China 2010

After going to Japan in Autumn of 2010, I visited the cities of Hangzhou and Shanghai in China. Two very cool people I met on couchsurfing.org hosted me in Shanghai. I got to take tea ceremony classes with one of my hosts when we visited the Hangzhou National Tea Museum, leaving with a much deeper appreciation of tea. The area around the lake in Hangzhou is beautiful and has many gardens. The people I met in Hangzhou were very warm. In Shanghai, things are loud and busy. There are ghettos and shanty towns, Louis Vuitton stores and fancy skyscrapers, a vast number of poorly built high rise apartment buildings, and some historic french architecture. Traffic in Shanghai flows chaotically. The only "rule" is that pedestrians must stay out of the way of vehicles, and smaller vehicles must stay out of the way of large vehicles. There seemed to be a true indifference to death on the road. This system and mentality was difficult for me to understand, although I followed it closely for the sake of self-preservation. On some level it makes sense and it works. On another, it felt inhumane. Lastly, I visited the historic Zhouzhuang water village, which I highly recommend.