So many blog posts to catch up on! Kicking it off with a quick report of my experience last weekend in Qiandao Hu—Thousand Islands Lake—with my coworkers.
Nice view from my hotel window
As the name implies, Qiandao Hu is a (man-made) lake full of islands, near Hangzhou. Eleven of us left the office early on Friday morning and took a van the 5ish hours to Qiandao Hu. Checked in to a nice hotel and headed straight to lunch, then to “piao liu,” which was translated on my itinerary as “drift.” When we got there it looked more like whitewater rafting, with two main differences from what I’m used to—there were only two of us per raft, and there weren’t any natural rapids, so every few hundred meters there was a man-made chute that one raft at a time could squeeze down, plummeting 4 or 5 feet into the water below. Tons of fun…everyone got soaked.
"Piao liu" rafts
Dinner both nights had lots of (whole) fish stew, since the area is famous for its fish (as well as Nongfu Spring bottled water, a popular brand available in Shanghai, and Cheerday Beer, which has about the same alcohol content as Nongfu Spring bottled water).
...and plenty of fish for sale in the gift shops!
#88 looks adorable! Let
Saturday we did what I assume is the typical touristy thing to do in Qiandao Hu: we rode a boat from island to island, got off and walked around at each. It was hot/humid as blazes, by the way, so I was dripping sweat the entire time. It was pretty awful from that standpoint. We got the VIP room on our powerfully air-conditioned boat, which was nice.
The islands were hilarious…mostly tourist traps. I don’t remember exactly what was on each island, but they each seemed to have a theme, like Lock Island (I don’t think it was really called that), on which there were giant padlock sculptures, and you could buy a lock with you and your honey’s name on it and lock it to a railing on the island. I once again encountered the speaker-rocks that we saw on Putuoshan, if that gives you an idea of what I was in for.
Here’s some pics of what I saw:
Giant locks!!!
Deadly snakes!!!
A gentleman demonstrating the Beijing Bikini
Some attractive stuff
It really was pretty there...
The craziest/funniest part was when we docked at an island and my coworkers, translating from the guide’s Chinese, asked me if I was interested in seeing the “she-males” on the island. My first reaction was, “why would I want to see that when you can see it every day for free in San Francisco?” But when I thought about it, I started to wonder if they’d be in a cage like the birds, and all the tourists would be pointing and taking pictures. I had to see.
Turns out it was a drag show of sorts, and you had to pay to see it. We opted against. Weird.
Imported from Thailand
Saturday night at dinner we got an extra treat: half of a cow’s head, complete with skull, teeth, and even a little “eyebrow” on one piece of meat (which no one would eat). It was interesting to watch my Chinese coworkers react to the cow head…everyone thought it was funny, and wanted to take pictures, but I was the only one all that grossed out by it. Living and eating here has started to redefine “picky” for me.
Our chief designer taking the half cow head by the horn
We spent the in-between times playing UNO, another card game like Gin Rummy, a dice/drinking game, watching World Cup, working on my Chinese, and walking around sweating a lot.
If any of my coworkers read this, thanks again for a great trip! 下一次我记得说 “UNO”！
Click here for the rest of the pics. And keep your eyes open for upcoming posts about Cooper’s first days in Shanghai, and other recent happenings.
Tags: Hangzhou, near Shanghai, Qiandao, Qiandao Hu, work retreat
And not long ago you thought eating the fish eye was adventuresome!
Now it sez I have to check the spam bot box - is that OK - I never had to do that before.
What a great trip. A beautiful place. I’m assuming the facilities were better than the ferry you took to Putuoshan. I have to ask. Do you eat all around the eyes, teeth and eyebrows on the cow’s head? I’m looking forward to hearing about Cooper’s experience in Shanghai. Sorry about the misspelling of her name on my email.
That was quite a weekend! It was a retreat. Does that mean a working vacation or totally fun weekend. Wish my employer that that way. They only wanted us to work, as in staff development. Play was on our own.
I only ate one piece from the cow head plate, just to say that I had…I’m hoping it was tongue. No one would eat the piece with “eyebrow” on it, and of course the teeth were intact when we were done.
I was expecting the trip to involve more work, but it was pretty much just a group vacation! Can’t complain…