Hangzhou, China

Yet another city on my Asia tour of October, 2010.  Located about 2 hours outside Shanghai,  Hangzhou (the "zh" are pronounced "j") is the location of one of our best software development partners.  They have a huge research facility there.  We were told that Hangzhou is actually a popular tourist location.  I imagined some sort of tiny resort town.  To my surprise, Hangzhou has a population of 3.5 million at the center, with 8 million in the area around it.  Not exactly a tiny place.  I also found out that this was once the ancient capital of China.  This was about 1,000 years ago...not much remains from that time.

The heart of Hangzhou is an area called West Lake.  It's a beautiful lake, with lush green trees surrounding it.  On a normal day, it looks like this:

Nice, huh?  However, we had rainy and overcast weather.  This was due to the impact of a nearby typhoon.  For us, it looked more like this:

It's still very pretty - despite the fact that you can't see anything.  The picture above shows a temple...far off in the distance, on a hill.  I walked for about 30 minutes, and took another picture in that same direction:

Apparently, this bridge is considered one of the more romantic spots in West Lake.  Just to prove that I was actually here, I had a buddy take my picture:

Yes, that's a Coke Zero in my hand...

While walking around the lake (it's about 15 miles around), I found this lovely statue, surrounded by colorful flowers:

Everything was delightful, until I walked up to the plaque just below the statue.  Here's what it said:

Well...alrighty then.  I think I'll just move along ; )  At another spot on along the lake, we found a large crowd waiting for a performance of the "dancing fountains":

The next day, we held some great meetings with the software developer.  Afterwards, they took us to lunch.  It was an amazing meal.  They told us that the restaurant, named The Dragon King, specialized in local cuisine.  I tried to take photos with my phone camera, so they're not the best - but I'll show you a little of what we enjoyed:

The drink was interesting.  Before taking a sip, I asked what it was - because it was warm.  They told me it was "corn juice".  That's exactly what it was.  It was delicious!

This is what I affectionately called "crab potatoes".  They had steamed crab over a plate of fried potatoes and vegetables.  It was a really interesting combination.

This last shot was just pretty - although out-of-focus.  They were fresh prawns, but the care put into the garnish was absurd.  See the flowers, sticking out of a chunk of cucumber.  It was really amazing to look at.

After lunch, we went to visit Zhejiang University.  We wanted to work with them on some of their graduate research in computer science.  We met with several professors, and had a chance to see some of the interesting work going on in parallel computing.  If you want to know more...just ask ; )

We finished the day at the Hangzhou train station - we had a 90-minute ride to get back to Shanghai that evening.  The station...and almost every other train station in China...was packed.  This is a quick video clip showing folks in line to board the train:

That's it for now...next stop - Shanghai!