Barb and Bill take their first tour of China together, along with Kate Garrett and her Mom, Mary. This post covers our day traveling from Wuxi via Lake Tai by boat, a quick lunch in Huzhou and then by bus to Hangzhou, arriving for the afternoon and evening.
Wednesday, November 9, 1988
Still feeling effects of jet lag, I woke up at dawn and tried to get some atmospheric pictures of Lake Tai in the morning mist. Mostly I just got mist.
Soon enough, everyone was up, we checked out of our hotel and boarded a “speedboat” for a cruise on Lake Tai toward Hangzhou.
Lake Tai is a fairly massive body of water. Our speedboat takes 2-1/2 hours to get to the other shore. The trip takes 6 hours in a regular boat.
The lake has an active fishing industry, including the world famous Lake Tai Silverfish. Fleets of junks and other boats were working hard and were picturesque at the same time.
Barb and new friends on the speedboat.
Kate, Annette, Dotty, Barb 
Dotty, Barb, Ginny
The boat let us off at Huzhou where we had lunch. For two days, our guide Kenny had warned us that this was to be the worst food on the tour. It turned out to be not so bad. Kenny also repeatedly warned us not to drink too much at lunch because it was still a 3-hour bus ride to Hangzhou with no stops and no facilities on the bus. This proved to be useful advice.
So we had a little extra time in Huzhou while everyone waited for their chance at the single toilet. So I took a few more pictures of street scenes.
Back on the bus, we zip (relatively speaking) through the countryside. It turns out to be rice-harvesting time. Tea is also growing on the hillsides. Every arable space is put to use, and almost all the work is done by hand.
After about an hour the road deteriorated from an already low level of quality. Kenny said that the road had been under construction for about five years. They had quite a way to go. At some point there was nothing else to do but nap.
Road “under construction” 
The largest piece of machinery we saw at work in China 
Anyone want to buy a bamboo ladder? 
It’s worth noting again that at this point there was relatively little traffic on the roads, and what vehicles there were were mostly aging trucks and farm equipment. There were still a fair number of carts being drawn by horses or oxen. No private vehicles, no cars.
We arrived in Hangzhou in the late afternoon and were delighted to check into the Shangri-La Hangzhou Hotel (website). The hotel, operated by the Shangri-La group out of Hong Kong, was opened in 1984 but had an older feel, reminiscent of the Repulse Bay Hotel. After just a couple of nights in Chinese tourist-grade hotels we were very happy to be back in an international hotel. Spoiled brats that we were and remain.
Hangzhou is renowned as one of China’s loveliest cities, situated on West Lake with a surplus of gardens, temples and dramatic green mountains nearby. It’s long been a tourist destination within China, and there was immediately a sense of leisure and play that had been notably absent in our other stops so far.
We explored the hotel for a bit, then went into the adjacent park just in time for sunset on West Lake.
With sunset over, we were very eager to get back to the hotel for our featured “Western dinner.” Though we had only been in China for four nights at that point, we were already a little tired of Chinese food (how do they it every day??) and we were highly excited. Under other circumstances, the meal would best have been described as mediocre, but we loved it. Barb and I switch from the basic “braised beef” to fish and chips for Barb and curry for me. Barb was extra excited that the hotel had Diet Cokes, a first on this trip. It took more than two hours to serve our relatively small group, but we suffered gladly.
After dinner, we skipped the Cultural Show (which turned out to have been a fashion show — missed my chance to see the models) and we head down to the hotel gift shop. It was a very nice shop with some of the highest quality goods we encountered on the trip. The shop was staffed by a group of beautiful but sullen young Chinese women who had been given clinging silk cheongsams to wear and name tags like “Angel” and “Trixie.” Barb suspected that some Western missionaries vented their frustrations by giving the women these names. I, in turn, suspected that the nametags were scrounged from a yard sale at the Atlanta Marriott or some such place.
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