Hangzhou (Day 1)

There is a saying in Chinese that says Hangzhou and Suzhou are heaven on Earth. I definitely fell in love with the city when I came to it. After one visit I said to myself "I need to live here" and the next day I asked for a transfer. Right now I am still working on transferring, but I have visited this city many times since then. It feels like I go every other weekend.
      My first stop in Hangzhou was a restaurant for lunch. I was with my friend, Hui, and it was my first day to meet him, so I was very excited. I let him order off the menu, because I love everything, and I always have trouble choosing. We ate fried fish, crab and rice cakes, and a few other sweet dishes. I thought it was all good, but he said "I hope you don't think 好吃 is a compliment". He's a very traditional Chinese guy, he doesn't give out compliments too often.

      After eating, we went to a magical place called 西湖, in English, West Lake, a famous world culture and heritage site. As soon as we arrived I instantly fell in love. I could understand why the Chinese called it heaven on Earth. I thought I had to share it all with my friends and family, so I started taking pictures, but Hui told me I was just taking pictures of a restaurant, and there were better things to come. I still took the pictures, because I loved it. The first thing we did was ride a boat to the other side of the lake. Everything was so amazingly beautiful, I took pictures of everything, because the beauty needed to be shared.      
    While on the boat I was also texting my friend (aka Chinese sister), Judy, who is Hui's cousin. She had been trying for two years to make a match of us, and I wanted to let her know that I met him. Actually, I already liked him. I had been messaging him every day for two years. I was so excited to finally meet him and see if he was the one for me. When I met him the first time in Hangzhou train station, he looked so excited to finally meet me. I was excited too, but I am a shy person, so.......basically I was shy. haha

On the other side of the lake we came to an area called 三潭(san tan), where you can see three small statues in the water. In English this area can be translated as three pools mirroring the moon. The legend is that at night you can see 18 moons in the lake there. It is known for being a great place to view the moon during the mid autumn festival, and the scene can also be seen on the back of the 1 yuan bill.

While walking around west lake I was feeling amazing, like I really really wanted to move to Hangzhou. After going there for the first time, I remember feeling a real appreciation for nature that I had never felt before. Now, I am looking back at these pictures, and I also notice there are sooooo many mountains! This city is just surrounded by beauty.

Next we caught sight of the famous 雷峰塔leifeng pagoda. I didn't realize from a distance just how big it was, and I didn't realize that I was going to get to go inside it! Hui really had the whole day planned out for me, and it was so touching. I honestly just came to Hangzhou to meet him, but he planned to show me all of this.



The sunset was coming, so it was time to head over to the leifeng pagoda. Traditionally, the best time to view the pagoda is at dusk. Hui told me the custom is to watch the sunset from the top floor, so we did!
You will notice that there is an escalator installed in the middle of the stairs. I onced joked to my friend that it had been there for thousands of years and that it was installed for the emperor's use only. All the other people had to use the stairs.....unfortunately the emperor had to walk going down, but this was much less tiring.
Another thing the leifeng pagoda is famous for is the story of the white snake. A snake spirit named Bai Suzhen disguised as a human and fell in love with a man named Xuxian. In a later part of the story Bai Suzhen is discovered by a monk and is imprisoned inside of the leifeng pagoda. Twenty years later she is released and returns to Xuxian. There is a famous Chinese tv show about this called 新白娘子传奇. The song from this show(千年等一回） is also famous, and whenever I go to west lake now I feel like I want to sing it.

the new wallpaper on my computer, my sstudents love it

雷峰塔

 This photo is the first of many. After going to Hangzhou I found it is really fun to take what I call 塔selfies. The word 塔(ta) basically translates to tower or pagoda. What I do is take a selfie like this with every 塔 I can find. Now, obviously this one is too perfect to be a real selfie (Hui took this one), but the rest are real selfies!
On day two we only went to west lake for a short time, so I am going to focus my day two blog on something else. Here are all of my pictures of west lake from day two.

上有天堂下有苏杭, that is the Chinese version of the saying I mentioned earlier. Later that night I was watching the show at the xihu musical fountain, and I couldn't help but feel moved and shed a few tears for the second time in China. The first time was when the airplane started to descend and all you could see were mountains, and I saw the great wall of China. Great day great day great day! That night I got on wechat to let all my friends know I met Judy's cousin, and I was ready for day two.