Friday April 8th

This morning, the hotel’s Danish pastries had custard in the middle!  Hooray!  I also had yoghurt today, which came with a straw to drink!  I tried taking a Satsuma and 2 of the small pastries with me for the day, but for some reason I wasn’t allowed today.  Yesterday it was no problem, but today I couldn’t take any.  I asked why and the woman proceeded to tell me I couldn’t and upon asking why AGAIN, she told me she didn’t actually know why – I just couldn’t.  I left the food at the counter and continued up to the hotel room.  I didn’t understand!  Maybe people can take food except on Fridays?  Oh well, they’ll never see me again!

 

Wuzhen Water Village



On the coach, we travelled 2 hours to a “Water Village” called Wuzhen.  Basically a historic and residential village around a central canal and other smaller canals, and it may have even connected to the Grand Canal.  It has a lot of history to it, and people who live there still work and make lots of crafts to sell, such as woodcarving, shoe making and cotton dying which we saw all of.  The streets were narrow and the buildings mostly wooden and some of brick.  There were many many carvings above doorways and in corners – the majority of which was Chinese Pine.



Cotton drying and dying

Market stalls were dotted around the village, selling a mixture of crafts made in the village, food and tourist tat, and most of the time, the stalls selling similar items were close together.  We walked around with Jane taking us around and translating for us as the actual tour guide couldn’t speak English.  There were so many other tour guides there with their own personal microphones and speakers so Jane decided to use the local guide’s equipment, but STILL the other tour guides seemed to boost their speakers and drowned Jane’s voice out completely.  In the end, Jane decided to speak very quickly, and when she’d finished she would shout “Let’s go!” before the other groups could catch up with us!  During our tour here, we went around a ‘Museum of Beds’ (!) which was a little random but actually quite interesting!  We had time to browse a small (probably the main) market where I bargained for a hat and got it for 15 Yuan instead of 20.  We had lunch in the village and the food was surprisingly plain and simple, some dishes almost English including beef and potato in gravy, tomato and scrambled egg, a huge joint of pork and some chicken soup.

We left for another 2 hour journey to Shanghai, where we were staying for the next two nights.  For some reason we got onto the subject of food and cooking, and Jane told us about men in the south are known as “soft ears”, and are known to appreciate their wife to the extent that he cooks, cleans, and makes a point of looking after her very well indeed!  Jane told us that she was married to a Mongolian man who didn’t do much cooking, but she said she was working on changing him and apparently his ears are beginning to soften!

 We had a different room, slightly swankier actually, and it was a ‘No Smoking’ floor, where the carpet was lovely and clean, and we discovered a washing line in the bathroom.  If only we could have had it near the window like they do in the apartments here!



Huang Po River cruise



We went out to dinner in a restaurant where we cooked out own ‘Hot-Pot’.  A round table as usual, but all the food in the middle was raw.  At each seat there was a hotplate with a split pan ready to boil: one side was plain water, the other side had chillies and chilli oil inside.  Again, the food was surprisingly simple, and of course I used the plain boiling water side only.  It was nice to have some plain food though, with the only dressing being soy sauce.  It was quite fun!

Back on the coach, we went to the riverside where we went on an evening cruise on the Huang Po River.  It was quite cold on the top deck but it was definitely worth it!  It was the only time I wore my woolly hat here in China, and Jane couldn’t believe that most, if not all the Brits had been on the roof for the entire trip!