Barb and Bill take their first tour of China together, along with Kate Garrett and her Mom, Mary. This post covers our day touring Hangzhou, flying to Beijing and our first evening in Beijing.
Thursday, November 10, 1988
I once again woke early with jet lag (Barb slept fine) and wandered down to West Lake to catch sunrise. It was a quiet, peaceful time and I tried not to intrude on the many people doing Tai Chi exercises.
An elderly bicycle rider stopped for a conversation with me. He was a retired teacher of Japanese and had a good American friend who taught him English 40 years before (in 1948). We strolled for a few minutes, talking about China and America, mostly in platitudes but I think both of us wanted to go deeper. I wish I could have spent hours with him — what stories must he have had to tell — but no. He senses that time is up, gets on his bike, we smile and he pedals away. This is one of the only unscripted encounters I have with any Chinese citizens. I wish there had been time and opportunity for more, but it seemed a risky proposition from both directions.
Heading back to the hotel, I noticed that the little specks on the ridge line of the hill were moving. More Tai Chi exercisers. It must have been quite a view from up there.
Back on the bus! We had a busy day ahead. First we took a short ride to another garden on the shores of West Lake, and hustle through in order to catch our boat for a cruise of the lake. It’s a pretty garden featuring the Red Fish Pond. We get a few minutes to feed the fish, but have to keep hustling along.
I began to resent the pace that morning, wishing we could have spent more time in some lovely areas. To be fair, the reason for the quick pace was to cram scenic Hangzhou into one day before we headed to the airport in the afternoon.
The four NY girls were not enthralled with the fish, but they did come across a group of nattily uniformed Army officers who also seemed to be tourists. Our girls insisted on taking a group photo, which may have been the most hazardous duty the Army men had seen in a while. Our national guide, Mr. Li, is in the foreground not being helpful, a typical pose for him.
We did eventually make it to our boat (neither of the ones pictured) and commenced our lake cruise.
We stopped at one of the mid-lake islands for a quick jaunt in another garden, then back on the boat for more cruising and scenery. Hangzhou’s West Lake is indeed quite lovely, with many gardens and temples around its shores. It seemed like one place the Chinese were intent on not messing up with factories and ugly buildings. For a nation not long removed from the Cultural Revolution and decades of desperate poverty, it was refreshing to find a place that seemed treasured for its beauty and history.
After the boat ride, we boarded the bus and zipped up a hillside to a tea commune, home of famous Longjing tea. We stopped in the fields for a bit, inspecting the plants. Barb got more details from the guide. I was not adequately appreciative of the historical importance or gastronomic delights of the wide world of tea. It all looked green to me.
It being rice harvest time, flat spaces were being used to dry the grains. This lady, sifting rice grains by hand, was not pleased with having a bunch of tourists taking pictures.
Next to the tea field was a fish pond being drained and harvested, which I found interesting though odorous. The girls went into the gift shop to buy some tea. I was more interested in the street food market outside. It was not the time or place for us to eat, but the food looked good, and it was one of the few times we were close to regular Chinese folks enjoying their food.
Fish pond, drained and being harvested 
Fast food!
We bused back to the hotel for our own lunch. Barb and I skipped lunch (!) to run down to the lakeside to get tacky tourist photos done at a little stand which a couple of others in our group had found. The people running the stand don’t speak much English, so Barb and I cause quite a commotion trying to haggle in our approximation of Chinese and pick out costumes.
They had a hard time making the robes fit around me (what would they do nowadays?) and I didn’t know how to hold a fan properly (they kept correcting me). Barb fit right in, even though she wasn’t very comfortable with the impromptu makeup job and wig. I’m still more than a bit embarrassed that we did these, but you know, when in China…
For the afternoon, one more stop at a sort of Song Dynasty amusement park, the Yellow Dragon Cave. We wandered the park for a bit, stopping to see the period reenactors and generally goofing off. We have fun picking at Barb’s hair after her encounter with the wig.
Two cuties and their “manager” 
Butterfly checks out Barb’s nails 
Kate checks Barb’s hair
Our final tourist stop in Hangzhou is 35 minutes at the Friendship Store. On the way to the bathroom, Barb finds words to live by: “Carry oneself with civilization. Pay attention to hygiene.”
Postcards of things in Hangzhou we didn’t have time to see…
We were back at the hotel by 4pm to gather bags and get to the airport. The group conferred on how to handle tips for our local guides, Kenny and Mr. Li. We decide to put the tall man, Pat, in charge. I think the pollen oral liquid was part of the prize package, or it may have just been something odd in the Friendship Store. Either way, we got to the airport to learn that we had to wait another hour or so for the delayed plane. We killed time by trying to guess whose Louis Vuitton bags were real (if any).
Our flight was our first on CAAC, China’s national airline. We were all a bit worried because CAAC had not only a poor safety record (note that its Wikipedia entry includes a long list of crashes and “incidents”), but the on-board service was famously spartan. We were somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that our plane was a Boeing 737, though a suspiciously old one. The flight to Beijing ended up being successful and without incident.
Does one need to specify Economy Class in a classless society? 
Very glad that we didn’t need to use the airsickness bags
It was evening in Beijing by the time we arrived and transferred to our hotel, the Sheraton Great Wall, so we didn’t see much on our trip from the airport, nor did we have much appreciation of the hotel itself. We were excited, however, to be in a nice, new Western hotel for the next three nights.
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