The first morning of our trip, freshly out the door of our hotel and ready to embark on our adventure we stumbled upon a french-style pastry shop filled with smiling and welcoming people.  Maybe it was Eliot’s red hair, and maybe it was because of our darling boys the whole time but whatever it was, the people in China were so friendly!

The French pastry shop was an interesting fusion of French and Chinese. They had chicken curry croissants, (my favorite) pork floss baguette, sweet mushroom tarts and one strange coffee combo that I didn’t try: a blue cheese latte.  Call me a square.  I ordered a regular old cappuccino.

Our hotel in Shanghai was huge, it was bigger than our apartment in New York and it was located right near People’s Square Park which was the first place we went to, after skipping the blue cheese latte.  The park was amazing, I didn’t expect a park like that in the center of a city with a population nearing 20 million.  It was clean; perfectly landscaped and maintained with lakes, bridges and 4 major museums.  We spent the early morning there walking around waiting for the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall to open.

I loved everything about Shanghai, it felt like a city in real motion.  The push forward there is so strong, so many things are changing forever.  In many ways it’s frightening and I couldn’t stop thinking about how it must seem to the millions of old folks who have been living in the same neighborhoods for decades suddenly seeing their facing block getting demolished and a luxury shopping center glittering in its place.  It’s pretty sad for them I would think, and very difficult for the impoverished people who are getting left behind, built around and forced out of the city.  These scenes are everywhere and you can see the change happening it’s so fast.

We walked out of the French Concession, out of a street where people still washed their clothes in plastic buckets in a shared alleyway, and sat on the street in their pajamas playing chess or eating lunch together and looked up to a new gated development across the street towering above the scale of the neighborhood with the bold title of “Richgate.”  It was mostly inhabited by foreigners and close to the outrageously expensive western-style shopping area Xintiandi.  We spent a few minutes there because of a recommendation from a friend but quickly realized it wasn’t what we were here to see.  It did show me the amazing level of luxury and refinement that China could offer, it was really well done and so very out of place..for now.

I couldn’t get enough of Shanghai and I forced everyone out of the hotel room bright and early and stayed out pushing forward all day until dark fell before returning back again.  I wanted to make sure we went everywhere, ate and saw everything.  I had made some pretty well researched lists of activities organized by district and we managed to do them all, except we never made it to the expo.  shocking.  We could have gone but on the day we planned to go, so did 1.3 million other people and while we were having lunch before taking a taxi to the site, we spoke with a woman who told us the lines were 3-9 hours long to enter the pavilions.  So, we did something else instead and didn’t look back.

From Shanghai we took the bus to a small canal town called Zhujiajiao and it was not what we expected.  I hesitated on this part of the planning and should have listened to myself but at least I only allowed one half day and one night there.  The guest house seemed so nice online, and the guy who ran it was friendly.  The website was professional and it boasted “European standards” alongside pretty pictures of clean rooms.  When we got there, after finding the right unmarked doorway down a narrow and dark corridor, nobody was there.  The doors were open, and I let myself in, but it was not what I had hoped for.  It wasn’t the worst place I have ever stayed but the plywood mattress wasn’t the softest board either.  The boys were happy to have a bug net tent on the floor for their shared bed but they did surprisingly notice the difference in living standards that they are accustomed to.  They asked nicely to go back to the other hotel.  We made it through, and it was just fine because I knew that the next day we would be moving into the most comfortable part of our trip (because I had made all of the reservations).

We hired a taxi from Zhujiajiao to Suzhou and arrived at our 5 star luxury hotel in the early afternoon.  It was raining but that was nice because we needed a break from the pace of Shanghai and the accumulated grime of Zhujiajiao.  We spent the rest of the day relaxing in our perfect room and the boys finally got the luxury of watching  cartoons in Chinese.  The hotel was wonderful, our window looked out onto a large Chinese garden with a big old pagoda and in the morning the breakfast buffet was full of pancakes, waffles, sausages, and 100 other things to choose from.

In Suzhou we spent our time seeing the classical Chinese gardens that the city is known for.  Bertram was really into it all and he pretty much drove this part of the trip.  It was great to see all of this together and to see the gardens through his eyes too, they were particularly special to him and I liked that.  My favorite garden was called “The Humble Administrator’s Garden” and I guess it’s also the most famous, but for good reason.  It was large and sprawling and had an incredible bonsai garden attached to it that must have housed over 200 perfectly maintained bonsai.  The whole garden was so pleasant, it was really heavenly.  We stayed there for an entire day, from morning until sunset.

We saw gardens and Suzhou leisurely for 5 days and slept luxuriously for 6 nights and then took the bus to Hangzhou.  For an unknown reason, West Lake in Hangzhou is relatively unheard of outside China.  For this reason I was skeptical when I read about its charms before seeing it myself.  I totally underestimated its potential for our vacation.  I thought to myself “it’s only a lake, how can we spend more than an hour looking at it, let alone go there for several days?”  Boy was I wrong.  I wished so much that I had given us more time there, I had no idea it would be the place of my dreams.  At West Lake there was nothing that got in the way, no McDonald’s across the street to ignore, no tourist trap junk shops lining the boardwalk around the lake, no unfortunate architecture blaring out at you… there were little islets of perfectly manicured gardens at one end of the lake linked together by beautiful bridges and lightly spotted with pleasant local cafes and small restaurants. There were pedestrian walkways that crossed the lake, lined by trees and grass and smiling people. You could escape the cars and still be essentially in the city. It was really flawless everywhere and I have never seen that before. It was a place of undisturbed ultimate perfection, but not in a wasteful or indulgent way, in a peaceful and harmonious way. You can spend days, years, there I’m sure and continue to feel that way. It’s not only the lake either; around the lake are forests and mountains that extend the undisturbed beauty.  We climbed a small mountain by carved rock stair steps with the boys, to the top of a pagoda where we could see the whole city sitting beyond the lake.  We sat there on these huge rocks in the warm sun staring over this faraway place with the memories of so many pleasant days behind us.  I felt so happy there atop so much beauty, and so happy that I could share this view with the boys.

To see all the pictures from our trip, copy and paste this link to my slideshow on Facebook.  You can view it even if you’re not on FB, and please let me know if it doesn’t work:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2087666&id=1563038992&l=e70b0d7b44

Advertisement