around Seattle...but while there was some beautiful scenery around the West Lake, I didn't think it was particularly exceptional. Hangzhou is a modern city with smog, and when you look across the lake, the opposite shore is hazy. There's not much that's worthy of pictures here. Overall, I'd say that Hangzhou was my least favorite locale of the trip.

Near the West Lake late in the afternoon.


These statues are common throughout China.






The entire lake is surrounded by parks, museums and ponds like these.


There were lots of boats on the lake. This one was my favorite.




This is on Lesser Yingzhou Island, in the middle of the lake. It's got lakes of its own.




My Dad and Allen on one of the pedestrian causeways.

I also had the single most frustrating experience of the trip in Hangzhou. After Hangzhou, our plan was to visit Huang Shan (we already had bus tickets for this) and then find a way to get to Xi'an. Unfortunately, this was right before spring festival (i.e. the Chinese New Year)--the biggest holiday in China, when everyone is traveling to be with their relatives. All the trains to Xi'an were booked out, unless we waited 2 extra days. I went online to try to find a flight and found one, but had all sorts of problems booking it. First I tried to pay using my Chinese debit card. It would come back with a message (in Chinese of course--Allen translated it for me) saying I didn't have enough available funds in my account, even though I had more than enough. I also tried my American credit card, but that would fail without giving me a reason before I would even get to the point of entering my credit card info. Allen and I spent 3 hours one night trying to find a way to get to Xi'an, without success. The internet cafe we used wound up charging us more than twice what they had originally told us it would cost (apparently the first price they told us only applies if you pay a fee to become a member. We're obviously not members if we're asking what the price is, so this was clearly a tactic to get us to use their computers and then pay more). And it was pouring down rain that night. It was a long walk back to our hostel from the internet cafe in the rain, and I hadn't accomplished anything after spending 3 hours trying to find a way to Xi'an. I was beyond frustrated.

The next morning, things didn't start out any better. I figured maybe my Chinese debit card only allowed a certain percent of my account to be used for an internet transaction, so I deposited a couple thousand RMB in order to make sure my account had more than twice what we would need. For some stupid reason, the bank charged me money to make the deposit (Who ever heard of that before? Don't banks want your money so that they can turn around and loan it out and charge interest? Isn't that whey they give you interest for having money in their bank? Why charge a fee and discourage people from making a deposit???). I tried again to book the flight using my Chinese debit card, and got the same message. We asked the bank about it, and they said my debit card has a restriction, and that to book the flight I would need to open a new account at the Hangzhou branch of my bank, transfer in funds, and pay out of that account. Does that make any sense whatsoever? In the meantime, the price on the flight we were trying to book jumped significantly, to the point where it was more than we were willing to pay. So we decided to look for a plan B. And in the end, it worked out better this way (God was good to us). We found a flight to Beijing for about half of what the flight to Xi'an was going to cost us. We talked with a support person from the flight website, and discovered that the reason our credit card wasn't working is because we had entered Allen's name using Chinese characters rather than pinyin, and the Visa website couldn't accept Chinese characters. So we just had to spell his name in pinyin and then it worked fine.

So in the end it worked out well, but it sure was frustrating while it was happening. Thanks for letting me rant :).

We took a bus to Huang Shan the next day.

My Winter Travels, Part 11: Suzhou

Suzhou Picasa Photo Album

The day after we visited Zhujiajiao, we took a day trip to Suzhou from our base in Shanghai. Suzhou is very close to Shanghai (only about 45 minutes by train) and has a long history of tourism. It was a center of silk production in ancient China. Marco Polo visited it when he visited China. It's famous for its canals and gardens--earning it the nickname "Venice of the East." It does have some canals, but Zhujiajiao had a lot more and better canals. "Venice of the East" is a bit of an exaggeration, but we did enjoy Suzhou. We basically just visited three things: the Suzhou Silk Museum, the North Temple Pagoda and the Master-of-Nets Garden. I knew very little about silk, so the silk museum was interesting, but there wasn't much to see (I didn't even take any pictures!). The North Temple Pagoda and the Master-of-Nets Garden were both well worth visiting.

The North Temple Pagoda.


Suzhou as seen from the North Temple Pagoda.




The North Temple Pagoda is an active Buddhist temple complex. In addition to the Pagoda, there were a couple temple buildings and some monks.


One of Suzhou's canals.


Map of the Master-of-Nets-Garden.


Inside one of the buildings at the garden.


One of the doorways at the garden.


My favorite part of the garden was around this pond.


Me at the Master-of-Nets garden.

The next day we wrapped up our time in Shanghai by visiting the Yuyuan Gardens before heading to Hangzhou next.

