In early April it was "tomb sweeping day" in China - one of those national holidays where every one ends up working over the weekend in order to get 3 days off during the week.
Originally we had planned to go away to climb the Yellow Mountains . But than lazyness took over and we decided to venture out for day trip to Hangzhou instead.
Hangzhou is considered one of the most romantic cities in China. It is located 190km south of Shanghai and it´s main attraction is a huge man made lake which is surrounded by mountains and teaplantations. The new high speed train takes you there within one hour and therefore makes it a perfect daytrip from Shanghai.
Having learnt from previous national holiday experiences we knew that we were not going to be the only ones with the idea of getting out of town, especially as the weather was forecasted to be good.
Already at Honqiao trainstation in Shanghai we got a pre-taste of what to expect on our journey:
But before we were able to take off we were rejected to enter the train first time - My great chinese skills had sucessfully managed to us buy train tickets in advance - for a day earlier. So we had que up to buy new ones. Believe it or not - despite the chaos it took only 10 minutes.
By mid day we had made it to the Westlake in Hangzhou and started walking around enjoying the sun and the flowering trees. Every now and then we came past a tea house or temple.
Springtime:
(My chinese posing skills, well developed by now...)
It doesn´t really matter if you visit Hangzhou on a weekend or national holiday. It is always busy because it is such a popular tourist spot. But when the country is off you get a little extra challenge - keeping balance on the bridges that cross the water and making sure that the crowd doesn´t push you over the edge. It is MEGA busy and in some corners like this passage way below it can get a little chaotic.
A still picture doesn´t really bring across what it was really like. We threfore took a couple of mini films to share this little chaos with you. You will get a nice impression of what it can be like in China - hillarious!.. and a little extra fun when you find out you went in the wrong lane and have to walk against! the crowd :-)
Film 1 - click HERE
Film 2 - click HERE
Now, I can hear you shouting " Oh my god"... :-)...But you know what? It was still real good fun to be there and that´s when we noticed that well into our second year we have adjusted and found our place in China and it´s crowds . After all we are also nothing else than little ants wandering in the middle kingdom
Despite the chaos, despite the noise - at th end of the day it was a nice walk on a sunny day.
Just us - a couple of other people in search for romance :-)
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