To fulfill my promise to my guests of showing them the scenic country side of China, our itinerary for the day was to pay HangZhou a little visit, allowing It to further beautify our memory of having been to China.
HangZhou together with the beautiful West Lake (西湖) founded by the famous poet Su Dong Po (苏东坡), was entitled as "The most beautiful City in China". The city's beautify is prominently evident in the above picture of the west lake.
Our first stop at HangZhou was the Willow Gardens (柳树公园). Personally I love the willow trees as being a fan of Su Dong Po's poems which always uses the willow trees metaphorically, I excitedly got Chris and Bernard to jump off the Buick to snap good shots of the garden.
After having had enough of the Willow Trees, we headed "bridge" which allows the people to travel across the lake by foot. This wasn't exactly a bridge but more of an isle.
We walked along the "bridge", which measures approximately 2km from one end to the other. The walk did not seem tiring as the breezy weather together with HangZhou's mesmerizing beauty inspired us to keep moving on to see what other charming sceneries it has to offer.
In midst of our journey, we came across a Peacock farm. Barricaded in an area of approximately 50 square meters laid a habitat of Peacocks. Unfortunately I missed the moment when the peacock decided to seduce its apposite gender by "flowering" its butt!
Having arrived at the other end of the Isle, we got my driver to come pick us up and send us to the all time famous restaurant of HangZhou - Lou Wai Lou (楼外楼). Here we were ceased the chance to indulge in HangZhou's delicacy, Dong Po Rou (东坡肉), which directly translates to Dong Po meat. Note that the meat is named after the poet, Su Dong Po.
After the meal, we had to further tantalize our sweet tastebuds with a specialty desert made by the restaurant.
After the meal, we set off to the tea plantations at LongJing Village. As the name suggests it, HangZhou is also famous for its LongJing tea plantations. Our arrival at the village was welcomed and greeted by a lady villager. She kept insisting that we drop by her house to try out her Long Jing Tea. She soon turned out to be a pest as she just could not give up tagging with us, constantly bugging us to drink Long Jing Tea. All we did was mumble random Korean and Japanese words to her, pretending that we were mandarin noobs.
By playing dumb by pretending not to understand her, when she pointed at the tea leaves and said "cha", Chris would point at the floor and repeat after her saying "cha"; and when she pointed at the duck meat saying "ya", Chris would point at the sky and say "ya".
Knowing that Chris is very fond of pigs and pork and that seeing such non-halal stuff dangling in mid-air is a rare sight back at home, I decided to show everyone that pork... is just a food! =P
Our final destination for the day at HangZhou was the tea museum. This tea museum is situated in midst of a beautiful tea plantation. It had a wide range of tea leaves on display.
I bet everyone must be overwhelmed by the faces of Bernard and Chris. Well, that's sadly the case as these pictures were mostly taken by me. Lets just hope that they will have lots of pictures of me in their blogs!
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Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
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