Being Touristy, Part 2

This week hasn’t been immensely taxing, or even that eventful for that matter. Because class was canceled Monday, I effectively only had a half course-load this week, which I dealt with in one fell swoop at Starbucks Tuesday night. It was a rather sniffly swoop, as everone here seems to be sleeping poorly and coming down sick this week. I started getting the sniffles Monday evening, and by Tuesday I was in full-on head cold mode. I couldn’t sleep Tuesday night, a fact which was made worse by the fact that there were mosquitoes in my room. Chinese mosquitoes are quicker, and therefore harder to kill than the American ones. When I was in Beijing I bought a flyswatter, and it became a ritual every night to close the door and climb on every piece of furniture to kill my mosquitoes, each with a fast and supremely satisfying thwack. It was kind of fun, part vindictive pleasure, part prey-stalking.

Though there are mosquitoes here, they’re not as many and haven’t been a huge problem. But when you can’t sleep and you hear an occasional, ominous buzzing somewhere near your head, it can pretty quickly drive you crazy. I’d wave my arms wildly around my head, but a few minutes later they’d be back. I’d pull the covers over my head to keep them away, but quickly get too hot and decide that was a bad idea. It was awful. I’d get up to blow my nose, indignantly flick on the lights and swat at one perched on the wall over my bed. Of course, it would get away, and I’d scan the room for a minute before turning off the light and climbing back into bed. This went on for at least an hour, before finally I took out two of them with one of my textbooks, and (I hoped) shut a third in the bathroom. Left in peace, I settled into my ailing sleep for the night.

Wednesday I felt a bit better, but I also had well over five hours of class, and by the time I finished my one-on-one at 4:15, my brain was droning a monotonous mantra of “sleep…sleep…” and sleep I did, until 9:30 this morning, except for an hour and a half break around 8:00 when I sent off some emails and ate a granola bar. This morning I felt better, but a walk to the post office left me exhausted, and though I wasn’t exactly loving the idea of another afternoon in bed, I didn’t have any homework and wasn’t up for much activity.

Luckily my hand was forced by prior arrangements and a growing urge to get the hell away from campus, which I hadn’t ventured from since Monday night (Starbucks, though a 5-10 minute bus ride away, does not count as it is a place to sit and do work and come back, and has no sight-seeing aspects like other coffee houses). So this afternoon I set off with Xueqin, Shushan and Yazhen to the pedestrian area of Hefang Street, a street promising to give us the chance to haggle to our hearts content over jade cell phone fobs and Peking Opera masks. It still being the National Golden Holiday, the stores were crammed full of people, but it was lots of fun to see everyone’s wares, especially since the street seems to have been outfitted with a somewhat traditional façade, so the shops were all adorned with carved wooden signs and lanterns and such. There were also craft demonstrations of every type, which we were more than happy to gaze at in awe.

After walking the length of the street (and posing in only one picture with gaping tourists, who kept thinking poor Shushan, who’s Korean and lives in New Jersey, was our Chinese interpreter), we headed back to a teahouse we’d seen reviewed in a magazine, and were ushered to a private upstairs room. The waiters were all wearing somewhat traditional garb, and the service featured a tea ceremony that apparently takes two years of study to master. The tea, which was served cold, was refilled from a brass pot with a very long, narrow spout (we’re talking about four feet). The server could twirl the pot in all manner of configurations around his body, at last resting it on his head or behind his back, extending the other hand to the end of the spout and pouring the water, often from some distance, into the cup. Once he lunged at the cup from across the room, holding the pot high over his head, and once he even balanced the cup on his knee. We sat for quite some time, happily munching on the fruit, candies and sunflower seeds they provided us with. The place was terrific; it looked like a set from a kung fu movie, and we were definitely content to stay for as long as they kept bringing us more sunflower seeds, and refilling our beautifully painted teacups.

I’m a big fan of being touristy in Hangzhou. Much as I am getting used to living in this city for daily life, the touristy stuff has so much more stimulus, and there are better places to park and people watch downtown than on the outskirts. At the end of the day I don’t have to schlep my backpack to a hotel room, and I don’t have to think about whether or not I’m making use of my time, because I’ve got lots of time. I live here, though it’s definitely not home. Still, when I have the afternoon free, wandering around the touristy parts is an interesting and different, and somehow more cool than running an errand to buy a mouse (which I still need to do) or doing homework at Starbucks (which I will inevitably do again).