Days 20-27: Hangzhou + Huangshan

          I was reluctant to leave Lijiang, in fact it was the first city I wasn’t ready to leave yet.  However, I was looking forward to meeting my next couchsurfing host, Xiaomin in Hangzhou.  We had messaged several times before I left and he had been incredible helpful with helping me figure out my travel plans while I was in China.  He gave me the link to a chinese site for cheap flights, called travel agents to check out the best option for my plans, helped me pick out a hostel for while I was in Hangzhou (he was only able to host me while in Huangshan) and even arranged my bus tickets for getting from Hangzhou to Huangshan, and from Huangshan to Shanghai.

          Xiaomin let me know when my flight was delayed and even figured out how long it had been delayed for, both of which he was able to let me know before the airport even told me.  He met me at the gate at the airport and had already bought me a ticket on the shuttle bus.  He took me to my hostel, helped me get checked in, and made plans to meet me in the morning for breakfast.

West Lake

          The next couple days Xiaomin showed me his favorite sites in Hangzhou.  The famous west lake, that is featured on the back of the 1 yuan bill.  A bamboo forest.  The Lingyin Temple.  Each was really cool, but would have been a lot better in their full glory in the summer.  Unfortunately for me, the weather in Hangzhou was quiet a bit chillier then Lijiang and wetter.  On Chinese New Years Eve, Xiaomin had to go and be with his family for the holiday and I was left on my own. 

          Chinese New Years, or Spring Festival as it’s direct translation, is the largest holiday in China.  Spring Festival is a family celebration in which you gather with your family who you may not have seen since last year.  Everyone in China will usually get at least the first week of spring festival off to do this.  Because a large portion of workers in China are migrate workers who’ve left their small towns to find work in the large cities, many of them are all traveling back home at the same time.  This creates the largest human migration in the world each year.

          When I was planning my trip, I found very little information about what exactly is the best way to experience the holiday as a foreigner.  In fact, most information I looked up told me that Chinese New Years is the worst time to travel in China.  Some said to straight up not to do it.  What information I could find said that because major cities will be largely abandoned, the real place to be is in the small towns in China.  I also found someone’s post saying they went to the small(ish) city of Huangshan for New Years and they had a really good experience there.  So I figured if it worked for them, might as well try it since I couldn’t figure out a better plan.

          I ended up staying in Hangzhou for New Years Eve, and then heading to Huangshan the next day.  I asked Xiaomin if there were any kind of celebrations of ceremonies I could witness, but he said that most chinese just stay inside with their family and watch the new years ceremony on TV.  He explained that the real parades and celebrates for New Years only happen outside China, in the China towns.

Dumpings I helped make

          The hostel I was staying at offered a New Years Eve banquette that you could attend, and they even let me join in and help make the dumplings for the party.

          After eating, people basically just left and once again I was left to myself.  So just before midnight, and went for a walk to watch the entire city explode in fireworks.  The week leading up to new years, the fireworks were increasingly being lit off every night, and by the time it got dark out fireworks could be heard frequently through the night.

          I set out to find a good vantage point to see the fireworks go off all around the city, but no one I asked had any suggestions, and after wandering around for an hour I failed to find a better option.

And then everything started exploding.  In every direction I looked, fireworks were being set off.  It felt like I was in the middle of a war zone as explosions went off in every direction.  I headed towards the largest source of them and stood and watched as they set off fireworks just meters above me.

Huangshan Old Street

          The next day Xiaomin met up with me and we took the bus together to Huangshan.  After a scenic three hour drive through the mountains, we were there.   

          We explored the old street of Huangshan and tried the local delicacy of “Stinky Fish” as it is directly translated.  Xiaomin didn’t think I’d be willing to try it, but I did and it was actually really good.  I tried to explain Lutefisk to him to explain that I’m used to bad smelling fish dishes.

"Stinky Fish"

          Being in Huangshan was interesting, because apparently not many westerners travel to the city, so I would get a lot of stares and comments from the locals there.  We stopped at a connivence store on the way back and this small child was really confused by me and would walk up close to me and stare.  Xiaomin translated what she said to her parents for me: "I can't even tell where he is from!"

          Unfortunately the cold wet weather had taken its toll on me and my cough had gotten really bad by this point.  We had plans to do a tour of some nearby villages where Leaping Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed, but I wasn’t feeling up to it and let him go without me.

          By later that day, I was starting to feel better and offered to try and make him a real American meal.  So we headed to the largest super market in town and tried to find all the ingredients for what I assumed would be a simple to make meal: pulled-pork sandwiches and potato salad.

          Shopping in China proved to be a bit of a challenging.  First I’d need to translate the quantities into metric, then often times Xiaomin would need to translate the ingredient into chinese to know what it was, and then he’d have to ask someone where to find it.

Xiaomin with my meal

          In the end, I learned what ingredients apparently do not exist in China.  I had to do some substitutions, bread slices for hamburger buns, regular potatoes for red potatoes.  As well as omit several hopefully not key ingredients.  I was fortunately able to find mayo, but ranch was no where to be found, nor sour cream.  Mustard proved to be a challenge.  I had seen ketchup at the store, so I figured they must have mustard as well, but that was a false assumption.  When Xiaomin put the word in his translator, he knew what it was and handed me a tube of wasabi...I don’t think that translation was accurate.

          Minus a few ingredients, I went a head and made the meal.  Like most kitchens in China, his did not have an oven, so I was forced to use the stove, a method I was not familiar with.  As a result I ended up burning the meat a little bit.  Trying to pull pork when you don’t have forks proved to be another challenge I hadn’t expected.

          The end result was less then spectacular, but Xiaomin seemed to really enjoy it and even asked for seconds.

          Leaving for Shanghai next, I felt like I had made a really good new friend, and was a little reluctant to leave.