Hangzhou, we arrive.

little guardians of Quinghefang Ancient Street…

The bus hurdled westward until Shanghai was just a collection of faded grey shapes.  I watched through the window as the suburbs rolled by: groups of colourful housing complexes creeping their way across green.  Power lines, train tracks, industry.  Even in the mystical land of the red dragon there was urban sprawl.  China…. China… The word itself  is enough to conjure a deluge of reveries.  China: the land of tea, of silk, bound feet, gunpowder, peppercorns, astounding landscapes, whispering sands… dumplings.

The bus stopped, and the trance that I had fallen into was broken.  Was this Hangzhou?  Had we arrived?

I looked around for some visual clues: a sign, evidence of a bus stop- anything.  All I saw was a bustling nondescript street corner that just happened to be about 3 hours away from the airport in Shanghai.  It was a length of time that matched my scrawl of notes, so that had to be something, right?  On top of that, almost everyone seemed to be getting off here… Never mind that ‘here’ was a rather vague concept at the moment.  We looked at each other and shrugged in that universal “eh, why not?” gesture.  (You know, the one that either leads to a grand adventure or to a whole series of unfortunate events? )  And with that we hopped off the bus, grabbed our luggage, and shuffled off, taking refuge against the nearest building.  I pulled the folded piece of paper out of my bag that had our hotel address written on it- a relatively useless bit of information, given the fact that I had completely forgotten to print out an area map… not that it would have helped either. We were deep in thought, formulating a plan of attack when a singular voice cut through the unfamiliar sounds that surrounded us.

“Taxi?”  The word had an almost heavenly ring to it, and without hesitation, we nodded happily in the voice’s direction.  A short, youngish looking man approached us.  After taking a look at our destination’s address, he named a price.  I was confused, but did not heed the tiny warning voice going off in my head- the one that was questioning why we were even negotiating to begin with.  Was this how the taxi system worked here?  But instead of walking away, we began haggling… numbers passed back and forth for a few minutes before all involved came to an agreement.  Part of me felt like we had just been hustled, but then again I didn’t know where we were- or where our hotel was- and I certainly had no concept as to where one was in relation to the other.  So, I guess I really couldn’t complain.  We were off- he had my suitcase and was deftly speed-wheeling through the dense crowd of pedestrians while my husband and I did our best to keep up.  At one point I broke into a jog.  In heels.  Various scenarios ran through my head.  I tried to envision the outcome to our present situation.  Was this turning into one of those stories… already?  We hadn’t even been in the country for 6 hours. I was out of breath.  Almost out of steam.  I hadn’t really been prepared for a run today.  Then, as abruptly as the chase began, it ended.  There was no taxi anywhere.  Instead, I watched as my suitcase got loaded into the trunk of a small, rusted out silver 4 door.  He motioned for us to get in, and I took a seat in the back.  As we pulled away from the curb I noticed two security guards sitting nearby who had obviously been watching the whole scene unfold.  The look on both of their faces was one of amused puzzlement.  I can’t say that it was comforting.

The air in the car was acrid with the scent of old cigarette smoke, and the built-in ashtray near my foot was overflowing with butts.  I wondered who else he had been driving around.  Friends? Strangers?  He looked at our hotel address again.  I swear that we were backtracking- passing by the same buildings that I had just seen from the bus window.  After about 15 minutes there was a u-turn.  The finally GPS got switched on.  Another u-turn.  More driving.  A wrong turn, and another u-turn, then a left down an empty street in an older section of town.  He looked at the address again, stopped the car, got out and ran into a nearby building.  Uh-oh.  Moments later he returned, hopped back into the driver’s seat and kicked the car into reverse.  We went speeding backwards, stopping just before we hit the intersection, and he got out again- address paper in hand looking from paper to building, paper to building.  Things were getting surreal.  Back into the car, back up the street and back into the same building he had just come out of minutes before.  When he appeared again, he was with another man.  There was a lot of back and forth conversation.  An older woman wheeled up on a bicycle, and stopped to join in the mix.  They looked up the street.  They looked down the street.  There was a lot of pointing.  From where I sat, it looked like a scene from an old silent film- exaggerated slapstick all for the sake of a few laughs.  I am sure that everything would have been quite hilarious if I hadn’t had a nagging worry in the back of my mind that our driver was going to grow tired of the search and kick us to the curb.  Once again he made his way back to the car.  Ok… here we go again… what was the verdict going to be?

“No car,” he said.  What?  No car?  Was he implying that we should get out?  “No car,” he repeated. Kicking it into reverse- we went backwards, then whipped around in a hasty 3-point turn, before heading back in the direction from where we had recently come. We pulled into traffic, and within 30 seconds he had pulled over, and was pointing down a wide, cobbled street.  “No car.”  I was still confused, but had definitely understood the part where he was ready for us to get out.  We settled the fee, and watched as he drove off; most likely very happy to be rid of us, and possibly entertaining the idea that he wouldn’t be picking up strangers with luggage who were hanging out near the bus ever again.

We wobbled and bumped- dragging our wheelie luggage down the cobblestone street, still feeling completely lost.  Just as the phrase “What should we do now?” was about to pass over my lips, we spotted a security guard nearby, and decided to roll on over to him- cursed address paper in hand, extended like I was offering up a flower.  The security guard took one look at the paper and made a chopping motion though the air in the direction of straight ahead.  He grunted while he did this.  He chopped to the left and grunted again- in a way that we understood that we were not to take that route.  He chopped to the right and nodded while grunting in an affirmative manner.  I had never imagined that so much information could be conveyed through a single sound.  Who knew that grunting could be so expressive?  We rolled forward, our luggage vibrating on the old, uneven cobbles; and bumped along for a while successfully reaching the fork in the road-  making sure that we wheeled ourselves to the right like we had been instructed.  We seemed to be rolling away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds and the restaurants, entering a very quiet part of the neighbourhood.  The street narrowed.  White washed buildings rose up on both sides.  It was an aesthetic that we would come to associate with more traditional architecture in the days to come.  I finally felt like we had arrived.  “We are in China!” I called out to my husband.  Like those words could transport us to the China of my imagination.  I could hardly wait to explore.  To eat!

We wheeled along for a bit longer… We had the sinking feeling we had unknowingly passed our hotel, or somehow managed to misunderstand the directions from our grunting friend.  Once more I unfolded the paper with the hotel’s address on it.  10th time is a charm, right?  We glanced around- looking for anything that might function as a clue.  I noticed a small plaque with the number 31 on it affixed to a nearby building.  My paper had a 31 on it.  There was a door!  I looked up, thinking that there had to be a sign, and hoping that it matched the name of our hotel… but, it was completely in Chinese.  Yes… of course…  Then, as if on cue, a young woman emerged from building 31.  We showed her our paper and she nodded.  Finally…

We had barely settled into our beautiful hotel room before we were back outside wandering. We turned a corner, and in front of us appeared a river of humans stretching as far as the eye could see.  The sun was beginning to set and the sky had turned a dusty pink.  Rooftops cut ancient looking shapes against the evening air.  Holding hands we recited our mantra as we took a step forward. “We are in China!”

Getting to Hangzhou from Shanghai is a breeze (our mini-misadventure aside). I would highly recommend taking a day or two to explore… It is a great stopping point for those making their way from Shanghai to Tunxi, Huangshan, or any other points west! Click here for transportation details.