Hangzhou: Afternoon

Once we had left the Tea Museum, we took a bus back to the bottom of the West Lake, and stumbled upon the Leifeng temple and pagoda, across the street from each other. The temple was typical of all the others, although one of the buildings was quite nicely decorated inside. The problem with the temples is that they are very similar to each other, and you can't take pictures of the impressive Buddha statues, or anywhere inside the temple, because people pray to them. Religion ruins everything! Chris and I foreignered through some construction and made it behind the tourist barricade, and found a small pagoda that was actually legit, as well as some writing in the mountain that was also surprisingly old. The temple area used to be giant, but all that area was grown in with forest, and so most people only saw the now walled in tourist area. It's quite unfortunate, because that back area was really nice.

We then went over to the Leifeng Pagoda side of the street. This pagoda was cool. It turned out that the original pagoda had crumbled (By means of the Cultural Revolution? I don't know), and they had built a huge, new one over top of it. The original was kept in tact (roughly) and was surrounded by glass windows, inside the new pagoda. The new pagoda had escalators, and elevators (no joke). It had been built as a tribute to the old one, or along those lines. The view from the top was spectacular, and each floor had some kind of meaning. The top floor was essentially a viewing floor. The floor below it had carved wood above each door to the outside, again for viewing. The carved wood was done so it was a picture of what you could see out that door, which was cool. Again, a floor below that was a series of 3D wood carved murals, telling a story of the original legend.

The story (based off of my memory) goes as such:
Song Li (name may be slightly off, it's Song something) was born and grows up, steals some magical herb, causes a bunch of other evil things, but is then captured inside the original Leifeng pagoda. The pagoda eventually crumbled, and the Song family celebrates. It is worth noting that the Song name would be of an important family, as there are a few leaders, and a dynasty named as such. Hangzhou has most of its history take place in the Song Dynasty.

Once again, a floor below that was another viewing room, with artistic murals above each door. I couldn't figure out the meaning of these ones. Below that were three floors where you were able to see random crap they were selling, and/or the original pagoda's remains.

Once finished there, we took a walk down the street to find a place to eat. Chris was determined to find a place where he could sample another famous dish of Hangzhou's: Beggar's Chicken. It's a roasted chicken, cooked in charcoal, and it is by no means meant for beggars. It's roughly 80 yuan. So we took a walk, and bickered about which restaurant to try, and finally agreed on one. The chicken was good, but not great. I don't know what's special about it, as it tasted like just about any roasted chicken, but it was good, albeit somewhat Westernized.

After dinner, we set out for one more attraction, since we were running close to the time the bus left Hangzhou for Wuxi. The Lonely Planet book claimed that Hangzhou is known for scissors, and that it had a small scissors museum that would explain why. We got the name of the place the museum was supposed to be, and it turned out there were two shops (at least). Neither of them had a museum, and they both turned out to be small shops that sold knives and scissors. We were not impressed, and it took us forever to find a cab to get there, as well. We made it to the bus station with about 5 or 10 minutes to spare.

My final impression of Hangzhou would be that it's OK, at best. Its got way too much touristy crap, but if you look hard enough, there are quite a few interesting things in the city. Personally, I think it would be best as a home base to live in, as I am in Wuxi, while travelling out to other cities. The appealing things would be more interesting if you picked them up as a resident, such as the legends, and the easy day-trip attractions that are actually worthwhile (like Leifeng Pagoda/temple, and certain portions of the West Lake). It would also explain why Hangzhou had so many foreigners.