Breakfast in the group dining room again. Nothing special, but quite acceptable. They offered a number of varieties of very tasty bread, rolls, fruit, and a few Chinese dishes, some obvious and some mysterious. Today they had black coffee instead of the pre-creamed coffee of yesterday. Yay!
After breakfast, we four set off by cab to the Lingyin Buddhist Temple. The 1600 year old temple is the home of 3000 monks at this time. It is just on the outskirts of Hangzhou. We started with a short gondola ride to the top of a steep hill. There’s a building project of some sort underway at the top, and our departure from the base station was delayed while they loaded bricks on a freight car that formed the fourth car in our group. A thick mist prevented us from seeing the city from the great height, but we did see rows of tea plants. There was a small Buddhist shrine on the top. People were making offerings of incense and prayers. We didn’t stay too long as we knew we had much more to see.
Once in the valley again, we explored the limestone caves, where there are more than 100 Buddha figures carved into the rocks, all of varying sizes, and locations. It was enjoyable to climb up the steep, ropey-vine covered cliffs on narrow stairsteps and into the shallow caves to find the figures incised into the stones.
After all this exercise, lunch seemed like good idea. Since there was only one restaurant, we went in. It was rather nicer than we frequent, with linen cloths and elegant atmosphere. The waitress spoke no English, but did produce a menu in English. For some reason three of us, not Dan, chose “Noodle Bowl With Three Delicacies” and Dan chose prawns. The large noodle bowls arrived hot and steaming and full of unrecognizable things … “Which of the many unfamiliar food items were the three delicacies?” we wondered. Well, Bruce and I like mushrooms. We are not too proficient at slurping long noodles with chopsticks though. I’m sure it was all haute cuisine Asian style, but for us it was mystery soup. Pink things, white fringy things, and pink and white stripy things. And several styles of brown wrinkly things. The broth was tasty. After seeing the prawns peering at him Dan decided to try again and order plain noodle soup, so Bruce tackled the prawns which needed peeling and deheading. Dan mostly sucked the broth and slurped the noodles. On the whole, I’ve had far worse travel eating adventures. But Dan couldn’t wait to get to an ice cream stand to wash his mouth out with chocolate.
After lunch, came the main temples. Hugely tall, richly painted, intriguing and baffling. Carved stone, gilded wood, and wisps of incense from huge cauldrons. It would have been better if we had had a guide. The few signs in English were mostly lists of rules.
We left the temple area after several hours, and got a cab to a shopping street we had been told about. The method for getting around in a taxi is to have someone proficient in Chinese write down the address to hand to the cabbie. It works well.
First stop was at an ATM. Who would have believed that one could stick a piece of plastic into a hole in the wall halfway around the world and get money straight out of a checking account back home, and in the local currency. That’s sure not the world we knew when we started our international adventures 40 years ago—traveler’s checks, passports, money changing booths, banks, limited hours of operation, forms to fill out. Wow! Ain’t technology grand!
The shopping street was fascinating and we loved it. Small stalls on either side for several blocks, and kiosks down the center. There were all manner of clothing, shoes, jewelry, crafts, herbal medicine, snacks, antiques and trinkets. And all manner of people—old, young, babies, natives, tourists (still few westerners—good). Lots of sounds, shouting, musical instruments playing. I was very happy people-watching while Sarah bought several items of clothing—unique, well made, not traditional Asian, but maybe contemporary Asian. For about $20 US! The air had drifts of incense, body smells, a few bad drains, and strong food aromas. A sensual overload! Dan led us all to Dairy Queen for dinner, where his sundae wasn’t quite up to snuff either. Mine was fine.
Believe it or not, our favorite place to eat here in Hangzhou, discovered by Dan and Sarah, is a hole in the wall place, literally, under the flume ride at the carnival, habituated by the carnies of World Carnival. These folks hail from New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. They are very chatty. Anyway, the menu there is full of simple delicious dishes similar to Chinese restaurants in North America. We all decided we like peasant style Chinese food rather than gourmet.
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