Day 2 in Hangzhou. Beautiful sunshine! We took a bus early in the morning out to the Longjing Tea Fields, one of the most famous green teas in China. We got detailed instructions on all the buses we needed to get out there, and set off. Upon arrival, it looked a little empty, to say the least. We were there early, but for being a super famous tourist sight, where is everyone? We walked up to only find some old men playing the traditional Chinese card games, wagering their crinkled renminbi, barely noticing the 2 tall blondes walking by, and everything was closed. We ventured a bit further to find some creepy houses that seemed to be for rent as small weekend vacation houses, and a bunch of confetti all over the ground. We think there was a wedding shortly before we arrived, but we really have no idea. There wasn’t a single soul around to ask. We left, looked around disappointedly, and got on the bus to leave. This was the part of the journey I was the most excited about, and it turned out to be nothing. Back down the mountain, we did see some tea fields, and a small village with many little tea houses, but it was nothing like what I’d expected. We’re hoping it was only this sad because it was the off-season. Hopefully, we can return in the spring to find a much livelier scene!
We then took the next bus to the Tiantong Temple. This temple is one of the largest and most famous temples, not only in our region, but in China. Taking a bus to a new destination in China is a bit tricky because we don’t understand what they’re saying on the bus, we can’t read the bus map (because it’s all in characters and not in pinyin which would be slightly helpful to ignorant foreigners), and well, we can’t ask for help. Generally, we hope to be able to look around and make an educated guess on where we need to get off. This works, sometimes. Trying to get to Tiantong Temple, we just made complete asses of ourselves. The bus pulled into a large parking lot, where the majority of the people got off, but not everyone. We didn’t know where we were, and couldn’t exactly see a temple from the bus, so we decided to stay on. I understood one, short phrase from the Chinese to understand that even they were a bit confused. The bus set off again, and I just barely noticed a sign pointing in the direction of the temple, and then the bus turned the opposite direction. I thought to myself, maybe we’re taking the scenic route? We continued on the bus for another 20 minutes, following the bus’s route with our map, only to conclude that we’d somehow missed the stop, and were now traveling very quickly away from the temple. We finally hopped off and started walking back where we came from. Okay, no problem. We ate, found a Starbucks, and enjoyed walking another portion of the lake we hadn’t seen yet.
On our way back to the temple, we saw a street sign pointing toward some sweet sounding caves, so we turned and decided to take a small detour. The problem in China is that you are very rarely informed about where you are or where you’re going when relying only upon the road signs, but if you are informed, it’s never very detailed. This sign had an arrow pointing us in the general direction of the caves, but we didn’t know if it was 500m down the road, or more like 15 miles down the road. After one, very long, Chinese block, heading once again away from the temple, we gave up on that mystery adventure and headed toward the Botanical Gardens. When we finally reached the botanical gardens, we only came to discover that it’s absolutely, ridiculously massive, and that you need several hours to walk around the place. Considering we’d already walked a ridiculous amount and that it was December, we thought maybe the gardens wouldn’t be the best use of our time. We continued in the direction of the temple, but looking at the map, it still looked to be quite a distance away. We agreed to take the next bus we found a stop for. Of course, the next bus stop we came upon was still a 10 minute walk away. At the bus stop, while waiting, we found a map showing us where’d we’d been all day, where the temple was, and where we’d gotten off the bus and in turn began walking back. I have a wonderful photo giving you an idea of how far we walked and where exactly we reached our exhaustion point at which we took the bus. Just to humor you, from the exhaution ‘point A’ to the temple ‘point B’, we were only on the bus a couple minutes before the bus attendant looked at us, the two foreigners, and said, “The temple is here. Get off now.” Oh, thanks.
Upon stepping off the bus, we found ourselves in the exact parking lot we’d previously been in on the other bus, when everyone else got off, and we didn’t. Luckily, we did make it to the temple because this ended up being one of the highlights of this small adventure. The temple is massive and beautiful, along with some surrounding caves and carvings that are hundreds of years old and fantastic. The journey to the temple was a little chaotic and unfortunate, but it’s all in the adventure, right?
In all this walking around the city, it didn’t take long for me to notice the beauty, cleanliness, and general peacefulness that is very much lacking in Ningbo, where I’m currently living, but is very present, on the other hand, in this city. There will most definitely be another visit to Hangzhou in the spring, and maybe a more permanent visit someday if the occasion ever arises!
Undiscovered Sunsets 