Day Four…. Hangzhou

Where do we begin. Today was a day filled with all so many things from the smells of the lake, trees, flowers, the sights beautiful lake and mountains, pagodas, people, the tastes of all the different foods we have tasted and so much more.

It is hard to believe that we have only been here for four days with as much as we have done so far.

This morning everyone packed a bag for the night and we all headed to Hangzhou, about a two hour drive from the city of Shanghai. Hangzhou was one of the seven ancient capitals in China. Today, with historical remains of the Imperial City, Royal Temple and Guanyao Kiln of the Southern Song Dynast, it extends before us a panorama of the city’s prosperity in the history.

It has also been great to escape from the sky scrapers for a few days and appreciate the beauty of the this wonderful national scenic area. It is difficult to explain everything we did and keep this as short as possible, so we will do our best.

Frank Yih has been a wonderful host for us today as we arrived in Hangzhou just in time for lunch; A wonderful buffet of a wide variety of food. Ryan tried the baby swordfish, Patricia and Melanie chewed on an octopus for a while, and so so many other choices from dumplings, fish, pork, duck, soups, sushi. Not to mention the desserts; tiramisu (looks like tiramisu, tastes like tiramisu, must be tiramisu) to gummy worms, mousse, ice cream, fondue.

After lunch, we headed over to the West Lake for an afternoon stroll. This lake is surrounded by mountains and has wonderful views. The people are amazing as well. Today was the first time we all walked around together like this and were the stars of the show. Frank has been a wonderful photographer throughout our time here, but the local people were taking photos of us, following us, etc. As Frank would say we are creating Chinese American friendship. The children who knew how to say hello would and even ask to take a photo with us, when we said yes they would get SOOOOOoo excited. A few of them fell in love with Megan and Ryan.

We certainly had a lot of laughs throughout the day!

Dinner is an entirely different story. I think the photos may have to explain the sights we saw, however, the most visual was the sight of a 50 pound fish right out of the water, flung to the floor, knocked out, and cut into 10 different pieces within only minutes.

We all trusted Frank in his decision making while choosing what we would be eating this evening. The choices ranged anything from well, um most types of fish, sea cucumber, ducks with their heads still there, chicken feet, enough to really put your stomach in knocks. Not going to lie, we were seriously nervous about what would be served, however, Frank did a wonderful job with anything from vegetables, clams, giant prawns, local fish from the lake, duck soup (with the entire duck in one piece in the bowl), etc. Turned out to be a lovely meal, as always.

An end to another wonderful day!