Growing up in Hong Kong: Hangzhou

The next day, we took a car out and visited Flying Peak 飛來峰 and Lingyin Temple 靈隱寺 in the morning.

A leisurely breakfast at the hotel before we started our day.

Stone carvings on the walls of Flying Peak

The temple seems extremely popular with lots and lots of worshippers

The Buddha in the first temple (天王殿)

Buddha in the next temple (大雄寶殿) further up the hill

The next level is where the scrips are kept and therefore not accessible to the public

Before we reached the top level, we came across a statue of a Japanese monk. It was a gift from the Japanese in remembrance of Japanese monk 海空和尚 who came to China over 1200 years ago.

Buddha at the top level temple (藥師殿)

When we went back down, we found a temple housing the 500 disciples 五百羅漢. Each of them 1.7m tall and weigh a ton and they were arranged in the pattern of a 卍.

Of the disciples, I only know Tat Mo 達摩, so it was only logical to seek him out.

He's number 25

And since I was there, I wanted to see who was number 1

And number 500. Judging by the colour of the plague, seems I am not the only one who felt this way.

Hangzhou is famous for its longjing tea 龍井茶. So before lunch, we also went to visit some tea plantation. A to-do in Hangzhou is to "ask for tea" 問茶 but the area's so commercialised, we decided not to stop at any of the tea houses, the last thing we want is hassle. So, we had the driver drive as far up the hill as possible and stopped at a plantation. We just wanted to walk amongst the rows of tea and take some shots.

There are 4 well known restaurants in Hangzhou all serving traditional Hangzhou cuisine. We didn't have time to try all, so we picked 樓外樓 for lunch. Apparently, this restaurant which was located on a little island on the West Lake has the exclusive fishing rights to the fishes in the Wast Lake. How interesting!

After lunch, we went to our last sight for the day, Liuhe Tower 六和塔.

We ended the day with the show Impression West Lake 印象西湖. With this, we completed Impression series by director Zhang Yimou (the others being Impression Liu San Jie in Guilin and Impression Lijiang in Lijiang). Impression West Lake is very similar to Impression Liu San Jie but without the Guilin mountains, this was not as dramatic. Geoff preferred Impression Lijiang, maybe because it was our first show and it was a day time show (the others are night shows with lightings) and more personal.

KFC before the show. This really brings back memories. The last time I was in Hangzhou (back in 1993), I was here with KPMG to audit KFC outlets. I spent many days working in a place just like this.