Living in a country the size of China provides many opportunities to travel. It turns out, though, that we saw a lot more of the country when we traveled here in 2007 for two months than we will after having lived here for a year. We’re just too busy working, the weather really hasn’t been great and—wouldn’t you know it—teaching children means bringing home a cold just about every week!

But we did take advantage of time off during National Week to visit Hangzhou along with a few hundred million other tourists. The city, about 3.5 hours north by speed train from our home in Wenzhou is famed for West Lake – which I keep reading is China’s largest lake but I doubt this claim to fame. The area surrounding the lake has numerous parks and scenic areas with poetic names including: Snowfall Over Broken Bridge, Orioles Singing in the Willows and Three Pools Mirroring the Moon. more…

Tourism operators are known to charge unsuspecting travelers as high a price as they can get away with. This “tourist tax” is usually once or twice the normal price a local or anyone who knows the value of the item might pay. That’s why travelers are told to bargain hard to avoid paying such exorbitant sums of money. The most blatant example – a 500% increase over the normal price – was offered us in Hangzhou, China this week.

As our train pulled in after a three and a half hour ride from Wenzhou, where we have been living for seven months, we wondered which station we would be arriving at: the Main Station or the South Station. The Main Station would mean a 15-Yuan taxi ride while the South Station would entail two bus rides as we didn’t want to spend 60 Yuan on a taxi. more…

The Western world has a peculiar view of the Chinese as a very peaceful and obedient people. And so, readers have expressed surprise when I’ve written about how aggressive drivers are or how violent disputes over card games can be. I’ve warned travelers and expats that – as a pedestrian – even when you have the right of way, you never have the right of way. I’ve also written about how a card player, feeling cheated, went after a competitor with a metal pipe.

On my usual morning exercise walks, I often see groups of taxi drivers playing cards at little on-the-street restaurants (a card table & four chairs) to pass the time. I assume these are the night-shift drivers because: it’s usually between 5:30 and 7:00 a.m.; they are drinking lots of cheap beer; smoking tons of cigarettes; eating greasy food; playing gambling card games; and their taxis are all parked on the street with their “For Hire” signs on. more…

I caused another near-miss accident on my power walk this morning. I’ve mentioned before that white people get stared at a lot in my little Chinese city of 7 million people named Wenzhou.

The residents here don’t see too many loawai (literally old foreigner) and so when they do, they tend to look very carefully as they may never see another. This is even more true of country folk who come to the big city to work. I encounter a disproportionate number of them in the mornings as they make their way to the market to sell their produce or to the construction sites littering this boom town. more…

Unlike most of the expat teachers at my husband’s school, we rarely ordered food delivered to our apartment for the first five or so months we lived here. Between the fact that most everything is deep fried, over-salted and flavored with MSG, we didn’t know enough Chinese to order food let alone explain – over the phone, no less – how to have it delivered to our home. And, since I work from home, I was happy to make our meals. more…