Joe and Char board the 25, the first step to embarking on The Mother Of All Bus Rides, aka, The Bus Ride From Hell. Our bus experience on a recent Saturday in Hangzhou, China, clearly sets it apart from all other experiences of the week and lands it squarely in the I-can’t-believe-I-lived-through-that category. In thinking back on it, I’m a little undecided whether to call it “The Bus Ride From Hell,” or, “The Mother ... Read More
Hangzhou Routine
This is a rather long and somewhat uninteresting review of our week written to give you some idea of what life is like in Hangzhou. Just like your lives, much of what we do is routine and every so often something different or fun comes along. --jk Sometime during the night on Monday I awoke to make what has become for some number of years now the nightly trip to the bathroom. I noticed that my ankle was sore, as ... Read More
A Bout With Gout
Chinese cuisine is wonderful. I love going out to eat in Hangzhou. Why it makes me more susceptible to gout here than at home, I cannot say. I'm not going to stop eating Chinese food, so I'll just have to be careful. This is a problem I don’t want. Two years ago when I was in Hangzhou, I had a couple of bouts of gout. This is the condition known as “the disease of kings” or “the rich man’s disease.” It was so called ... Read More
Jet Lag and Schedule Adjustments
A small desk in the 2nd-floor apartment serves as my work space. I am looking south toward a rather large windows with a large tree outside. Nice to see the foliage, although the security bars on the windows offer a kind of jail house ambience. My days have been starting sometime between 3:30 and 4:30 a.m. This is not by design; rather, I think it is the result of my body trying to reset its circadian clock, which was ... Read More
Getting Settled in Hangzhou
Our first week in Hangzhou found us reestablishing our life in a much different way than we are accustomed to living in Minnesota. We met with some old friends, did some basic grocery shopping, signed up with a Chinese telecom provider for Chinese phones, took a tour to the nearby canal town of Wuzhen, enjoyed three wonderful Chinese dining experiences, and quickly remembered how to cross a Hangzhou intersection without ... Read More
Return To China, the Silk Road, and More
RETURN TO CHINA (Feb 17 - Jun 30) We're headed back to China! In February, 2012, my wife, Char, and I spent five months in China. Char taught English in a school in Hangzhou and I worked remotely for my company. What an experience! Now we will return. Char will again be teaching in Hangzhou. But this time, I will be freelancing. I’m planning to write about the rich experiences we are bound to have during our time there. ... Read More
Last hours in Hangzhou
During our Sunday walk around West Lake, we got a text from our student-interpreter (also our new Chinese granddaughter), Eryi (are-ee'), asking when we were leaving. She wanted to visit one more time. So we met her at Pacific Coffee this morning and chatted for a couple of hours--about school, about going off to college, about China and the United States and the difference in our populations and cultures. ... Read More
A Walk Around West Lake
After five months in China, we realize that there are so many things that we HAVE NOT done. We haven't used the well-developed bike rental system, we haven't gone to the Lei Feng Pagoda, we didn't get to the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an, didn't make it to Beijing, the Yellow Mountain, the kilns in Ningbo, Tibet, and other places and sites. We have been promising ourselves that we would walk around West Lake, ... Read More
Last Days in Hangzhou
A Last Lunch Menu at Monday's lunch with Lindan and William (whom we met during the Marryin' Joseph episode--go look at the pics again): Duck eggs with soy sauceCrab--three whole animalsTofu with meat fillingTea mushroomsWest Lake beef soupSpicy frogSome kind of whole crustacean, not shrimp, not lobster--something in betweenShrimp dumplingsPeanut ice cream Lindan is our Chinese daughter and we wanted to ... Read More
Eating Fun in Hangzhou
Eudora Station is one of the latest restaurant discoveries for us. Although it is located right smack-dab in the middle of the tourist area of Hangzhou, we didn't discover it until Sunday, June 10, nearly five months after our arrival. I guess that is an indication that we do not hang out much in the tourist places. Nevertheless, Eurdora Station was fun to discover. It has a nice combination of ... Read More
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