Monday, 2nd April - Hangzhou

Today was all about seeing Trudy. Trudy is the first Chinese business person that I really got to know. Not the first I met, but she took us to dinner on our first night in Hangzhou a few years ago, before a factory visit the next day, and I spent time with her in Guangzhou this time last year at the Canton Fair. Graham catches up with her on most of his visits to China. She is extremely professional in business, supplying a number of the items in Graham's furniture range.

We started the day by heading off to catch the train to Hangzhou. We caught the metro to Hongquiao railway station. It was much more crowded today and the queues to buy a ticket were extremely long. With hindsight, we should have done this earlier, as we bought the ticket around 9:00 had to wait until 13:15 for the train. This is unusual in Graham's experience. What we hadn't counted on when we made our plans was that today was the first day of the Qingming festival, a three day holiday in China, and that Hangzhou is a popular tourist destination. The Qingming festival honours the dead, with people tending the graves of their ancestors and burning paper tributes to them. Apparently 120 million people visit their ancestors' graves at this time, according to an article I read in China Daily.

Anyway, it was chaotic. We bought our tickets and settled in to wait. There's always an upside, as it meant that we were able to check out our return journey the next day. As we wandered around the railway station, we discovered that we could walk across to the airport terminal for our flight to Yichang instead of returning there via metro. Better yet, we discovered that our check in counter was the closest one to the railway station. That might seem trivial, but these airports are enormous!

I love people watching, and this was a veritable feast of opportunity for some serious observation.There were people of all ages and socio-economic circumstances travelling. We saw people with bundles tied in string, workers with their tools  in buckets, young families, elderly people, fairly much everyone except for Westerners. There were a couple there, but they always seemed to be in the distance.

There was a lot of confusion about. It was clear that some people rarely travelled and didn't understand where they should be or what they should do. There were others who were clearly meeting people at the station, who were frantically looking for them at the gate. The gates opened 15 mins before the train departed, but people started queueing 30 mins before that. If two trains were departing from the same gate within half an hour of each other, the two queues became blended, causing absolute confusion at boarding time, with people trying to go through with invalid tickets, then panicking that they were going to miss their train. Somehow it all got sorted.

One advantage of being early was that we up knew exactly what to do when it came to our turn. We boarded as smooth as silk. The train was really comfortable. The trips have been great as I've been able to write up my blog entries.

At the other end I followed Graham's lead. I remember our first trip, when neither of us knew what we were doing. This was so much less stressful, as Graham has travelled by train in China so many times now he's become an old hand at it. Even my last train trip, from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, wasn't this easy. We made our way along with the crowd, out of the station, and walked into apparent bedlam. Graham told me that Trudy was waiting nearby, led me straight to her, and I was safely ensconced in the car in no time.

Every time I see Trudy I am struck by how tiny she is. I feel like a giant beside her. Her 11 year old daughter, Christina, is as tall as she is. Trudy is like a pocket dynamo, full of energy. I met Christina for the first time as well as Trudy's five month old son. He doesn't have an English name yet. His Chinese name means happy and improving each day.

We dropped our bags at the hotel and then headed off to the Silk Market. There were so many beautiful things there. It was like I had given my eyes a gift, by showing the, so much beauty. I didn't realise that there would be ready made clothes there. I had expected dressing gowns, scarves and shawls, but just hadn't thought about tops, skirts, dresses and underwear. I will be better prepared next time. I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for trying on clothes with an entourage of people who were just there because I wanted to see the silk market.

I did buy two shawls for one of my sisters, a warm one and a lighter one. One thing that was really helpful when doing that was that Trudy told me that I should end up paying about 70% of the asking price. When I found the shawls, I added the ticket prices together, 178 yuan, but the shop keeper started at 140 yuan. I offered 60 yuan, thinking 2/3 of 180 was 120 so we might end up there. They stopped talking to me and started talking to Trudy. She was frowning and I thought I'd completely blown it. I was all ready to walk away and start again in another shop, but the offer came back at 100 yuan. Woohoo! I had done even better than I had hoped, even though I had help.

