Spent a week in Hangzhou, and since the office was about 20 mins away from the hotel by cab, I actually got to see some of the city for once. The weather wasn't quite a cooperative this time as it was on my previous trip, when I actually spent a bit of time getting a few photos.
I was there with a co-worker from Germany and his wife. Their hotel was not too far from mine--almost right on Westlake. Mine was a bit further away, about 5 mins by cab, or 35 mins walking. I walked it a couple of times. Once was after a nice dinner with the two of them. It was a bit of an experience trying to order food for 3, with different tastes, only by looking at the picture. At one point my co-worker's wife decided she wanted some soy sauce with her dinner--it wasn't salty enough for their tastes. More than too salty for me, as I am used to eating a low salt diet. She ordered it in english, and they brought a small bowl of salt. Well this met one criteria, but wasn't exactly what she wanted. So she got up and looked around the restaurant. There was a neighboring table with a small bowl of brown liquid on the table. Assuming this was soy sauce, or some similar salty soy based liquid, she took our waitress over to that table, pointed at it and asked for some. The waitress scurries off to the kitchen and in a minute a busboy comes back with a small brown bowl of liquid. Ok, now all is good? She dunks one of her vegetable croquettes (best description I can give for chopped veggies fried some sort of crispy covering) in the sauce. Her face was a dead giveaway, complete pucker. The sauce was vinegar, not soy sauce-- back to the salt dish. We never did get the soy sauce, even though the food was pretty good and we managed to get a variety that we could all share. The only thing that none of us touched was the chicken foot and chicken head in the large dish which was not really cooked, but finished on the burner built in our table.
Hangzhou is split by a river. In the past I stayed in the "old town" side of the river as both the office and the hotel were on the same side (about 10 mins walk). But the office has moved to Binjiang, which is where there is a lot of new development.
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Here you see the office building in the background, NSN occupies 14-24th floors, with Petri, Christian, Tony, Bryan and William in the foreground. Buildings are sprouting like mushrooms, and rising to touch the sky in weeks. The roads are wide, not crowded. There is not as much noise, but there also aren't many places to eat or shop yet. I stayed close to the office in October in the Longhill hotel, and really didn't enjoy the stay. Neither did I like the hotel which I felt was fairly dirty and not kept up (except the lobby), but the choices of places to eat was very limited, and the pool was empty.
The lack of things to do and places to eat may change as there are new businesses opening up almost daily in the area, and the locals are discovering where there are good places to eat, usually a trip by car from the office though.
In October the building was still very new (we inaugurated the sauna with it's glass doors and slippery floors), and the landscaping was still in very initial stages. It is much nicer looking now that the grand opening has been held with the local government and party officials.
On a clear day, you can see the bridge, and across the river to the older part of town.
I don't have many pictures from my recent trip as it was usually dark when I had time to go wander around. I did manage to do some shopping one night a the Pinghai (sp?) night market. It looks like a flea market in the west, tables set up down the street with vendors of all kinds of goods from some really nice things to real crap. I did buy Conner the watch he has been bugging me for ever since I started traveling to China. I kind of liked it and may go back to get one for myself. I also went shopping one night with my friends.
I got two strings of pearls (not the highest quality, but still very nice) for Cindy-- 100RMB. My friend had learned how to bargain from another expat who is living there. We started out at 300RMB for 1, she bargained it down to 70, then I picked up another. She said 100 for both, the shopkeeper countered with something like 150, she again said 100 for both, and after some hesitation we got them both for 100. Goes to show you really need to know how much they are worth and how much you are willing to pay and be firm. I'm not nearly so good at the bargaining thing.
On my previous trip to China, we took a day to go on a teambuilding trip, I don't remember the city where. It was about a 2-3 hour drive from Hangzhou. We went to a city where there are hot springs. The hot water was piped into several pools, actually there were about a dozen, of different sizes. Some could hold 10 people, some could have held 50 people. The pools were of different temperatures. Unfortunately the hotel attached to the hot springs was full and we could not stay there. That would have been nice, but we stayed in a very nice place about 10 mins away, except for the trains which went by every 20 mins or so. The elevator was a bit odd, it was numbered 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12...20. When I asked the next day why this was, I was told that the building is the local party headquarters and the missing floors were for offices. Well I guess that is one way to make sure that your power, sewer, etc. services are in working order, host the local officials in the hotel building.
We spent the evening in the hot springs, the next morning doing work on various organizational issues local to the R&D site.
On the way back, several of the team played a very intense card game in the bus. I couldn't tell all of the rules, but the play was fierce.
I also managed to get one picture of some farmers housing. There is farmland all along between Shanghai and Hangzhou (well where it isn't actually city any more). And also there were a lot of these on the way to/from the hot springs. These look like very nice housing from the outside. Much pleasanter than many of the old cement block apartment housing in the city of Hangzhou. Thanksgiving with the family at Ankie's house was between the two trips. It was very nice to get the gang together, although I really missed my dad. It is strange that it has been almost a year since he migrated to a different place, as was so nicely said at his memorial. I guess it was strange as last year thanksgiving was the last time many of us saw him.
Before dinner we went on a bird walk, to remember Bruce, and were lucky enough to see many different species, even though I cannot remember any of the names. I guess I am just not cut out to be a serious birder. I enjoy looking at them, learning about their habitats, habits, etc, but remembering each one's name--that's beyond me. Still it was thouroughly enjoyable, and everyone-even all the children, brought something to eat. 
Geoff and I had to flip for who had the 'honors' of cutting the turkey, I won, and Ygrayne criticized all the way through. Still it came out very nice and good times were had by all.
Returning the most recent time was a bit of a shock. The house was in a total chaos with packing. Since then I have not really had the time to do much other than pack. But now finally I got our visas today, and we have flights booked. We are leaving for Bangalore early next year, and will be very busy between now and then.
And this may be the only christmas tree we have this year... Oh well at least Smitty was nice enough to bring us one. It is a bit of cheer in the mess.
