Bindu's

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From WuYi Shan I had a really horrible night train ride to Hangzhou. Was a night train and I was issued a standing ticket! Yikes... Sat several different places, but ended up in the food carriage... I may have slept for an hour or so on the 14 hour journey... Watching the sunrise over really lovely mountains and fields was a bit of recompense... But the real treat was one night in a REALLY nice hotel (most hotels would have charged two days since I checked in at 7am) so it wasn't terribly expensive for one day/night even got two breakfasts with cornflakes out of the deal :) In the afternoon I went for a walk around West Lake which is very famous around China. It's really lovely even though it's prety developed. Along the way I met a Chinese guy (Allen is his English name) and his "Sister" (Candy is her English name)... we walked and talked for a while and then had dinner. Allen is quite an amazing man. He is a Bilogigy teach in the North East of China. He had two weeks off work and was in town visiting his "sister"... His American (I would say English, except he speaks American :) is exceptional. It's really hard for me to understand how someone could develop such an amazing vocabulary and ease with a language without having spoken with foriegners more than a handfull of times. Anyway, they invited me to Li Shui to stay with Candy's family for a few days. What an absolutely amazing experience! I spent the afternoon of my second day in Hangzhou in Candy's shop, wich is a sports clothing shop in a huge building full of mostly Shoe stores... Then we took the bus (3 hours) to Li Shui. Candy's hubby, Da Liang (means big Liang, which is his family name), was at the bus station to meet us with their car, which we had to push start because they were having problems with the battery. We went out to dinner with some school friends of Candy's. Allen convinced me to try Cicadas (sp?) looked like beatles... Was hard to eat the first one, but easy to eat the send, third, fourth, etc :) The restaurant was very sparse dirty concrete with plastic tables and chairs, on the edge of a really lovely little lake with neon animal signs all over the place :) We had some spectacular fish! The chinese way of eating is really great. You have a big stew in the middle of the table and lots of dishes that everyone shares. Then there is the drinking. Lots and lots of drinking. Mostly ale.. You make as if to knock glasses with someone except you just touch your knuckles, you say "Gambe" and shoot the whole glass. Then fill it and go again... Generally you don't take a sip without engaging someone in this ritual... And you can't say no! At leat it's not poilite although, very luckily I received some leeway on this point as a foriegner... After dinner we stopped at a family friends house. Candy is involved with Amway and had some business to do with her friend and I got the vague impression that I was being shown off :) The first day, Allen, Da Liang and I took the car to be repaired and then went sight seeing. The chinese seem very civilized about this. We would walk around for half an hour then stop to eat or drink something...

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