September 14 - China: Hangzhou
We slept in until 10:00 today. Jon had grand plans of going for a run this morning, but obviously didn't make it. My head cold was on full throttle, but I felt like I needed to get outside and do things - just to occupy my mind at the very least. And it was a beautiful day. So we walked out of the hotel, which is situated on the edge of a lovely lake, and walked around the lake to get to town for lunch.
View from the XinXin Hotel
The walk took about 30 minutes, and we stopped by a bookstore along the way to find something for Jon to read. Then we walked to McDonald's, which Jon has been craving. Over lunch, we figured out what we wanted to do today. We decided to go to Lingyin Si, an old monastery, and then decide later on if we felt like doing anything else. I feel as if sight-seeing is sort of sacrilegious, given the events of the last few days, but sitting around doesn't seem to help anyone. And we can't get any news on the television anymore so we're going quietly crazy with nothing to do.
Lingyin Si
We caught a taxi to Lingyin Si, and made our way around the complex. This is one of Hangzhou's main tourist attractions, so the megaphone-toting, hat-matching, sight-crowding Chinese tourists were all over the place. We ran into Ted and Ivy on their way out. They of course walked to the temple from the hotel (we took a taxi) after they walked the 8+km around the lake this morning. These two have somehow found the fountain of youth, so I plan to bottle it once I figure out how they do it.
Anyway, Jon and I walked into the temple area and first visited the stone grottos in the rocks on the side. These were beautiful Buddha statues carved into the rocks and into various caves in the hillside. It's unbelievable how much detail there was in the carvings, and how much time it must have taken to carve.
There were stairs leading up the hill beyond where we could see, so we decided to walk up and see where the stairs went. It was the strangest thing - stairs led to stairs which led to stairs. Many of them going up, some going sideways, some going down. But they all seemed to converge on the top so we kept going up. It was a steep climb, and after 20 minutes we thought about turning around. The stone grottos were only on the bottom of the hill, so we had nothing to look at but tall trees and a few other tourists. We decided to keep going. At the very least, we figured, we'd have a view over the temple. We were wrong. The stairs led to a pile of large rocks at the top of the hill. But the trees were so tall around the top that we couldn't see a thing. What a waste of time and energy! I later joked that it was a like an Escher Painting - rows and rows of stairs in all different directions that led to nothing.
So we rested a while, drank water, and went back down the various stairs and into the temple. The halls and temples were lovely, and it was nice to see it here in China where we'd previously thought all these sights would be destroyed. This place is so different from Tibet, which was crowded with prostrating pilgrims and monks. These temples are crowded with tourists and cheap souvenirs. They are pristinely clean, whereas Tibet's were dark, smoky, and covered in yak butter soot and smells. After all my complaints about the sickly sweet smell of yak butter, I actually found myself missing it.
From Jon: The temples in China almost seemed commercialized, or perhaps just 'too clean' compared to the temples we saw in Tibet. The temple here doesn't look like it is actually used as a place for prayers but more like a museum to present what a Buddhist temple should look like. The temples in Tibet are holy places that many people come to on pilgrimages that they save for their entire lives, and the Tibetan temples show all of the signs of being well-used and inhabited by the monks of the neighboring monasteries. Just an interesting observation...
The Buddha statues are quite different, too. In Tibet they were all of the sleek and solemn Sakyamni (Siddhartha). Here, the Buddhas are fat and laughing. I don't know why this is, but I hope we get a guide later in the trip who can explain the evolution from Siddhartha to the laughing Buddha.
Back to the Hotel
We caught a taxi and headed back to the hotel, where Jon had decided I needed to go to bed. He went to the Shangri-la hotel to bring back the latest USA Today and International Herald Tribune, and we sat in the room for 2 hours and consumed all the news that we could.
Pizza Hut
Afterwards, we went to dinner at Pizza Hut, which is quite a happening place on a Friday night. It's also MUCH nicer than any Pizza Hut in the states. Jon called it a "well-oiled machine" because of the efficiency of the place (we were right next to the kitchen, so we saw it all first-hand). Everyone's uniforms were starched, and they had the waiters and waitresses doing certain tasks while the "newcomers" (trainees) did others. We were very impressed. And the pizza was good, too.
Around Town
Then, of course, we went to the Internet Cafe where we unfortunately had to wait 20 minutes for a computer. Still some good news and some bad news via email, but it seems that the former thankfully outweighs the latter.
After the Internet Cafe, Jon wanted to walk around the night market, which had all sorts of great Chinese arts and crafts and souvenirs. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the mood to shop and just wanted to go back and sleep so I was a bit of drag on Jon's enthusiasm. But he made his way around the market, looking a the Chairman Mao watches, chopsticks, and silk. Then we went back to the room to pack and go to sleep.