jeff yen

This is part of a series of posts that are going to detail my time as part of a week-long, five-star-studded, guided group tour my father arranged for us. Initially I thought it would be a short trip around Shanghai, and agreed to go in the hopes that maybe… just maybe… my dad and I could spend some quality time together.

…Yeah.

In any event, the posts are going to come in reverse order, since the trip is almost over and I’m writing what’s most fresh in my mind at the moment. There’s going to be more exposition in the posts to come, since explaining how these tours actually work at the business level is something I’m going to reserve for when my impressions get drier and I’m bored of writing about the whole thing anyway.

Pictures are also coming, when I get a chance.

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We were up at 6AM again in Suzhou, ready for another battle at the breakfast line with the five other tour groups staying at the same hotel. I have found that breakfasts tend to be the best meals, possibly because the hotel kitchen staff is accustomed to serving real customers in addition to the periodic herds of guided tourists. This is not to say that the meals are good … merely the best in comparison to what we are fed in other establishments throughout the day.

As a result, despite the ungodly hour, the breakfast crowds are merciless. Omelet bars are overwhelmed, the young cooks sweating and dazed behind their portable gas stoves and french skillets. Busboys and waitresses skitter back and forth frantically, gathering used dishware and silverware, and responding meekly to impatient barks from patrons. Chafing dishes full of meat — and some of the more competently executed vegetables — are emptied faster than the kitchen can refill them, and fresh fruit is quietly smuggled away in purses and backpacks for later consumption.

Luckily for the staff, we are normally allowed only about an hour before being prodded onto our buses for the morning’s featured event.

Suzhou’s morning tour was the Lingering Garden (Liu Yuan / 留园), which was fairly interesting, in an “I’ve seen this in front of every P.F. Chang’s” sort of way.

To be fair, the garden was actually gorgeous, and the steady rain only enhanced the drooping willows, the dark creaking wood of the buildings, and the twisting stone walkways. However, the place’s serene beauty was utterly spoiled by the noise of workers busily restoring or replacing part of a wall, the legions of tour groups tramping about the place, and their tour guides’ loudspeakers blaring in competition with one another as they expounded on the history of the place.

This is fairly typical of Chinese tourism, and I’m surprised I’m still upset by it after all this time.

Trying to escape the crowds, I decided to just wander off on my own into the maze of gardens, avoiding the main paths and tour groups, occasionally retracing my steps to check on the tour group and make sure they weren’t piling back on the bus without me. This failed to put me in favor with the tour guide, who appeared to take offense that I wasn’t cooing over his descriptions of the hardwood chairs in every room.

The garden was followed by a visit to a silk outlet, thinly disguised as a tour. I immediately left the group and located a cafe on the second floor where I spent a happy hour sipping a cup of terrible coffee and reading, with a brief but remarkable interlude… a “fashion show” put on by the factory.

 

The net impression was one of long-standing depression; unattractive models wearing cheaply made, unattractive clothes, slumping down a gaudy catwalk before wheeling robotically to retreat backstage. As a tribute to fading hope and listless cynicism, I could see no room for improvement. As a sales and marketing tool… I think they could do better.

We were then called to lunch, which turned out to be equally depressing. Out of seven or eight dishes (to serve a table of ten), one was boiled cabbage, and another was scrambled eggs, both with no seasoning whatsoever, unless you count despair. God help the chef in charge of the kitchens if he actually likes to cook; this was clearly the work of a broken man.

Once the shoppers — and less discriminating eaters — in the group had had their fill, we were herded back onto the buses for the drive to Hangzhou, which lasted for three hours and one pit stop.

Our arrival in Hangzhou was actually a pleasant surprise. Rather than viewing a pointless stretch of waterway or standing around in a field for fifteen minutes before being driven to dinner, we were driven directly to the restaurant near West Lake ( Xi Hu / 西湖) and cut loose for an hour. Despite the cold drizzle, the entire group naturally made a beeline for the lake itself, there to pose giddily for pictures of themselves in front of a featureless fog bank.

Despite having resolved to try to spend some quality time with my father this trip, I decided that this, among so many other activities, defied any possible interpretation of the phrase, and quit the field. I told him I’d meet him at the restaurant at the appointed time, and went wandering off by myself.

Incidentally, I now recognize this as my favorite mode of travel, which is something of a relief and a disappointment. I am relieved, since I can now stop wondering why I feel out of my element when traveling with others, but supremely disappointing in the realization that some of my happiest moments may simply be lost to time and strangers’ memories, as I am unable to sufficiently share them even with the people closest to me. Words and pictures are a pale, clumsy substitute for a living memory, and that they may be all I have to offer when all’s said and done is a disheartening thought.

 

I immediately found one interesting attraction by the lake, at any rate; there is a peculiar monument, entitled “Monument to Martyrs of the 88th Division of Chinses[sic] Army in the Battle at Songhu[sic].”

The intent is clearly noble: on January 28th 1932, Japan initiated an invasion of Shanghai, in which 1,421 soldiers of the local 88th division died defending their country, and this monument was built (and subsequently dismantled for unknown reasons, then rebuilt years later at the current location) to commemorate them.

However, the two heroes that made it onto the monument are curiously immortalized at the instant in time immediately before being — if the monument has any say in the matter — violently martyred into a fountain of fine red mist by four simultaneously exploding bombs, which I found unsettlingly hilarious.

It wasn’t long before I found a coffee shop hidden behind a narrow, neon-lit facade on a nearby street; all narrow stairways and wood paneling, the old building was dark and quiet inside, but for the creak of wooden floorboards and the occasional pool of light from a window or an overhead spot. The first floor was just a stairway; the second floor was a bar, where they were just starting a movie. I told the waitress I was interested in a quiet place to just have a cup of coffee, and the manager nearby told her to take me upstairs, to a floor that was simply marked “3/F Lovers” on the building’s register.

“3/F Lovers,” despite my various apprehensions, turned out to be a collection of small private sitting rooms. Mine was packed with a small table, two chairs, a tired-looking sofa, and an open window with a view of the street below. A single small sconce cast a dim honeyed glow over dark wood panels and dusty art, and a lake-fed breeze whispered in through the open window, somehow making the room simultaneously warm and cool.

The waitress took my espresso order and slipped out, leaving me alone with the quiet hiss of rain and wet tires outside, the lonely, ancient wail of a Chinese fiddle (an er hu / 二胡) floating up from the street, and the low murmuring click-click-clack of a game of mahjong (ma jiang / 麻将) from the room next door.

I had a pang of guilt when I remembered my dad out by the lake, but we are probably both happier this way; I have a moment of peace in this sublime little hideaway, and he is free to harangue his fellow travelers without me cramping his style.

 

I have half an hour until we are expected at what I fully expect to be an enormously boring and bland dinner, and I fully intend to make the most of it by sitting with my eyes closed, sipping my coffee, listening to the city around me, and otherwise doing… absolutely… nothing.

 

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Leisure 1930 Pub : Coffee House Restaurant
88 Scholar’s Road ( xue shi lu 88 hao / 学士路88号 )
Hangzhou, China
T: +86 0571-87910561