Even older now that it's taken a while to post, but on Tuesday I celebrated my birthday in Shanghai and Hangzhou / West Lake. The theme of the day was "transportation." Ok, I didn't actually define a theme for my birthday, but looking back we did have some fairly interesting experiences involving transportation. And this doesn't even take into account the Shanghai taxis, which by now we had become accustomed to. The taxis generally just barge their way into any small opening that exists, regardless of lanes, which is fine because they blast their horns a few times to let you know not to hit them. So it's relatively organized chaos. We never even bumped into anyone.
From Shanghai to Hangzhou and back we took a high-speed train that hit 355 km/hr according to the digital speedometer located above the doors between cars. That's just over 220 mph, and I think the fastest I'd ever gone on the surface of the earth up until that point. The record would be broken the next day as our China Eastern flight landed in Beijing and then desperately slammed on the thrust reversers and brakes to get us stopped, which was a unique feeling as well, but the train felt like it was just up and running. It had that levitating feeling like just before you blow over a race boat backwards. Very cool.
Once in Hangzhou we made our way out to West Lake, which received at least 5 stars in the rating system devised by one of Kristy's excited Chinese patients in the weeks prior to our trip. According to the Chinese press, on my birthday the Air Pollution Index in the greater Shanghai area exceeded 500 for only the third time since the scale was devised in June of 2000. This gave West Lake a hauntingly beautiful look that brought tears to one's eyes, as though shrouded in a thin fog. A thin fog that burns your eyes a little bit. There we hired a local gentleman to take us on his small boat around the lake. We were in luck. Thanks to the death of Osama bin Laden, he was willing to give us a special price. For the next thirty minutes we laughed quite a bit as he rowed us around several small islands while animatedly speaking Mandarin trying to convince Phil to move to Hangzhou and begin learning Kung Fu.
From Shanghai to Hangzhou and back we took a high-speed train that hit 355 km/hr according to the digital speedometer located above the doors between cars. That's just over 220 mph, and I think the fastest I'd ever gone on the surface of the earth up until that point. The record would be broken the next day as our China Eastern flight landed in Beijing and then desperately slammed on the thrust reversers and brakes to get us stopped, which was a unique feeling as well, but the train felt like it was just up and running. It had that levitating feeling like just before you blow over a race boat backwards. Very cool.
Once in Hangzhou we made our way out to West Lake, which received at least 5 stars in the rating system devised by one of Kristy's excited Chinese patients in the weeks prior to our trip. According to the Chinese press, on my birthday the Air Pollution Index in the greater Shanghai area exceeded 500 for only the third time since the scale was devised in June of 2000. This gave West Lake a hauntingly beautiful look that brought tears to one's eyes, as though shrouded in a thin fog. A thin fog that burns your eyes a little bit. There we hired a local gentleman to take us on his small boat around the lake. We were in luck. Thanks to the death of Osama bin Laden, he was willing to give us a special price. For the next thirty minutes we laughed quite a bit as he rowed us around several small islands while animatedly speaking Mandarin trying to convince Phil to move to Hangzhou and begin learning Kung Fu.
Achingly beautiful West Lake.
After leaving West Lake we took another great adventure: the Hangzhou city bus. I must admit I've never even been on a city bus in San Francisco, but I frequently took the bus in Oshkosh, WI while growing up. This was different. To be fair it really wasn't that different, it just had 6 times as many people on it and didn't have any signs or sounds in English. After what seemed like 3 hours gripping the bars and contorting myself into enough space to stand without hitting anyone in the face with my backpack, we were at the train station. Interestingly, we encountered no English at all between West Lake and our seat on the high-speed train home. Thank you, Phil.
So it was a good birthday. At some stage I hope to get back to individually thanking everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook.
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