Tuesday, September 19, 2017 – Hangzhou – Bangkok

Well it was another long night;  but it’s morning and there is lots of time to stretch and begin packing before breakfast.  Ginger’s sciatic nerve is still giving her trouble and she is stretching it out in hopes of some relief.

Since the French tour had to leave by 6:30, it is easy to find a breakfast table.  We’re completely ignoring the American foods this morning and start with a crepe that is filled with Chinese yummies.  It tastes great but probably doesn’t have a ton or food value, so I go foraging and come back with assorted goodies, like a purple sweet potato, sour beans (I think those small pieces are green beans), tofu, bok choy, and some others.  And a second cup of coffee!  

 When I return we’ve acquired a new tablemate, a lady from Quebec who enlightens us about the divide in the educational system between French and English speakers.  Soon her husband joins us.  He was a teacher and adds details.  It seems that the Catholic church was quite adamant about the French speakers having separate schools.  Although all the schools are public, there was quite a split.  It is a little different now and while there used to be discrimination against the Fracophones, now the tables are turned and it is better to speak French than English!

They also have a daughter-in-law who is not the same nationality as their son, and they and Ginger compare their situations.

There is just time to go back upstairs, finish packing, and go downstairs with all our luggage to check out and meet Julian.  Everyone heads out to the bus and loads up.  We choose seats on the other side of the bus, just for variety – and because I want a window that isn’t divided by a support!

We have a three-hour drive ahead of us to Hangzhou where we will take a boat ride on the West Lake (a UNESCO heritage site) and visit a green-tea plantation.  After dinner we will take an Air China flight to Bangkok.  It leaves after ten and arrives around one in the morning.  Flinch.

 Julian starts us off with some more interesting data about life in China.  First he tells us that each city has it’s own dialect and that it is not understood outside the city.  Because of this the government requires everyone to speak Mandarin when conducting public business.  He tells us that each character can be pronounced four different ways, depending on whether the sound goes up or down and how much.  Each pronunciation has a completely different meaning.

The women in Shanghai are called Dragon Ladies and their husbands are all hen-pecked, doing all the domestic chores.  The ladies accomplish this by never giving their men any clues about what they are thinking.  For example, if a man asks his lady what she wants for lunch, she’ll say, “Anything is fine”.  But to each thing he suggests, she’s say, “No, I hate that.”  Finally, in exasperation, he’ll ask, “Well what the heck do you want?” and she’ll say, “Anything is fine!”

Here they say that marriage is like graduating from college.  First you get a BA – barely available;  then an MBA – married but barely available;  then PhD – person who has daughter!

Regarding the policy of only having one baby, Julian says that is was only changed about three years ago, to allow two children.  He says that it is very expensive to have children for several reasons.  One of which is that, although English is taught in school, most children take classes from private schools.  A forty-five minute class with, perhaps, fifteen students in it can cost two hundred yuan per class. 

Another reason it is so expensive, especially for boys, is that a boy’s parents are expected to provide a house for their son and his new wife.  A girl’s parents only have to provide some furniture and electronics.  Often, the boy’s parents will move out of their own home and give it to their son!  Many people still live with their parents until they are twenty-eight or thirty! (Actually, that didn’t sound so strange!)

There are parks where parents go with a photo of their son or daughter.  A parent will strike up a conversation with someone and ask about the child – age, occupation, do he have a house, etc. If they are pleased with the answers, they will ask to see a picture of the child and the other parent will reciprocate.  Then they will exchange the children’s email or cell phone number and the kids will pursue the relationship! Many marriages are arranged this way;  in fact it is how Julian met his wife!

When you are invited to a wedding you bring a gift of cash in a red envelope.  The newlyweds keep track of the amounts, and when you get married, they will bring you a red envelope with as much, or slightly more money!  The same is true for babies.  That’s why wedding invitations are called “red bombs”!

It is said that money lubricates relationships.  If your child is in preschool with two teachers and a nurse, you would bring a red envelope to the teacher or nurse so she will pay extra attention to your child.  Also, if you are having surgery, you bring a red envelope to your surgeon, even though there are signs in the hospital saying this is illegal.

Because the population is growing so quickly, the country is losing farm land.  They can’t grow enough rice for the population, so it is imported from Thailand.

Julian told us a bit about Hangzhou.  It is famous for its freshwater seafood and is home to 98 Fortune 500 companies.  The residents are said to be very clever financiers and Julian called them the Jews of China.  It is considered a good place to live because the air is good and the pace of living is slower than other large cities.

If you want to be a monk, you must study Buddhism in college for four or five years!

