Hangzhou: Gradual Redemption

The second half of the day went much better. We hit a few stops before the temple, and they were a lot more interesting than the crap on West Lake. Another mausoleum, for a guy named Yue Fei, was along the way. This place was better, but still full of tourist crap. I just liked that there were a few statues left near the tomb. And yes, the tomb was indeed "restored". Another example is just outside of the tomb, there was a juniper tree, leaning way to the left. There was a sign by it that explained: The word Juniper was symbolic to the man's name who killed Yue Fei, so to dishonour the guy who executed Yue Fei wrongfully, they planted a juniper tree crooked when they buried Yue Fei. Then the sign went on to say that during the cultural revolution (they didn't call it that, they just stated the date), they removed the tree, and this one was planted in its stead. So instead of a giant, old crooked Juniper tree with history, there was a nice little 20 year old tree planted there for no apparent reason or history. Oh well.

On our way out of the mausoleum, we got hit up by a bunch of souvenir vendors ("Come, come, buy this! You've seen it a million times! Come buy it at insane markups!"). Chris bought a silk shirt for 55 yuan. Silk is really well known and cheap in this area, so it's easy to find real silk shirts for cheap. He talked her down from over 100 yuan. I didn't buy anything, since I knew there was a night market in Hangzhou that would be more willing to haggle. I love night markets. It's also easy to find cheap silk in Suzhou and Wuxi as well, so I wasn't terribly worried.

Afterwards, we walked further towards the temple (it turned out to be way further than we expected), and we came across a botanical garden. Like I said, Hangzhou's only the prettiest city in China because it has living plants. We went in, and took a walk around. It was nice, and Chris is very fond of nature walks, as I've discovered over the last few trips, so we killed quite a bit of time there. I was still in the books of "Hangzhou still sucks, but at least they've got a few things", but it seemed that Hangzhou was slowly bringing us around. We also saw people fishing out of the ponds with crayfish, which are cheap in China. Didn't see any catches though, and the ponds were so small, it made me wonder how many fish could really be in there.

Eventually, we finally made it to the temple. The temple itself was standard tourist stuff, but the surrounding area was pretty cool. A large series of caves nearby, and a long climb up the mountain made it very worthwhile. The forested area around the caves were very jungle-like, complete with huge vines, even hanging in the way of the paths. Caution signs were everywhere, as in China, they don't make things safe for their customers, they just warn them they're in a lot of potential danger. The caves seemed genuine, and at first, we thought they were air conditioned, but I soon realized it was because the caves were so damp, they actually dripped water everywhere. The ground was wet and slippery.

At the top of the mountain, there was a small monument, looking heavily pirated. I wanted to know what it was for, so I started a brief conversation with a Chinese guy, but unfortunately, his explanation involved too many words outside my vocabulary. However, I now know that difeng means "place". So that peak was the place that something happened, according to the Chinese guy. How profound my knowledge has become! Sarcasm doesn't work well in text, does it? I later found out from an American guy with a Chinese girlfriend that reaching the top meant you were supposed to make a wish, but I never found out the answer as to why. Something about an emperor being there, or something. Translating Chinese is hard.