Jimmy-Watch: Shaoxing

Nate and I traveled south-east from Hangzhou by train to Shaoxing, a quiet city of 4.5 million in Zhejiang province. When Nate and I were planning where to go from Hangzhou, we had a few days to travel before we could meet up with Ian again, so we didn't want to stray too far from Shanghai. However, Lonely Planet was not being very helpful. The sad reality is that the size of a travel guide seems to be inversely proportional to its quality. With little help from Lonely Planet, we found a city that was a couple of hours by train from Hangzhou, and went for it, not sure exactly what we would find. We ended up in Shaoxing, a city about two hours by train from Hangzhou. It's a humble city of 4.5 million, and here Nate and I began to see China.

Tearing away, layer by layer, the bars, night clubs, dunkin' donuts, the bund, we left the foreigner zone and entered a city built by the Chinese for the Chinese. Not that this city was so different from the others. Shaoxing is still full of towering apartment complexes, early-morning ballroom dancing in public parks, streets saturated with mo-peds, but this city seemed to be bleeding utility and efficiency.

Shaoxing, like a lot of China, is perpetually being built

I never stop being impressed by these large, stoic squares that have welcomed me to some cities in China

And just when I thought that this was a just another modern city blooming from Chinese industrial expansion, we walked one mile east from our Hostel and encountered some architecture that felt like an old Chinese village. The skyscrapers of Shaoxiang towered in the distance, and I'm honestly not sure how much longer this village section of the city will last. It was one of the places where I would have loved to have a tour guide, or at least someone who spoke Chinese. Some villagers peeked out from their buildings and said "ni hao", but I wonder how long they had lived there and when Shaoxiang began its explosion into a metropolis. I left China with more questions than answers, and nowhere was this more evident than in Shaoxiang.

Out of nowhere, old buildings!

It took a while, but we found a pagoda on the hill. Walking up the hill, we ran into some old men who we think were telling us that the inside of the pagoda was closed, and insisted that we try some other time. When we kept on going, they looked at each other and wrinkled their eyebrows in confusion, probably thinking "those guys are wasting their time, why don't they come back tomorrow when they can see the inside of the pagoda too?"

Silenced by language, I drifted aimlessly through this city, seeing people, buildings and places without really understanding. Without any help from the guide book, we were surrounded by a city without even knowing why it existed in the first place. I had been pretty firmly attached to my guide book up until this point, and in Shaoxing I learned to put the book in my backpack and start exploring. I'm sure there were points of interest we missed - apparently a famous poet lived somewhere in the city - but we decided to take the city and make it our own.

"What kinds of industries are important in Shaoxiang? What types of people live here? Is this a city that Chinese people would visit? What is that big glass pyramid building in the middle of the town square?"
"I have no idea!"

As expected, we failed spectacularly, which is not so bad, all things considered.