Interesting facts – there is no free health care in China.  Everyone pays into an old-age pension and a health-care plan.  There are various levels of health-care plans.  There is also an income tax.  If you earn less than 2,800 yuan, you don’t pay any tax.  It scales up from there from 5.5% to 45% if you earn 70,000 yuan or more.  Large companies avoid this for their higher-level employees by giving them bonuses instead of high salaries, since bonus don’t count toward your taxable income.  (Doesn’t sound very Communist to me!)

Young people who can’t get good jobs in small towns often go to Japan for several years to earn more money which they save and bring back to China to buy goods and perhaps even a house.

During our three-hour journey to Hongzhou we have a rest stop and Ginger discovers a monument to the first national congress of the Chinese Community Party, held in Shanghai in 1921.

Back to the bus and on to lunch at the Royal Lily Restaurant, with another pair of tables with glass lazy susans, some familiar dishes, and more beer.  AT the bar there is a large jar with a poisonous snake in it.  They make snake wine by dropping a live snake into alcohol and leaving it for six months.  Julian says it is very popular;  but he hasn’t tried it!

Now these look like a communist country.

Two extremes

Snake wine - related to drunken shrimp?

Our first official event is a boat ride on the West Lake.  There are mountains on three sides of the lake with the city on the fourth. Although Julian says the air quality today is good.  You can barely see the mountains for the haze.  He calls it “vapor”, not what we’d call it.  After the ride we have some free time to walk around and take pictures. 

Our new best friend, Helen!

Onward to the Tea Plantation, which is run by the government and grows green tea.  We watch a presentation by a young woman who has studied the science of tea at university for five years.  She touted all the health benefits of green tea with a visual presentation in which she used a glass to symbolize the human body. She put some rice into the “body”, then added some iodine which symbolized calcium (??).  She then added water to show that drinking water wouldn’t change the black water.  Then she added some of the green tea we have all been drinking and the water cleared almost immediately.  In theory this showed that green tea will detox your body. 

Tea plants

The tea leaves are fried in tea oil, from tea seeds, in these bowls.

When individual glasses are filled, it is done in three pours to symbolize "you are welcome"  and you tap the table three times to say "thanks very much" But if you're drinking beer, three taps means you want more!

At the beginning of her talk everyone received a glass with some green tea and a bit of hot (not boiling) water.  We were to smell it and agreed that it smells like spinach.  Then we covered part of the top of the glass and let the steam southe our tired eyes.  It takes about thirty seconds for each eye.  Now we get enough hot water to fill the glass and as the talk continues we sip our tea.  She tells us that we can eat the leaves;  but not to eat them all, as you can add water five times before the leaves are finished.

The whole production is a sales pitch for the green tea leaves that are picked in Spring and for Empress tea which is the very first picking.  The summer and autumn pickings are inferior and go for export.

She is also selling tables of tea polyphenols.  Both products are supposed to be good for weight loss, diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease and gout.  And there are specials if you buy large amounts.

We stop for an early dinner (you know the scenario) and nothing much is different.  There are a couple of new dishes and a different beer.

From here we go to the Hongzhou airport for our flight to Bangkok.  We arrive at 7:15 for our 10:40 flight.  Julian leaves us here to return to Shanghai by train to pick up another tour group.  He tells us to line up for check in around 8:30;  but that isn’t the three hours we were told were mandatory.  We sit for a while, then decide to line up anyway, as there are lots of people in line.  We have to decide if we’re “group” or “economy” and choose the economy line, since that’s what is says on our tickets.  The ticket agents arrive a little after eight.  (So much for the three hours)  We make it through the line, drop our bags, get our boarding passes and move on through the whole process.  At immigration we are told that we need a departure card, so we go back and find those and fill them out.  Back to the agent and on through customs to security.  Remove laptops but not shoes and finally we are at our gate.  What a long day and it’s not over.  It’s a three-hour flight and who knows how long it will be until we get to our hotel.

Well it turns out that we cross a time zone, so the flight is actually four hours and when we have cleared all the hurdle to get out of the airport we find we are with another group, so fitting everyone's suitcases - and bodies - on the bus is a trick.  But we arrive at our hotel, The Royal Orchid Sheraton and get our rooms sorted out.  it's well after four in the morning by the time we are in our room.  We are supposed to meet to load the bus at 7:30.  One couple is quite annoyed;  but everyone else understands that it's just life - get on with it!!  Ginger opts for a couple of hours sleep and I just stay up.  As the sun comes up we can see that we're on a river!  Very pretty!