Hangzhou

Second stop on my father's visit to China was Hangzhou. This ancient Chinese capital city is now the provincial capital of Zhejiang province--China's wealthiest. Many businessmen live in Hangzhou and commute to Shanghai for work via the bullet train (300+ km/h).

Shanghai Hongqiao train station. The light at the end of the tunnel is the future of transportation, and its already in China.

Hangzhou is most famous for two things: Dragon Well Tea and the West Lake. Dragon Well Tea is acclaimed across China. With thousands of years of tea drinking experience, Chinese critical acclaim for a tea is serious.

The misty tea fields of Zhejiang province.

We had a traditional tea flight experience at Hangzhou's tea museum

The West Lake is the most famous lake in China, not for its size (that's Qinghai lake) but rather its beauty. The lake was beautiful, but it had been hyped up a considerable amount by my students for months prior to my visit, so I was somewhat disappointed.

The most beautiful lake in all of China...

The boat cruise of the lake was nice

The lake is surrounded by hills on three sides and the artificial hills of Hangzhou's skyline on the fourth

These three channel-marker looking things mark the deepest point in the lake. They are also featured on the back of the 1 Yuan.

Besides the West Lake and the tea fields, there were many more interesting sites to see in Hangzhou...

Hello Buddha, haven't seen you since...thailand

A peacock in its natural habitat...

...sort of

I guess America isn't the only place where transformers have become public art

This fine temple marked the start of Hangzhou's food street. The food was delicious, wish I took some pictures of it, but i was too busy eating. This was the first food street where I've seen scorpion as an option. Don't worry, I wasn't THAT hungry.