When we negotiated at the fabric market, we did a really bad job of it. I find it hard to start the bargaining and Graham starts too high, so it's almost not worth the effort. We will have to learn from this experience. I am going to practise at the Yiwu night markets. If I end up with nothing, that will be fine.

I did see some scarves I would have loved for myself, and waited patiently to be served, after I'd worked out which ones I wanted. Finally I managed to get starting prices for two of the four scarves I wanted (250 and 160) then the lady went back to her conversation. I waited a while longer for my other prices but was ignored. I figure bad service is bad service in any culture, so I put the scarves away, told Trudy that I would have bought all four if I'd been served and went outside to where Graham was waiting. Trudy came back to me after talking to the ladies in the shop with a price of four scarves for 400 yuan. I don't know how good a price it was, but I was over the buying impulse by then and decided I would do without.

We headed off towards another place Graham had told me about - a pedestrian street which was near a restaurant street and night markets. We decided to have dinner first. I was given the job of choosing a restaurant, so I picked one at random. It ended up being a great choice. We got there before the rush and then observed the place completely fill up, en turn tables over quickly. I don't know if it was popular or simply because of the holiday, but the food was delicious, the service was good and the prices were reasonable.

Oh, I discovered what the black stuff that I thought might be cabbage is. I asked Trudy as it was in one of the dishes we ordered. It's dried greens. So, now I know.

I really enjoyed dinner. It was a great opportunity to catch up with Trudy and to see her with her children. She told me that we were friends and so she'd brought the baby with her. If we were just business acquaintances the baby would have been left at home. I thought that was a lovely compliment to us. I loved seeing him. When I last saw Trudy she confided in me that she was pregnant. She always wanted a second child but it is only recently that she has been allowed to have one. It's great to see her with him.

After dinner we ventured into the pedestrian street around the corner. It was a combination of stalls on the street and shops along the sides. All sorts of bits and pieces. More silk, as Hangzhou is famous for its silk. Tea everywhere. The tea festival is on at the moment, with the early Spring tea now available. lots of souvenirs, feng shui, antiques, musical instruments. All sorts of snack food. There were small bakeries making traditional dishes. At several places there were two men swinging large wooden mallets, with people standing around looking. I wasn't tall enough to see past the crowd but Trudy told me it was a traditional dish that consisted of something sweet with crushed biscuits. They were flattening it into layers. Basically it looked like it was having the cr*p beaten out of it.

I went into a building that had been operating as a shop since 1649. It was selling a herb that is famous in China as a general tonic. It's supposed to fix back problems, upset tummies, etc. lots of people were drinking some sort of tea coloured water and buying the herb. I decided discretion was the better part of valour and didn't try it.

We bought some CDs with traditional Chinese music - Chinese bamboo flute and a stringed instrument that you often see buskers playing. This music will fit right in with Graham's pan pipes collection. We're planning to listen to it as we cruise along the Yangtze.

The night markets were more like a general market than a tourist market. We wandered around them and then it was time to go home. Trudy took us back to our hotel, where we found another street market! I had thought I was too tired to walk another step, but I revived. We dropped our purchases off in our hotel room and headed back into the fray.

This market had a lot of clothes, belts, shoes, hair accessories, etc. it was extremely crowded. I was pushed and shoved but I survived. I think it was good for me, as I'm not used to having people so close to me. I managed better at the train station the next day, just for having had that experience.

Finally we made it back to our hotel room. We sat up for a little while, chatting and listening to our new traditional cd before going to bed. The bed in this hotel really was like a board, but I was so tired that I slept quite well. In fact, I was so tired that I didn't brush my teeth, a really unusual occurrence for me. I think I was asleep before my head hit the pillow!

All in all it was a very full day.