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Public Zone 公開區 => Travelogues 遊記相薄 => Topic started by: chin on 16 April 2012, 23:10:18
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We went to Hangzhou 10-14 Apr 2012.
Unfortunately for me I hurt my back a few days prior to the trip, thus I was not able to bring the better camera to Hangzhou, and once there I was not able to walk a lot. Thus I did not have many pictures besides a few taken in the hotel. I will post some pictures here, and I hope my friends will add to the photo journal.
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The hotel as stayed at was Four Seasons Hangzhou. It was a very nice hotel over looking the West Lake - the key attraction of Hangzhou.
The design of the hotel was like a Chinese garden and a Hangzhou home, with lots of 亭台樓閣. Some may say the corridors are too long.
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I have been to some very small hotel, like the ones we stayed in Peru & Tibet. We have been to some very large hotels also, like those with well over 1000 rooms.
The Four Seasons Hangzhou is easily the smallest grand hotel we have been to - it has only 78 rooms (and our group booked 15 of them.) Yet the amenity, staff level and service are very good. I guess I can also say it's the biggest small hotel I have been to so far.
The 1st picture below is the view from my bath tub. The 2nd picture is the outside view of a big suite.
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1st picture is the outdoor swimming pool as seen from the lobby. The hotel also has an indoor swimming pool.
The 2nd picture is where we had breakfast everyday. It's a nice outdoor area next to the pool.
The 3rd picture is overlooking the swimming pool. Beyond the pool is the quiet inner lake of the famous West Lake. The West Lake is very big. We once board a tour boat from the inner lake, and row out to the main lake. I hope some of my group members would post pictures of the main lake.
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More random pictures in the Four Seasons Hangzhou.
On the left of the first picture is their Chinese restaurant Jin Sha 金沙廳. During our first dinner in Jin Sha, oo8 recognized the tea pot they use in the restaurant is a limited edition Pewter ware from Royal Selangor. oo8 said that there is only 2000 pieces if that Pumpkin Pot produced, and Jin Sha as 50 of them!!! The waitresses in the restaurant probably found it very funny that we were all very interested in their tea pots!
The 2nd picture is again West Lake over swimming pool. The last picture is the West Lake as seen from the hotel.
One of my friend asked, why is all Chinese scenery all very hazy?! Like a water color painting.
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More random pictures from the hotel gardens.
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Hangzhou, one of the most storied Chinese cities, with history traced back almost 5000 years.
I have a book 吳越之間 by 余秋雨 in my office for more than 5 years. It's a book about Hangzhou (and the nearby Suzhou 蘇州), from the time of the Warring States (春秋戰國,吳越之爭) more than 2000 years ago, to... Well, I never finishing reading the book.
Many of the most famous buildings or locates in Hangzhou now date back to Song dynasty (about 1000 years ago!) Everywhere you go, there are buildings or courtyards or whatever that date back to Song, Ming, or the more recent Qing dynasty. We are talking about things that's 1000, 600, or at least 200 years old.
Yet, there I was. Spending most of my time in a bubble - inside the Four Seasons Hotel. My excuse was that many places are getting to tourisssyyy, too crowded, etc...
Am I getting too old or too energy-less? Why was I not even trying to get out and see something historic?!
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wonderful!!
have you guys to a place where our famous Red Hat Merchand lived (紅頂商人,胡雪巖), i went there about 11yrs ago right after our Marlon introduced me the book....紅頂商人.....i wish i can go there again for 2nd time...but no time...if you can could update would be perrfect...
;D ;D ;D
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a video to show the forging process of LongQuan Sword!
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A map showing the highway systems around HangZhou. We went to QianDaoHu and LongQuan.
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wonderful!!
have you guys to a place where our famous Red Hat Merchand lived (紅頂商人,胡雪巖), i went there about 11yrs ago right after our Marlon introduced me the book....紅頂商人.....i wish i can go there again for 2nd time...but no time...if you can could update would be perrfect...
;D ;D ;D
I did not. But oo8 did.
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a video to show the forging process of LongQuan Sword!
Is it for sale?
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wonderful!!
have you guys to a place where our famous Red Hat Merchand lived (紅頂商人,胡雪巖), i went there about 11yrs ago right after our Marlon introduced me the book....紅頂商人.....i wish i can go there again for 2nd time...but no time...if you can could update would be perrfect...
;D ;D ;D
Will show you some pictures later......
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Is it for sale?
Yes, I bought one for my son. There are a few "Renowned" makers there selling their products at very high price. (well, we foot the bills on their advertisement) In the meantime, there are also a lot of inferior makers so it really takes time to find the right one. It takes 20 days to deliver our order. See sample picture. Master Zou is very patient explaining the details of sword-making. I may order another for myself after confirming their quality from my son's toy.
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Yes, I bought one for my son. There are a few "Reowned" makers there selling their products at very high price. (well, we foot the bills on their advertisement) In the meantime, there are also a lot of inferior makers so it really takes time to find the right one. It takes 20 days to deliver our order. See sample picture. Master Zou is very patient explaining the details of sword-making. I may order another for myself after confirming their quality from my son's toy.
