A Hongzhou visit

I have not been back to Hongzhou for over 25 years; what a change! It used to be a nice sleepy vacation spot. Now, it is over one million in population. The well known lake, West Lake (Xi Hu 西湖), is so crowded now. And the shore line has been renovated to accommodate the "commercial" side of tourism. It used to take 4 hours on a train from Shanghai to Hongzhou and required a special pass to travel; now anyone can with a highspeed train. It has cut the travel time down to 2 hours. With the travel restriction lifted years ago, people just swamp to Hongzhou in groups. Traffic becomes terrible; forget about traffic rules; there is no such thing anymore! I thought Shanghai is bad, Hongzhou is worst! This little sleepy city has built a tunnel linking one side of the lake to the other. Wow....

As mentioned earlier, we stayed at Shangri-La because of the good pricing; it was good; turned out this hotel used to be call Hongzhou Hotel (Fan Dian 饭店); it was where I stayed 25 years ago. We stayed at the old villa wind. Didn't like it; musty, the air cond was like 25 years ago - regulated by the hotel. O yeah, Microsoft's sale office is located in villa #3. We were in villa #4. No, not the entire villa, just a room but you need to use security key code to get in. Apparently, there is lots of foreign business people do long term rent there. The buffet b'fast and the a la cart was good price. Lots of food too for the price; we didn't get ripped off.

When we arrived Saturday morning just before 10am. Had b'fast then head out to the hill for a hike. What a hike; we climbed up and down, up and down for over 5 hours. The weather was perfect! Sunny. 28C. It was really good as we were away from the traffic and just clear out our lungs from the day to day breathing in Shanghai. Hongzhou has lots of hiking trails marked off in the hill. We used a running trail marked off by this guy who has been organizing the Sun up to Sun down Mongolia marathon (yes, my iron-wife did it one year, don't ask). So, we climb up and down following markings planted by this guy years ago. The original route was 44Km. We decided to do only 22Km. Took a short cut; but the short cut was pretty stepp going down hill. Pretty much straight drop. With my bad ankles, I felt the initial shock after the first few twists and turns with my feet. O well. After 20 minutes going down the hill, we found civilization again! Accidentally stumble across a newly built temple and village. Interesting. In the middle of no where. But then again, with the over development, not entirely "in the middle of no where". By the time we headed back to the hotel, it was pretty much 5pm. We started at 11:30am. Non-stop; only to have 2 water breaks. It was great! All the fresh air, no honking, no people (well, some... this is China after all). By the time we arrived back to the hotel, my ankles were toasted. Too bad I could not float all the way back. If it weren't for my ankles, I could easily going for a 5K or 8K run, no trouble.

For supper that night, we went to a place on the other side of the lake called the Xi Hu Tian Di (西湖天地）; it was/is a place where you get all the restaurants and dessert places overlooking the lake. I swear, nothing like that before in 1982 when I was there! Starbucks; huge! It wrapped around at least 3,500 sq ft easily. Then our famous Canadian ice cream brand name - same! More than 3,500 sq ft of space and packed! We settled for a Cantonese restaurant; it had great food. We had: tofu with century eggs, bean curds, steamed veggie buns, pork dumplings, a plate of stir-fried veggie I didn't have since I was a child, and to top off, we had a steam fish with eggs. The fish was sliced up into butterflied shape and the eggs were pour around. Wow, it was good and was the most expensive one: RMB$168. Over 1/4 of the total cost of our meal. Ok, we had two more people that came with us. Both were Audrey's friends.

The train to and from Hongzhou was really clean; it was superb! Even the toilets. Back in the old days, I remember, it was a hole in the floor looking down on the track. One can actually make a day trip. More on the train stations later. Got to do some house work.