Last weekend, Cary and I traveled to Zhejiang province with a couple of his students and their parents. We left on Saturday at a bright an early 7 AM to reach People's Square and get on our bus by 8 AM. Four hours later, we arrived at our hotel in a tiny city about an hour west of Hangzhou. You could stand in the middle of the city and see the edge of town in nearly all directions. Despite its seemingly small size, there were still probably a million people that lived there. Saturday afternoon was spent climbing Tianmushan.
The mountain was generally very peaceful, but one major gripe I have with here (and pretty much any Chinese tourist site) is the extreme amount of litter. I always thought the litter in the US was bad about litter, but from a young age we are told that littering is wrong and there are fines for littering. Generally Shanghai stays pretty clean because people sweep the streets and sidewalks every day, but it was very disheartening seeing the amount of trash in such a beautiful place. The botanical garden a couple weeks ago was just as bad. Generally, I try to be very accepting of the cultural differences between American and Chinese manners, habits, and lifestyles (the spitting, the shoving, the lack of information, the staring), but for some reason the littering really gets under my skin. Even at the peak pavilion, you look up and see a beautiful mountain range, but if you look down you see a pile of garbage outside the pavilion.
The mountain was generally very peaceful, but one major gripe I have with here (and pretty much any Chinese tourist site) is the extreme amount of litter. I always thought the litter in the US was bad about litter, but from a young age we are told that littering is wrong and there are fines for littering. Generally Shanghai stays pretty clean because people sweep the streets and sidewalks every day, but it was very disheartening seeing the amount of trash in such a beautiful place. The botanical garden a couple weeks ago was just as bad. Generally, I try to be very accepting of the cultural differences between American and Chinese manners, habits, and lifestyles (the spitting, the shoving, the lack of information, the staring), but for some reason the littering really gets under my skin. Even at the peak pavilion, you look up and see a beautiful mountain range, but if you look down you see a pile of garbage outside the pavilion.
On Sunday, we spent the day at the Eastern Zhejiang canyons. We had to wait almost three hours for a small van to take us around the winding roads. It was pretty much like a roller coaster ride around a giant a cliff that I would prefer not to re-live anytime soon. Various things we saw: waterfalls, bamboo jumping dance, and other naturey things too.
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