Wow, I would like to see and get one too!
I once went to a modern master sword maker exhibition in Macau, and find it very interesting!
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Some of the photos from Karen and my walk along the Sudi causeway.
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[20-Apr-2012]
q, I resized your pictures a bit for faster loading.
The original full size pictures were zipped and attached at the end.
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Some of the photos from Karen and my walk along the Sudi causeway.
I like the second one that associates me a place in JiaXing called Foggy-Rain Building 嘉興煙雨樓!
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Wow, I would like to see and get one too!
I once went to a modern master sword maker exhibition in Macau, and find it very interesting!
Will let you know and see it once delivered.
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Here are the pictures that I took. The hotel and my room.....
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I reduced the size of photos so the resolution may not be too good.....
The outside of my room....This first one is the view from my room. The third one is the left side of the small garden, the creek can lead us to West Lake. The last one is the view of the right hand side.
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When we walked to the restaurant, I took these.....
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We went to see the show "Impression West Lake" on the first night. They built a metal platform in the lake and when they started to perform, the platform was moved up to just below water surface at about 10 cm (as I was told by the boat guy during my boat tour on the fourth day).
The show was wonderful......
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Though it was raining during the show, I was impressed by the performance of the dancers and the lighting effect that they used.....
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The second photo showed part of the stage as it can move up to be a metal frame......
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The second day we went to golf, 7 of us in 2 flights........ The course is difficult and played in windy condition. The fairway was nice but the green was horrible.....
The third picture, we found "4-leaf grass" somewhere but it did not bring us luck......
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We went to golf again on the third day. My wife went to have a walk on the Baidi (白堤)
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After golf, we went to Qing Hue Fong (清河坊). It is a pedestrian street with ancient architecture, building like in Sung Dynasty. Hangzhou was the center of producing medicine in the old days. There were a lot of different brands and they had their own medicine plant here. Nowadays most of them were converted into museums.
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On the fourth day, we planned to go biking but as we went late, we finally walked to Sudi and took a look. We found there were some sculptures showing how the ancient people made wines.
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We arrived at Sudi and walked to the middle part of it, where it is claimed to be the most beautiful scene of Sudi. It is so-called "Sudi'a Morning of Spring" (蘇堤春曉)
The first and second pictures is the stone tablet showing the name of this section of Sudi. The front side has its name in red written by KangXi of Qing Dynasty. The back side has a statement made by another emperor Qianlong, the grandson of KangXi, when they visited Sudi at that time.
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After that, we went to Lingyin Temple. It was indeed a theme park rather than a temple. You need to buy ticket into the temple area. If you want to get into the Lingyin temple, you need to buy another ticket, which made me think of Kai Tak or Lai Yuen amusement park (you need to buy ticket to enter the park and pay for playing roller coaster).
So what did we do? I just put my camera through the fence to take the fourth picture......
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Walking up the hill of the Lingyin theme park, there is a YungFu temple. This one is nice and looks more like a real temple. Quiet and peace. It was built in West Jin, so the outlook is totally different from what we saw in Hangzhou....
From the entrance to the main temple, there were not many visitors and you can find a lot of sculptures which make you feel peaceful....
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After our souls were cleaned by the buddha, we went to Tea Museum. This museum is not too big but it gives me a good lesson about tea from planting to brewing.
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The museum also displays different types of tea and some exhibits are about tea business.....
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We did not buy any tea as the price is unreasonably high. Outside the museum there is a large tea-yard with rows of tea tree. On the way we go to lunch, we passed through a lot of tea-yards and some of them were planted along the contours of the hill (similar to vineyard??)
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The next stop after lunch was to visit the house of a famous businessman in late Qing Dynasty. This guy (紅頂商人,胡雪巖) was an important businessman at that time. I read a novel about him when I was an undergraduate. His flat was more than 63000 square feet.
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His house was built in Qing style and had 2 storeys. Only the lower level was open for visitors.
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The house has quite a lots of corridor and rooms, which made us like walking in a maze....
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Part of his house was the recreation area with lots of artificial hills, ponds, etc......
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The first picture is a view from the tower to the pond. The second one is the artificial cave, which is claimed to be the biggest artificial cave in China. The third one is one of the various rooms for the businessman's concubine. Now this is the place for selling souvenir.
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We hired a boat to wander around the West Lake on our last day in Hangzhou.
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I was told that most of the islands in the lake were made artificially and we saw someone building a concert stage in the middle of the lake. The next few pictures are the buildings on the artificial island and you need to pay for boarding the boat and having a walk thereon.
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In addition to its function as a tour spot, West Lake is a place for the city rowing team to train themselves and for taking wedding photos.
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We cannot get close to this spot as we are running out of time. This is the tomb of Wusong, the one who killed a tiger after drinking 18 bowls of strong wines.
