I had planned on sleeping in this morning, but as you know, “sleeping in” for me means “5:30am”. After waiting for a little while, I woke the little lady up and decided that we should get an early start to our day due to all the crowds I was sure we’d hit. We hit the hotel breakfast buffet first, and then took a cab to Six Harmonies pagoda, which was along the main river that cuts Hangzhou in half. Getting out early turned out to be a great idea. We found Hangzhou to have really bad traffic, and the traffic hadn’t started by the time we got out. So, we managed to get in early, not have to deal with any crowds, and get out fairly quickly.
Here’s the pagoda:
We paid the 10RMB required to climb up to the top, and the climb wasn’t nearly as bad as we were expecting. It was worth it for the views alone.
A hazy morning overlooking the other half of Hangzhou:
The inside of the pagoda wasn’t much to look at, but occasionally there was a bit of art or intricate patterns in the ceiling or whatever.
After we got out, we decided to walk the grounds for a while. This turned out to be really pleasant due to the lack of crowds and the pleasant weather.
They were charging 10RMB to ring this big bell, and the little lady wanted in, so we paid the money and she got to ring the bell six times.
Her hits were pretty weak, but you can hear them if you listen carefully.
This was a really nice area.
All sorts of little towers with Buddhist symbolism/imagery were on the grounds. Here’s an example:
We hiked up to the top of the nearby hill and were disappointed to find that it didn’t have much more than a bathroom, so we quickly went back down and then caught a cab to our next destination: the Xixi Wetlands Park. It took us forever to get there due to the traffic, but once we got in, it was pretty interesting, if unbearably hot after a while.
Here’s some typical scenery inside the park:
We saw a single crane while we were inside. I was expecting more wildlife, but I’ll take it.
There was a botanical garden inside the area, so we bought tix and went inside. Man oh man, do the Chinese go crazy for flowers. We had noticed this at the Six Harmonies pagoda as well—every person with a tripod and DSLR in Zhejiang province had congregated there to get photos of potted flowers. A bit strange, if you ask me.
In one area, they built see-through barriers into the water so people could walk through and see what’s underwater. We took a walk through there, and there were lots of fish to see.
We kept walking, stopping occasionally to photograph the flowers or other interesting sights.
We didn’t stay long. It was super hot and I ended up getting sunburned pretty badly, so we found the nearest exit, searched for a cab for about 45 minutes, and then went back to the McDonald’s near the hotel. The traffic on the way back was horrible, and the driver wasted our time by doing a couple u-turns and trying to find faster ways—none of which worked—to get us to our hotel. I think that was the first time I’d ever seen that before. What a disaster.
We got lunch at McDonald’s and then hung out in the hotel lounge for about an hour. The traffic was so bad that we felt like we couldn’t risk missing our train, so we ended up leaving really early for the train station and then hanging out in the chaos that was Hangzhou Station.
All in all, we saw some great stuff in Hangzhou, but I was a bit disappointed. Hangzhou was much smaller, slower and less crowded when I first went there 12 years ago, and that’s a lot of the reason why my classmates and I loved it so much (at the time, we all agreed that BYU should change its study abroad program from Nanjing to Hangzhou). Now, Hangzhou is very commercial and extremely touristy, and all that slow, small town charm is gone. All that said, it’s a great city and I think I would enjoy living there, but the best things about Hangzhou will probably remain the memories in my mind.
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