We finally got Ace moving and decided to search for both Qing He Fang and a nice lunch place at the same time.... finally we decided to just go Qing He Fang and eat there!:)
When we arrived, we didn't know where to get started and so just started walking around the back alleys...
I think it is so interesting.. the modern motorbike against the traditional doorway....
I discovered that the back alleys are all the shops selling art artifacts, antiques or jade.. so somehow, it is less crowded and the buildings here are extra nice:)
Check out that flight of stairs....
After going through the back alley, we walk through the main streets and saw lots of interesting stalls like toy stalls (that is where this pic came from cos the toy stall owner for demonstration how to play with the chinese yoyo) and even someone carrying a cage to sell rabbits! But we were all hungry and we promised Ace we will be back again for him to look at all these after we found a place to eat lunch..
We walked past this restaurant called ZHL.. it seemed to be serving local food and so we just walked in to try:) As they also served lots of seafood, they had fishtanks with live fishes inside.. When Max brought Ace to look at the fishes, one of the fish got too excited when she saw my son and jumped right out of the tank! hahahahahahah!
Thank goodness we managed to find vegeterian food in the menu.. yipee!:)
As they took our order, I noticed they used a remote control and pressed buttons while pointing at the TV to take order.. wah.. very high tech leh.. i din expect that in China:) But apparently, a few restaurants I went to after tat also doing the same thing..
I saw lots of these red seafood thingy.. I tot they were creyfish or wat but found out tat they are a certain type of lobster and apparently, they are famous for this...
Ace is very happy cos he gets to drink coke.. I decided to experiment. what happens when you add coke to chinese tea??:P The guys cheers and look happy cos finally, we are going to fill our tummies!
First dish tat arrived is fried toufu.. the sauce had some sort of taste.. I dunno wat they added in it.. it is like some sort of soy bean taste or wat.. cannot explain.. but this dish was so so lah...
Then is fried egg with leek.. I liked it tat there is more veggie than egg:)
Running out of ideas what to order, the girl suggested another local toufu delicacy.. the toufu is hard one.. and chewy.. and fried with a sauce like lao ganma...
After digging in, we found out the waitress forget to tell the chef no meat! Cos got fat meat inside the dish.. anyway, it is all donated to my tummy since I am the only non vegeterian..
This one is our favourite dish.. pumpkin deepfried with salted egg batter.. YUMS!
So many dishes hor.. the meal cost half of what it would cost if we ate a 3 dish meal in a chinese restaurant in dubai.. cheap and good ah! That is like $16 sing lor! Sibeh heng!
After we settled lunch, we are now READY to explore Qing He Fang PROPERLY:)
Ace was so excited to see Bing Tang Hulu.. we told him we will buy one later.. alas we were so full afterward we did not get a chance to taste this chinese dessert.. I am sure Ace will love it but looking at all the sugar.. I dun think I will like it very much...
Then we walked into this stall tat sells knick knacks.. and we made the very best investment ever! We bought this toy called a magic ruler.. I dunno if you have seen it before but I used to have one orange and white one when i was young.. and you can twist and turn it to make different things in it....
Ace loved it so much and becuase it is small and light, we brought it along for the rest of the trip and whenever Ace is bored, we would take it out to entertain him.. better than any iphone or ipad I tell you!
I am so happy that during this trip, my son has been exposed to so many traditional toys like chinese yoyo, chinese feather darts and the magic ruler:)
This one Max say MUST take cos is his favourite... he always loves those guan yu or yue fei type of statues...
We saw this group of artists.. they all long hair and arty farty looking one.. they are the best portrait artists I have ever seen.. they are very fast and their drawing if of much likeness lor!
Along the street is a medly of different buildings.. some sort of europeon.. some sort of traditional.. very curious mix it is...
That is mac donalds! Hahaha... so different from the Mac in Singapore right?:P
Then we walked to this part which is the FOOD STREET! But it looked too crowded so we did not venture in...
Right at the door, there were alot of people eating as well.. most of them were eating meat skewers that looked like satay and this guy was eating deep fried crab! So i am thinking even if we squeeze in also probably not much food we can eat.. besides, we are still very full from the sumptous lunch we had!
That is hell of a big wine jar lor!
Ace trying to break the jar to save his dad!:)
We also saw this person who was using a blowtorch to melt and make GLASS MODELS on the spot! Amazing!
They also have traditional tikam.. throw and hit how many you get a prize type of game..
They also have leather puppet show.. but you got to pay and then you can watch it through the view finder...
We went back to the toy store and saw a customer learning how to play with the chinese yoyo..
This is a store tat sells magic tricks.. Someone showed Ace how to undo this puzzle and so he could do it.. because he could do it and we praised him, he kept wanting to do it again and again and again!! hahahahaa
He refused to leave this stall!
This one is interesting but there is too big a crowd so i cant get a good pic.. first you pay.. then you spin a wheel, whatever the wheel points to.. you get tat animal. they have dragonk phoenix, rooster... So he first melts a pot of malt and then stirs it and pours it out into a shape of the animal and press a stick in and then wait for it to solidify and there, they are done!
Laughing buddha with thousand children... max say must touch to heng heng pray for another child:) hahaha
Max is intrigued with the child tat is doing a head stand on top of another child..
We noticed on the other hand, there was a little girl sitting on buddha's hand... hmm.. is tat a sign that buddha wants to give us a girl?:P hahahaha
Then I heard this guy playing some sort of flute.. sort of like a chinese clarinet.
I tried to take a video but alas was pushed along by the crowd so the video was a short one...
