Saturday, November 17, 2007

Alice in Wonderland

The intrepid Alice Renouf of the Colorado China Council came to visit us in Hangzhou, on her yearly tour through China.  We hired her originally to find us teaching positions in China and she did a great job holding our hand and answering our thousands of questions before we left for China.  Her website: http://www.asiacouncil.org.  We really enjoyed having the chance to visit and spend the day with her!

Alice has been coming to China for more than 30 years and is a wealth of knowledge on Chinese culture, history, politics, and living in China.  She stayed for a night with us in our 2nd apartment that the University provides.
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We told the boys for the last couple of weeks that today could be their home day, so Sue, myself, Alice and Sophie went to see some of Hangzhou's sights.  Of course the first stop was the Botanical Gardens.  It was sprinkling lightly, but we didn't mind.  Though it was mid-50's and "misty", Sophie didn't want to wear her coat, which is so... Sophie!
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Some scenes in the Botanical Gardens...
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Sue and Alice...
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Tim and Alice, enjoying the gardens...
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The autumn foliage was sure colorful...
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Sophie loved the Botanical Gardens.  She ran top speed all morning and as soon as we got into the cab at noon she fell asleep within 30 seconds.
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The cab took us to the Hangzhou silk market where Sue and Alice did some Christmas shopping. Alice said when she was here 10 years ago, these were rickety little stalls. 
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Business must be good, because in place of rickety stalls are clean, modern little shops, and so many of them!   Alice was wondering where Old China went!Hangzhou 052
Sophie deftly held the umbrella, protecting us from the afternoon sprinkles...
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There goes Old China, on a 3-wheeled bike!
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Alice Renouf, doing some Christmas shopping. 
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Hundreds upon hundreds of silk scarves.  My mother would be in heaven here!
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We stopped of at Starbuck's to get the kids a sandwich, but then we couldn't get a cab due to the rain so we walked for 1/2 hour back to our apartment, and Alice needed to catch the train.  She threw her things into her bag and went back out into the rain a few blocks away, but no one wanted to stop or go to the train station as it was near shift change time.

She whipped out a 100 yuan bill (the ride would probably only be about 20 yuan) and held that up and she got a taxi right away.  So refreshing to see how the experts do it  :)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

100 yuan is =to about $12.00
right? Curious in USA