My Winter Travels, Part 10: Zhujiajiao

Zhujiajiao Picasa Photo Album

During our time in Shanghai, we took a day trip to Zhujiajiao. Zhujiajiao is an ancient water town. I've never been to Venice, but Zhujiajiao reminds me of pictures I've seen of Venice. Canals run throughout town, with bridges crossing over them and boats in them. It's not a particularly well known place (Lonely Planet doesn't even mention it, and LP is consistently rated as the best guide book on China). Josh, one of the other foreign teachers at my school, told me about it, and it was well worth the visit. I think it was one of my favorite places we went on the trip. If you ever visit Shanghai, be sure to visit Zhujiajiao. It's better than all of Shanghai's main sights combined. There's not much else to say about it, so I'll jump straight to the pictures:

These canals run throughout town.


This is one of more than 30 bridges in town.


These boats where everywhere.












Allen and my parents at Zhujiajiao.


We took a boat ride.


Our boat driver.

The next day, we took a day trip to Suzhou.

My Winter Travels, Part 9: Shanghai

Shanghai Picasa Photo Album

After spending two days in Tokyo, I flew to Shanghai on February 8th , where I met up with my parents. My parents traveled with me for 3 weeks (they flew out of Beijing back to Seattle on March 1st). In Shanghai, a student named Allen from my school also met us, to travel with us, translate for us and generally just help us get around. We spent 4 nights in Shanghai.

The first night in Shanghai was one of the more frustrating moments of the trip. My flight got in pretty late (about 8:30 pm) and it took a long time to go through baggage claim, immigration and customs. By the time I met up with my parents and we started making our way to our hostel, it was after 10. We followed the instructions our hostel gave us, and took a bus to the train station, where we were supposed to take the metro to a station very near our hostel. Unfortunately, it was so late that the metro was closed. Taking a taxi was our only option. It was also poring down rain, my dad had a cold, and my parents were very tired. Chinese Taxi drivers are smart--they know a desperate tourist when they see one, and they go straight for the rip-off. In China, you can usually bargain a set price with a taxi driver, or go by the meter (which is always better if you're not sure what a ride should cost--anytime a taxi driver suggests a set price, it'll be higher than the metered price). I've read that it's illegal for a Taxi driver to refuse to go by the meter when a passenger suggests it, but that doesn't stop them, and this night was no exception. Each taxi driver offered a price of 50 RMB (which I knew was way too high) and refused to go by the meter when I asked. If I was a tourist fresh of an airplane, I probably would have given into this thievery, but 6 months in China teaches you a lot about bargaining and the regular rip-offs you will receive because you are a foreigner who presumably has lots of money by virtue of your white skin. Of course, my parents are just wanting to get to the hostel and are thinking "50 RMB is less than $7...what's the big deal?" But if you always do the conversion to USD and tell yourself that you're not paying too much, you'll keep getting ripped off and you'll spend far more than you need to to travel in China. So I stuck to my guns. After haggling with about 10 taxi drivers and getting nowhere, I finally decided to give in if the next taxi driver was unwilling to by the meter. Luckily, the next one was willing to use the meter, and the ride cost us only 22 RMB (less than half of the price of the other drivers). It was definitely a frustrating experience, and not my parent's best introduction to China. But the trip got much better after that :).


The Bund

We began our first full day in Shanghai by taking a stroll on the Bund. The Bund is probably Shanghai's most famous sight and it's obligatory to walk it when you visit Shanghai. The Bund once operated a bit like a Wall Street in Shanghai and has lots of historical buildings with European architecture.

The Bund.


The Monument to the People's Heroes at the Bund.


My parents at the Bund.

Nanjing Lu

Nanjing Lu is Shanghai's most famous shopping street. No cars are allowed on it, and at night the buildings are lit up, making for a very pleasant walking street. We walked it on our first day on our way from the Bund to the Shanghai Museum, and then again another night on our way to the Jinmao Tower.

Nanjing Lu by day.




Nanjing Lu by night.

Shanghai Museum

The last thing we did our first day was to visit the Shanghai Museum. The museum had a nice collection of various historical Chinese artifacts (including paintings, sculptures, calligraphy art, money, furniture and costumes).

The museum had an interesting circular design.


The lobby of the museum was quite nice.




The museum had a collection of dresses and masks from some of China's many minority cultures.


A close up of one of the sculptures.

Jinmao Tower

The Jinmao Tower is China's tallest skyscraper and the world's 5th largest at 1380 feet. It's got some nice views of the city from the observation deck.

The Oriental Pearl Tower, as seen from the Jinmao Tower.


Shanghai by night.


This is a lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in the Jinmao Tower. It starts on the 54th floor and is supposedly the world's highest hotel.

Yuyuan Gardens

We visited the Yuyuan Gardens on our final day in Shanghai. The gardens were very pretty, although I thought the gardens we saw in Suzhou the previous day were more spectacular.

Allen at the Yuyuan Gardens.


One of the many corridors of the Yuyuan Gardens.




Allen and my parents in the Yuyuan Gardens.


They sure like their dragons in China.

We also took day-trips to Zhujiajiao and Suzhou during our stay in Shanghai. After our time in Shanghai, we continued on to Hangzhou.