I really marvel at my son. After a short walk, he started his "Can I drink something, can I eat something?" mantra already! So Max queued up to buy him a chocolate drink.. but it was not a good choice cos drinking it made all of us even more thirsty!
Since Ace was rather clumsy, we decided to walk to the area that looked like a park and find a nice place to sit down and drink the drink...
Turned out that the place we found is Hangzhou Museum.. but as we had limited time and also a specific agenda to head out to West Lake after touring Qing He Fang, we decided to skip it and walk down the stairs and try to find our way to the West Lake... (as both locations are walking distance from each other)
Then we came to a map and realized that we are at the foot of the mountain and because the scenery seems to be very nice, we decided to go up the mountain to explore! So there goes our plan to walk to the West Lake..
Climbing upwards and still wondering what we will find..
Right at the top, we saw these stone gates.. they lead up to another temple.. (that you have to pay to get into..) But if you do not pay, you could still walk around the Wu Shan Park.. and there is greenery everywhere!
It feels good to be in the shade and have flora and fauna around:)
But Ace was rather upset since there is nothing interesting for him here...
As we followed the path, we saw more temples and shrines..
And then we came to this area called the Wu Shan Temple Square.. we expected to find people praying or maybe just eating..
Instead, we just found lots and lots of tables of people just drinking tea (or beer) and playing cards, chess and mahjong! There must have been a hundred tables there at least! And they were all filled with PEOPLE!
That is Ace asking "WHY SO BORING?" Cos I guess he doesnt appreciate the scenery we are seeing..
The view from the top of the mountain.. this is Hangzhou city..
Hmm.. what do we have there? By chance, we found another place we wanted to visit! Gu Lou!
To entertain Ace, Max got him to start counting the number of steps before we reach downhill...
There are 100+ steps before we reach ground level again...
Drum Tower... Max kept telling Ace he has to behave cos there are soldiers up there guarding the tower who are STARING at him to make sure he is a good boy...
Initially, Ace was mighty frightened.. BUT when we walked closer and Ace realized that it was just a bronze statue.. Ace yaya and said, "Fake one lah.. see, it cannot move one... "
We found out you have to pay to go in and watch cultural performances.. and then we saw that there is a Guai Zhai.. which sounded like what Ganma Karen told us about and so we asked the ticket seller for directions to find it...
Following her directions, we came to this place where someone was taking wedding photos.. apparently this is a series of art walls that are designed to show rustic life in Hangzhou in the past.. She looks lovely just standing there in the frame:)
Tgus us the effect the photog is trying to get I think..
So i also go and pose with the other walls:)
Such a huge and cute bear but i cannot understand why the writing on the shirt says "Bite me..."
It was a rather scenic walk in the less crowded area of the tourist spot...
Ace was fascinated with the toys...
And Max, as usual was fascinated with budhha statues:) hahahah
After getting lost countless times and asking for directions countless times, we finally arrived at GUAI ZHAI... which loosely translated to english means "Strange House..."
We paid entrance fees and went up the stairs...
dam! Turned out to those type of ghosthouses you see in amusement parks! Ace was rather scared but max just held his hand and bulled him along and me, since i had to take care of myself and Max had to take care of Ace and couldn't take care of me, I just LUN and CHEONG all the way..
But actually it was also NOT THAT scary lah.. truth to be told.. cos the props are all less than perfect.. And there was this group of men and women about me and Max's age who came in with us... the scaredy cats lor.. last stretch is you got to walk past some dead bodies tat will sit up.. BUT YOU CAN HEAR THE MACHINE making them sit up.. they hum and stand there and din move lor.. so me and max and ace pushed them aside and went ahead first.. wah lau.. so old liao even more scared than my 7 year old! hahahahaha
But Ace was rather scared afterward.. I was also disappointed to find tat it was not the place tat Karen and CK talked about ... But in retrospect, I was glad we went to this not so scary one.. cos it made Ace not want to go to a scarier one we saw the next day.. hahahaha.. cos I dun really like these sort of things..
Check this out.. the sun looked so much like the MOON here!
So now tat we are done with the strange house, we decided to move towards West Lake.. as we were walking, we saw this Hello Kitty car.. so cute right.. but the driver inside is a fat old man!:)
Ace complained that he was very tired and so we decided to sit and rest in the bus stop cos max did not have the strength to carry Ace all the way. Ace happily played with his toy while Max checked the map to double check our locations..
After a 10 minute rest, we are good to go to West Lake.. ALAS, the beauty of Qing He Fang just beckons us again... we walked past a parade square and saw lots of people inside and so we walked in to take a look lah....
Welcome to Wu Shan Square.. which is at the foot of Wu Shan.
It has a lovely view...
And lots of flowers..
And as it was sunday, the huge parade square area was filled with children playing and people flying kites..
We saw people selling these birds and bought two for Ace:)
Ace testing out his bird...
After playing there for a while we realized that we are at another end of Qing He Fang that we did not visit just now and so we went in... so there goes our plan to go to West Lake again.. hahahah
This part is just pasar malam selling toys and food.. nothing much.. these pencil caes are cute.. one of them says, "Work hard to make money... to protect your wife.." Hahahahaha
We noticed tat the bing tang hulu stall here also sold bing tang strawberries.. maybe they wanted to have healthier options.. or maybe it is cheap to get strawberries here cos i figured the farmers nearby must be growing strawberries as we saw alot of people selling them..
I was thinking.. ok, last photo of Qing He Fang before we make our way to West Lake but alas, we were unable to walk out of this area once and again!!
Read about what happened in the next post:)
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