Going to Ningbo

My friend and I had planned to go to Ningbo for the weekend. It is closer to the coast from here, and a very pretty city. I had been before - and was looking just to get away. However, our two nights became one night away when the faculty changed the dates for the examiantions. Instead of being in the week commencing January 5th, they are not the week commencing December 15th, so I have a lot of work to do this weekend.

Sue and I were just about to leave my apartment on Friday midday when a student arrived. He was going to be in my apartment while the repairman fixed the toilet. It was with a little fear and trepidation that I left - wondering what I might find when I returned. Another flood?

Anyway we had train tickets, and a hotel booking, so bravely left. We caught a taxi to the station - woman driver which is rare, and we had a good run to the station.

The waiting room looked a mess - it is now a construction site. They seem to be demolishing part of it - hopefully extending it and putting in modern toilet facilities one would hope. We were waitng not far from the screened off area when a great crash was heard and bricks and rock came crashing down close behind the screen. We moved as far away as we could!

Soon we were being called and had to go on the station, down stairs and under the tunnel and back up the other way to the other platform. Soon the train came and we had to climb stairs up into the train. The train was full - and there were people in our seats and we had to move them on!

As it turned out one of the students was in the next seat and she and I chatted for most of the trip, and I kept watch on the changing scenery. There were a lot of farms along the way - many rice fields being harvested or the stubble being burned. Small carts were loading the stalks and in some fields there were neat little stacks. These are used for heating during winter, so most will be taken from the fields within the next few weeks. There are still some fields that need harvesting and cleaning up.

All along the way are vegetable gardens - so many green vegetables have been planted on small plots of land, up over mounds and on neat flat beds. Some are under plastic hothouses already. On both sides of the railway line there are farms, villages, and along here quite a few duck farms too and often the ducks are happily swimming in the ponds near their sheds.

It is less than two hours between Shaoxing and Ningbo, but there are two cities in between. One we pass is Shangyu - which I visited earlier this year to pick yang mei, and the other is Yuyao which I have not visited. Both quite bustling cities. Shangyu is the city of umbrellas and has 1000 umbrella factories!

We were soon at Ningbo, and scrambled out with everyone else. There is a hotel opposite the station and we made our first port of call there - it has a nice coffee lounge and western toilets!

We indulged in some fruit cake. Now what we call fruit cake and the Chinese restaurants call fruit cake is quite different. It was a delightful chocloate cake with fruit on top of the icing and in the middle with cream. Odd, but nice anyway!

All refreshed we went out into the street to find a taxi. There was a taxi rank just along from the hotel, and there were a few men trying to get us to get into little trucks - but we stood our ground and eventually caught a taxi to the hotel that we were booked into. The hotel brochure says "5 minutes from bus and train station" - what a joke! It was more like 20 minutes!

Anyway we were glad to see it and book in!

New hotel in Shangyu

It is not often one gets to try a very new hotel, but that is what happened last Saturday. We went to Shangyu, which is not far from Shaoxing. It is a new city - still developing. It is reputed to have 1000 umbrella factories. I am sure they will be doing good business this week as it has barely stopped raining. The Chinese though use umbrellas all the time - to keep the rain or the sun off of them.

The Leidisen Winning Hotel was opened earlier this year, and our hosts had booked a room for lunch, but we had an hour or so to wander the shops etc which abound in this area of the city. Many of the shops were empty - but I guess that may not be the story after all the massive accommodation blocks around the place are taking in their new residents.

The hotel foyer had us gasping. It was beautiful. The staff were excellent - most able to converse with us in English. A feature flower arrangement - with a good mix of plastic and real flowers was a stunning welcome.

How I would love to stay there - and I may just do that next time I am here in China. There is a fabulous shopping nearby - but I was not aware of it until afterwards.

The foyer of the hotel features two exquisite hand carved elephant tusks. I'd say they were very old, and worth a small fortune now. Sad about the elephant I know, but it was part of culture years ago.

In one part of the foyer was a wonderful piano bar. No doubt when the sun goes down the pianist would arrive - but the grand piano was silent for our visit.

We did have coffee in the coffee bar adjacent to the restaurant. And full marks. The biscuits were great!

But it was the banquet upstairs that really impressed. The room was - well, it had a speechless, it was so beautiful. Right in the middle of the round table was a bowl of roses (you will see the photo on this page) that were fresh and glistening with what appeared to be dew, but of course, was probably from a mist of water.

The food was excellent. Treeeemendous. Wonderful. What can I say? Top marks. Now I wonder what the rooms would be like????

My basket of yangmei

This wonderful basket was full of freshly picked yangmei.

Yangmei

A little worker picking fruit.

Fruit growing on trees.

One of the many things we have learned living here, is that the Chinese people have some different fruits - things that we have never seen, and so many of them the Chinese students cannot give us an English name for them. We have seen the yangmei or Bayberry, which has been grown in China for over 2000 years. The fruit grows on a tree and this time of the year (late June) they are ripe for picking. The foreign teachers were taken on a visit to a village, just outside Shangyu, where they grow this fruit in the hills overlooking the village. We have had some pretty wet weather, so we had to walk along a pretty muddy path to get to the trees growing on the side of the hill.

There were family members from grandfather, to grandchildren picking the fruit. They were very generous in giving us handfuls of the fruit to eat. Very juicy sweet fruit, that are often seeped in Shaoxing Rice Wine or similar. They are great to eat straight from the refrigerator. After a while exploring the village, we boarded the bus for the return trip, and were most surprised to find that a basket of fruit had been provided for us. The fruit was packed into little plastic baskets with fern to stop the fruit rolling around.

Yangmei is on the menu for dinner tonight!