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We left the boat at the entrance of Sudi. We took a half hour visit to Yuefei Temple before we went back to hotel to check out. Yuefei is very famous in Hangzhou and most Hangzhou people respect him. His tomb is also in this temple.
This temple is totally artificial. They built a "temple" and put a statue there for people to worship, but they allows you to take photo inside the temple, unlike the buddha.
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The only thing that is worth to see is his tomb. In addition to the tomb itself, there are 4 bronze statues kneeing to Yuefei. These 4 people were the "murderers" of Yuefei so the people put these statues there to apologize. It is funny that there was a notice asking people not to spit on them.
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That concludes our visit to Hangzhou. I did not have a look at the airport until I was ready to leave.
How comes the airports nowadays are built in the same style like the one in Chek Lap Kok ?????
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OK. My turn to post some HangZhou pix . .. . . . . ;D
Start with the 4 Seasons Hotel first . . .
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Entrance hallway and the Mini Bar Closet . . . .
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Both with a View from the inside or out . . . . :o
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Here comes the food.
Starting with the looooong walk to the Chinese Restaurant . . . . . ;D
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The entrance decoration . . . .
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Finally . . . . :-*
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Show time . . . . after dinner . . . . . :D
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Breakfast the next day . . . . . ;D
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Golfing . . . .
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When we walked to the restaurant, I took these.....
From your room to the Jin Sha is from one end to that other end. Maybe taking 15 min walking or close to 1km in length?
The hotel only have 78 rooms, but the walk from one place to another is llloooonnnggg.
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The second day we went to golf, 7 of us in 2 flights........ The course is difficult and played in windy condition. The fairway was nice but the green was horrible.....
The third picture, we found "4-leaf grass" somewhere but it did not bring us luck......
4 is not a Fibonacci number. Maybe a genetic mutation?
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After golf, we went to Qing Hue Fong (清河坊). It is a pedestrian street with ancient architecture, building like in Sung Dynasty. Hangzhou was the center of producing medicine in the old days. There were a lot of different brands and they had their own medicine plant here. Nowadays most of them were converted into museums.
I believe the city still has many medicine firms nowadays. I was told by a guy who invested in a few of the largest medicine companies in Hangzhou.
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The sayings in this picture is good and should be taken to heart by anyone in the health business. Nowadays people would do anything for profit, even risking (other people's) lifes.
(http://chinman.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=685.0;attach=10480;image)
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After that, we went to Lingyin Temple. It was indeed a theme park rather than a temple. You need to buy ticket into the temple area. If you want to get into the Lingyin temple, you need to buy another ticket, which made me think of Kai Tak or Lai Yuen amusement park (you need to buy ticket to enter the park and pay for playing roller coaster).
So what did we do? I just put my camera through the fence to take the fourth picture......
Funny that I made the same observation 6 years ago about a temple in Sanya.
http://chinman.com/index.php/topic,26.msg426.html#msg426
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4 is not a Fibonacci number. Maybe a genetic mutation?
One of us found a 5-leaf grass..... :o
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I believe the city still has many medicine firms nowadays. I was told by a guy who invested in a few of the largest medicine companies in Hangzhou.
Yes. We found different shops there too and Bejing Tung Yan Tong has a shop there.
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Mist over Xin-An-Jiang (XinAn River) closed to QianDaoHu (Thousand Island Lake). This place is really really attractive!
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More photos in LongQuan!
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Cool!
When does your order arrive?
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Cool!
When does your order arrive?
We went there on 4/13. It takes about 20 days to make it and another week on the road. Second week of May expected.
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First Hydro-power station in China and QianDaoHu.
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LongQuan Sword delivered. Quality only so so not particularly surprised! :-\
After talking to the maker, they agreed to send me another one free of charge!!!! wowow!!!!!
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haha, a nice replacement was dispatched.
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The next stop after lunch was to visit the house of a famous businessman in late Qing Dynasty. This guy (紅頂商人,胡雪巖) was an important businessman at that time. I read a novel about him when I was an undergraduate. His flat was more than 63000 square feet.
What's the name of the novel?
I am reading 高陽 的 《胡雪岩》《紅頂商人》《燈火樓台》. It's a trilogy of the guy. I almost finished the books, and now very much want to go to Hangzhou again!
I don't usually read novels, but I found this series of books not just interesting story wise, but also have lots of insights and observations. I have been reading the electronic version of the trilogy since the beginning of this summer, and I just found out that the trilogy together comprise of 35 physical books!!! No wonder it took me so long!
Supposedly the author is a real historian, and his novels with 清朝 back drop is historically correct. I just found a description of the author on the internet.
http://gb.cri.cn/3601/2004/08/30/342@284153.htm
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Do you have, or read, the description of this 百獅樓?
I just read about this part in the book.
(http://chinman.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=685.0;attach=10519;image)
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Do you have, or read, the description of this 百獅樓?
I just read about this part in the book.
(http://chinman.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=685.0;attach=10519;image)
No. we can't get into the room. Just took a picture at the entrance of the room.