In China - 5

Its late and I want to go to bed, but i wanted to get this online before the weekend (which, of course, will be quite busy!). 

上海の二日後、電車でハンジョウ（杭州）までへ行った：

The last day it was off to Hangzhou (杭州) by train.  Shanghai's South train station is a fancy new station that looks more like an airport than a train station... unfortunately there are only two restaurants in the whole place! :-P

Its an ~80 minute train ride to Hangzhou on the new high speed direct train (apparently it used to take like 2 hours+)  tickets were only 54 rmb each (~US$7.50) too.

上海の南駅でした。新し丸し！空港みたい。ハンジョウまで~80分かかる、切符～８００円だけ。

The main attraction in Hangzhou is the world famous West Lake (西湖 - Xihu). I found a hotel online that was only about a 10 minute walk from the lake('s name written on a rock)....

ハンジョウの一番有名な所は西湖です。湖の近いのホテルで泊まりました。

The problem was that the weather was not so cooperative!  it was quite hazy... most of the apparently beautiful scenery of the islands and hills in the back was obscured.

でも今日の天気あまり晴れじゃなかった！あまり見えませんでした。残念！

You can hardly see to the other side.  its like staring out to sea! :-P

反対見えない！

Along the banks of the lake are a number of park areas, in this particular one there were a number of performing groups.  I'm not sure what kind of traditional music they were singing, but it was amusing to watch. Some of them were literally performing side by side and dueling with their sound systems...

湖の隣たくさん演じるグループが居ました。

Most of them seemed to have old men playing the instruments while an older woman sang on a microphone.  One of them had a unique feature (other than that lady's hair!): a guy dancing along...

I'm no expert, but based on my knowledge of traditional Shaoxing-style Chinese Opera, this dance would normally be associated with a female character... meaning either a woman does the dance or its performed by a 'dan' (旦 - wikipedia) aka, a female character impersonated by a man...  this is just my guess...  perhaps you'll agree after watching this video?

このグループはダンサーも有りました。男ですけど、女のダンスをした。。。ビデオを見てください！

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q1q-LIYsl8"Zherrrrrr!"

Despite the hazy weather, some people were still trying to get the full Xihu experience:

I preferred walking. :-P

天気けど、まだ人船を乗りました。

When I saw this statue, I immediately thought of my pal Xibanyae... because I know if he were here he would have stood next to this statue and taken a picture of himself doing the exact move. :-D

As the sun got lower in the sky the impenetrable haze became beneficial:

Golden skies! (one on the right looks better, doesn't it?) すごい夕映えがありました！

Partly because I was tired of walking and because I wanted to get a good sunset picture for my 'Sunsets By Etchy' photo album, I jumped at the chance to stop near a pavilion when I saw an empty bench:

Promises to be a great sunset right?

->
Doh, wrong!  too much haze, the sunset just fizzed!  Even before it was anywhere near going behind the hills there was almost no color left. :-O

残念早く夕映えがなくなりました。。。

actually i got a good one w/ my friend's CASIO (with the sunset mode!) before it was too late:

綺麗ですか？

After that it was a short walk over to Hefang Lu, which as you can probably guess was another artificial shopping area...　その後も一度お土産店所まで行った。

For some reason there seemed to be like 3 or 4 nearly identical stores selling Tibetan 'folk' products... it appears someone figured out that tourists would be interested in buying it, so next thing you know 10 more pop up out of nowhere.

This one had one thing made this place somewhat unique,  they had a long alley of food stalls, each specializing in a specific dish from different parts of China. It was crowded and some of them looked pretty good, but i didn't want to risk it.

Instead we went to a place around the south side of the lake that was in my friend's guide book.

お外の屋台在りましたので、綺麗レストランへ行った：

I can't remember what the name of this was in Chinese... but basically it was a pyramid of pork! 豚のピラミッド でした。美味しそう？

And got some steamed jiaozi too for good measure. So the question is, how much would you pay for all this? 餃子も食べた！

この食べ物全部幾らと思いますか？何千円？

The answer is:

101 RMB = less than $15! 　全部~1500円ぐらい！安い！

After dinner I stopped to watch this guy:

I was impressed w/ the fact that he was writing it in traditional Chinese.  I don't normally give money to street performers, etc... but after being confronted by (and in some cases practically assaulted by) literally of dozens of beggars and hundreds of people trying to sell me useless junk I would never want to buy over the previous 5 days in China,  I wanted to reward this guy for actually working hard and doing something which required skill.

(I didn't take any pictures of it, but in Shanghai I had seen a bunch of younger people just write "I am hungry" or "I need money to get home" in chalk on the sidewalk and sit in front of it and try to look hungry. After you see it a few dozen times, you start getting suspicious... )

上手ですか？繁体字で書いた！すごい！