Welcome to Hangzhou

We left Beijing today bound for Hangzhou (Hong-Joe), the capital of Ian’s province Zhejiang (Chur-jee-ong). Our flight was 2 hours, but was pretty bumpy and weird cabin pressure that left my soda bottle almost bursting, as well as my stomach. We seemed to climb in altitude until just before we started our decent, which wasn’t much fun. The silver lining to that cloud is that Hangzhou is much warmer than Beijing. It was 70 degrees when we landed…a full 20 degrees or more warmer than Beijing.

Once in Hangzhou, our guide Celine met us and we headed to our hotel on Hangzhou’s famous West Lake. She explained that she is from Xi’An and here for the entire month of November to assist WACAP families with their adoptions. She strictly does adoption guiding, so she knows just what to do and when, which is great peace of mind for us. Right after we leave on the 11th, 3 other WACAP families will be coming in to receive their children, also from Ian’s orphanage. We are her only family this week, so we have quite a bit of flexibility with her.

She is engaged to be married in Xi’An and is excited to be here because the hotel backs to a huge shopping district with stores and stalls lining the alleys. Coming up the street to our hotel, it was plain that this is a hip, young town. No less ten thousand young adults, probably 18 to 25, filled the streets. The population of Hangzhou is “only” 6 million, compared to Beijing’s 14 million, but it is much smaller, so it seems just as populated, if not more dense.

Celine explained to us that farming and textiles are the main economy of Hangzhou, and many of the farmers here are very wealthy. The government uses Hangzhou farmers as their suppliers for city landscape vegetation, so they have a large and steady income. She also explained that Wenzhou, Ian’s home town is also a big city. She said that Wenzhou is known for its wealthy families, which took me by surprise. She said it is a huge clothing manufacturing town, which makes me wonder if my company has facilities there. What a small world that would be!

Celine was quick to point out the Pizza Hut to us, but we explained to her that we want to enjoy the local culture and cuisine, and can have Pizza Hut anytime back home. I think this was a relief to her, and she took us down the back alley and into a local “hole in the wall”. We were ushered into a section of the restaurant partitioned into rooms and she ordered for us since there was no American menu. She ordered two local Hangzhou specialties, West Lake fish and Dragon Well shrimp. Tea arrived and the two dishes, fresh and sizzling, came along with fried rice in less than 10 minutes. We were relieved to hear that here, tea IS green tea unlike Beijing which only serves jasmine. It was a nice change of pace.

Dinner was phenomenal. The fish came whole, and Nemo & Dora were poised to stare at me throughout the entire meal. It was delicious light and flaky white fish in a soy/brown sugar type glaze. The shrimp were small, almost like sautéed popcorn shrimp, and were also very good. I was so sad that I had left my camera at the hotel. My coworker Jason would have thoroughly enjoyed the pictures of our meal. We hope to have Celine take us back again at least once more this week. On the way out, we saw their seafood case had squid, crawfish (by another name I can’t pronounce), and many other items that we really want to try. We left the restaurant stuffed and only $12 poorer. It was a meal that would have been at least $50 at home.

Tomorrow, we had originally planned to take a train into Shanghai, but now that we are here, it seems like it will be a day better spent resting and staying close to the hotel. We will have so much going on soon that we decided that after our crazy few days in Beijing, we will skip it. We wanted to say we’ve been to Shanghai, but there is always next time.

Shawn is battling the internet connection right now, which appears to be much slower than Beijing. For a country with more than a fourth of the world’s population, there is certainly no rush to become a leader in the information age. People don’t have internet in their homes and the connection and access are next to nothing. I now realize that after complaining about the shortcomings of our US government, it could be much, much worse.

We hope all is well back home. We’ll keep you posted as to the happenings of Hangzhou as we lead up to the big day! I am still unable to read the comments or view my blog, so I would like to say in advance a huge THANK YOU to everyone for reading and supporting us. We hope the information sprinkled among the gibberish has been helpful, if not mildly entertaining.