Hangzhou, our new home ...

Being away from college while it’s on is a weird experience, but finally beginning to feel at home. This week went by really quick, classes are in full swing- three weeks of rest after Language School and I am finally back to being a full time college student again. And what do college students do best? Enjoy their weekends. Our weekend began on Thursday (no class this past Friday) with a hike up Hangzhou’s Baoshishan (Gem Mountain). Once you summit, there awaits a beautifully-aged pagoda and a grand view of the Western Lake beneath and the expanse of the city. The weather that day was particularly humid and warm which meant that by the time we made it back down we were all pretty exhausted and famished and a dinner at a Thai restaurant and a midnight snack at McDonald’s ensued.

The next day was definitely my favourite yet, while at Hangzhou. We all slept in and did absolutely nothing but hang around and chat till the afternoon after which a few of us decided that we should cook dinner. After a trip the supermarket for Indian food ingredients (where it took longer than expected because turmeric isn’t all that easy to explain in Chinese), we cooked a very multiethnic but equally yum meal. The weekend also including a very embarrassing performance (to all of us) when we went bowling and a couple of hours at a very swanky KTV (karaoke place).

While at the supermarket, my friend and I came across the little animal section (not for consumption, by the way) and decided that post dinner we would head to the night market to buy ourselves a couple of little turtles. We did indeed head to the night market near our school after dinner, but the xiaodongwu seller chap was nowhere to be seen. So the bunch of us didn’t lose hope and KangKang (my good ole roommate) said he knew of another place a bus ride away that possible also sold turtles. After a couple of hours on our critter-hunt we finally found a store. But after much deliberation, Aiman and I went on to buy not turtles but rabbits instead.

2 of them. Little, brown and named BuSan and BuSi (literally means “Not three” and “Not four”. When put together BuSanBuSi roughly translated to the ever useful words “shady” or “dubious”; a favourite of Middlebury Chinese students). So far they have been quite a joy, though BuSan is proving to be a little troublesome. He escaped from his cage and disappeared into a hole behind a desk in my room on the first day we got him, which prompted a stressful 12-person search for him throughout the building at 1 in the morning for a good half an hour. And yesterday he did his business on poor KangKang’s bed.

Anyway, back to school. I am taking 4 classes- Hangzhou Studies (A class about the city of Hangzhou, a historic, cultural and ethnic look at the place where I shall be spending my next 3 months), Classical Chinese (the counterpart to Europe’s Latin), Business Chinese (A class about foreign and local businesses in China) and my One-on-One class (The topic I chose for this class is China’s International Environmental Policy). My classes are all very small and very engaging thus far. The teachers seem pretty dedicated and interesting and they also expect us to work hard and the daily load of homework is pretty heavy. But that means I have more to look forward to this weekend when we have the first of our small group travels planned. I am heading with my roommate and 4 others to a place called SanQingShan (Three Distinct Mountains, I swear these things sound better in Chinese). I hope to get a look at a different side of this part of China, away from the chaos of the city, and up the poetic stony peaks at SanQingShan.

Till now Hangzhou has struck me as a place where the people attribute to their natural surroundings a sort of essentiality and importance. There isn’t a resistance to the flow of the seasons and the seasonal adjustment to the cuisine is a sign of this, for example a special dish made from bamboo shoots is only available in the winter time and in the fall, each yet having distinct flavours). The recognition of the vitality and the dominion of nature in the olden days leads to places in China tending to have names more like Hangzhou (the province at the crossing of the river), Beijing (capital to the North), Shanghai (literally- on the sea) as opposed to Mumbai (named after Mumba devi, a goddess) or Washington DC.

Moreover, as you may have a gathered from this and previous posts, the Xihu or Western lake, is quite evidently the historic and in some senses the emotional heart of the city. You can’t say you have traveled to Hangzhou and have not spent a couple of hours by the calm waters of the lake. But overall, it isn’t all that big, and not that all that clean, and the causeways and lotuses and mountains do provide it with a certain gleam but nothing that Lake Champlain can’t match up to, for example. What really makes the lake special, is as much the human investment in the idea of the beauty of the lake as much as the actual beauty of it. It is said that there are 10 scenic views to the lake, including QuYuanFengHe (To see the lotus stirred by breeze in the QuYuan garden) or PingHuQiuYue (To see the autumn moon over the calm lake) or even DuanQiaoCanXue (To see the snow melt on the Broken Bridge). There is even one that made it onto the 1 yuan note is the SanTanYinYue (To see the three pools mirroring the moon).

Such a consciousness of what surrounds them provides the people of this city with a sort of natural desire to preserve. In the years to come, when the choices that China will need to make get harder and more vital to where we as a globe are heading; I hope that this inherent trait will play a role.