On to Hangzhou

Today started with breakfast at our hotel in Shanghai and then a two hour bus ride to Hangzhou. We are going to be spending our weeks in Hangzhou, and our weekends on trips to other parts of China. Hangzhou is a nice city that seems much more livable than Shanghai. Once we arrived there we checked into our hotel and then went on a quick walk around the hotel to see the local banks, markets, bakeries, and restaurants. After lunch several of us then went on a long walk to the botanical gardens and to the local university. At the university I took a picture of this huge Mao statue in the mall of the campus. Chairman Mao, of course, was a famous controversial Chinese leader and is thought of here like George Washington or a similar American hero.

After our long walk around part of Hangzhou we took a little break and watched some Chinese TV. It was fun to try to figure out what was happening in the story when you can’t understand a word of what is happening. Then, it was time for dinner. This turned out to be a great adventure because we stopped at a restaurant that was busy (we figured that meant it was good/safe). The problem was that the menu was in Chinese and didn’t have any pictures.

We just each picked one dish each and took our chances. We ended up with chicken parts (we each had some brain—quite tasty!), some type of pork, and prawns. We even had some Cheerday drink that was supposedly from some green lake somewhere and is pure to drink. We did manage to each eat some of the food before rushing back to the hotel for our first introduction to our Chinese language classes. Tomorrow we begin in the morning with our language instruction. The picture below is of me, Jose (my roommate), and Katie and our fine Chinese meal.