Hangzhou: Morning

It was Father's Day today, and I was irritated because there was a huge lack of internet cafes in Hangzhou. I decided to email Pops a day late. I seem to be bad at that. Chinese Internet is so irritatingly sparse that I've been hard pressed to send emails for special occasions, and update the blog.

We woke up to no power. Yet another Chinese Brownout. This makes two trips in a row where we've woken up in a hotel room with no power. It's justifiable when you convert the prices and realize I slept in a hotel room for about 10 bucks. Besides, I had showered the night before anyway. Chris showered in the pitch black, as our room only had a fake window, letting in minimal light, and certainly none to the bathroom. I took a walk around, and bought two doughnuts for breakfast for Chris and I. Finally, Western food done right! The Chinese finally got it! The doughnuts were surprisingly good. It must be their knack for deep frying half of their food.

Eventually, we checked out, and set out for a few more sights before heading home. We headed way out to the west to see the tea museum. Hangzhou is famous for their Longjing (Dragon Well) tea. I had tried it the day before, and it wasn't bad, I'm just not a tea-drinker. Talk to me when they get coffee right. The history of the tea was interesting, and as always, was created and named in honour of some great leader.

The entirety of the Chinese history is entailed as such: This generic item/event was created/planted/begun because so and so was wronged by this evil-doer, and as such, we created this generic item/event in his honour. The actual history of China is actually quite blunderous: Someone did their job, and got punished by their superior for it, usually by execution. Later, they discover that he did his job right/well, and so they honour him with a statue or a holiday, and from then on, his superior is evil.

Example: Many people were in charge of building sections of the Great Wall. One guy spent his entire budget in order to build his section, and was executed for it. He was deemed to be overspending. Over several invasions, it turned out that his section was the only one that consistently stood, so he was honoured with a fucking statue. I'd rather keep my head, thanks.

Example Number Two: The Yue Fi Mausoleum. His leader executed him for some random reason. Since then, they realized that his standpoint on the random reason was correct. They reburied him in the Mausoleum, and erected a statue of his leader. People spit on that statue, because now he's the bad guy. They also did that whole Juniper tree deal (see two posts ago: Gradual Redemption) to insult the leader.

Anyway, back to the point, the Tea Museum was really far out, and was filled with all sorts of scams. Nearby, a tea ceremony was held, and you could join in for free. The lady on the bus that helped me find the right stop turned out to be one of the ladies that harass you to go to this place once you get off the bus. When I heard "Free", I immediately became wary, because there would be no reason for so many little Chinese women to harass tourists for free. It turns out, once I asked others, that they bring you to the ceremony, and "encourage" you to drink the tea and join in the ceremony. You can watch for free, but the moment you try the tea, you've bought the tea. It is routinely extremely expensive, anywhere from 500 to 1500 yuan. I rejoiced in my wisdom of not following the "nice lady giving directions". The actual Tea Museum was expensive, and turned out to be quite crappy, as well. 35 yuan for a tiny ass museum (although I learned a lot about the Longjing tea), but I found a few paths behind the museum which lead up the mountain. This ended up with a lot of very pretty pictures of mountain scenery and the farms where they grow the tea leaves.

On my way back, I took a diferent route through the forest paths, and saw a small cottage. I approached it, thinking it might have some importance, and around the corner came a huge German Shepherd, snarling and chasing after me. I ran from the house as quick as I could, and fortunately, the dog was on a short leash, but the thing would have gnawed on my face for a long time to come, if it had the chance. Nobody even came to see what was going on, despite the large dogs numerous angry barks, and my shouting out loud when I first saw it.