Longmen

I've now officially been in China for over a month. Weird. In some ways, it feels like I just got here, but on the other hand, grandpa & grandma's wedding anniversary seems like eons ago.

Last weekend was "independent travel weekend", when we were strongly encouraged to try traveling somewhere outside of Hangzhou by ourselves. I was a little nervous about my navigation abilities at this point, so I picked a pretty straightforward destination, a little town about 30 miles southwest of Hangzhou.

Hangzhou has a pretty extensive bus system, and a great site for figuring out routes, so I worked out a plan and woke up early to test it out. This turned out to be a good decision, because the streets are a lot less crowded early in the morning, and it was easier to get oriented. Anyway, when I got off the first bus, downtown-ish, I had a potential plan for getting a bus to take me to the bus stop that would take me out of town, but I knew I was already on the right street, so I decided to take a chance and wander down it and see if I could find it myself. And it actually worked! It took a little bit of wandering around because of some construction, but I found it and caught a seat. (Note: I'm still enough of a country kid that whenever I get on a city bus I'm kind of like, wheeeee! I'm on a bus! The same goes for subways. I'm a dork, I know.)

It took about an hour to get to the city of Fuyang, and then I had to figure out how to get to Longmen. I didn't really have a plan for this part, so I stood around outside the bus station for a little while, looking totally awkward I'm sure, trying to figure out if there was a bus to Longmen. I eventually decided there wasn't, and found a minibus driver to take me to Longmen. This was a little inefficient, since those things fit about 7 people and I was paying for the whole thing myself, but the 20 minute ride was only 40 kuai ($5.87), so I guess that's reasonable. And more importantly, he was willing to come pick me up when I wanted to go back to Fuyang. He was pretty friendly, and we chatted a little on the way over. His southern accent wasn't too heavy, which made things a lot easier for me.

Longmen was a pretty tiny, very old town with several old houses and cute cobbled streets and buildings. It only took about an hour and a half to see everything, but that was okay because it all this independence was starting to wear me out anyway. So I got some lunch, had the restaurant owner call my driver, and went back to Hangzhou.

It wasn't the most exciting excursion ever, but I made it to Longmen, saw Longmen, and made it back to Hangzhou all by myself, so I decided to call it a success, and bought some baked deliciousness from Cafe 85 to celebrate. It was also a pretty educational dry run for going out to the countryside, so it should come in handy when I (hopefully) go visit some farms.

Tuesday we had our first cooking class with Chen Laoshi offered, and I enthusiastically participated. We made hongshao rou (pork braised in soy sauce) and noodles with greens. It was soooo delicious. Chen Laoshi talked a little fast and used some words I don't recognize, but she's really enthusiastic so it's a lot of fun. She's also apparently a bit of a local celebrity, with her own cooking show and everything, so she puts on a little bit of a performance and gives us a lot of tips on eating healthy.

Next Thursday is Chinese National Day, so we get Thursday and Friday off! I am so excited!! However, even though this gives us a four-day weekend, I probably won't be going out of town. The rest of China is also on holiday, and it kind of bogs down transportation. So I'll probably use this as an experiment to see how far I can get by walking/taking obscure bus routes.