Getting over a disappointment

June 12th, Sunday

Our plan for Sunday was to visit the Canal Museum on foot then catch a waterbus into town. After walking a couple of miles we did find what had probably once been the museum, in the middle of the Grand Canal, beyond a scruffy, impoverished district east of Sanxin Road where little boys playing were playing dangerously on the wall of a subsidiary canal and where watermelons were being sold from handcarts (not every vendor could afford a tricycle cart with an electric motor in this district); people's washing hung everywhere and we barefoot toddlers and dogs were roaming in front of the sheds where they lived. The museum was boarded up and looked ready for demolition; no sign of anywhere to board a waterbus either, nothing for it but to cross the canal again and walk back the way we'd come.

Entrance to the Grand Canal

If only we'd had proper access to the Internet and not just an out-of-date leaflet for foreign tourists we would have realised that the new Canal Museum (opened in 2006) is in the Gongshu district, a long distance from where we were. Had we been able to read Chinese we might have also found a mention of it on the notice boards concerning the waterbuses from Wulinmen Square.

Barge going through the lock

Anyhow, we crossed the canal at its very first (or last) bridge; it consisted of a couple of locks side by side, admitting barges into and out of the Qiantang River with huge, heavy gates that showered the boats with water as they just about scraped through the narrow passage way.

We had lunch at our local MixC mall where the posh people shop for Louis Vuitton handbags or Armani Junior outfits for their kids––after seeing the nearby slums the contrast made me feel decidedly uncomfortable––then, already rather hot and weary, caught the usual bus into town. "Be patriotic and obey the law" said the cartoon girl on the poster in the road.

Sequoia roots by the stream, Jiuxi

After our disappointment over the museum, I wanted Chris to have a treat, so, repeating what I'd done the previous Wednesday, we caught the K4 bus to Jiuxi. It was already 3:30 p.m. when we set off on the country walk. Since Saturday night's downpour and the previous downpours, the stream I mentioned in Wednesday's email had swollen to twice its previous volume and was rushing along; new streams had formed through the tea fields, besides, pouring across the road and into what had been sandy dry gullies. Fording the stream was now impossible and the cobbled path, dusty four days earlier, had become slippery with mud. The roadside rocks were dripping wet, which encourages the growth of moss, and the sequoia roots, reaching into the water, looked weird and wonderful. The shade of the trees kept us cool, but the dampness was such that sweat doesn't evaporate at all and we soon felt as soaked as if it were still raining!

View from the Jiuxi valley

Chris was enjoying the views as much as I had done during the week, in spite of more traffic on the narrow road. We walked as far as Xizhongxi where a high waterfall tumbles down the cliff and climbed slippery steps up the side to a pavilion high on the hillside where four student types were posing in Letters of the Alphabet shapes, our alphabet, funnily enough, not theirs. They were having fun. On the way down and further on it became more peaceful. We passed people wading barefoot in the water while others were washing their cars with it, and came upon the Li'an Temple, a quiet place built in memory of a monk who'd lived at the Buddhist temples of Jiuxi and Wuyun. Abbot Zhifeng was a man who “often went downhill with a big fan to beg alms” in order to buy meat with which to tame the terror of the woods, a tiger who "carried him up and down from then on", after which they called him Abbot Tiger Tamer. It sounds somewhat unlikely to me but I like the story. Here's a mention of it in someone else's blog.

At the Xizhongxi waterfall

We got off the return bus near the Haveli restaurant and had supper there again. It was very slow in coming because the waiters, not to mention Chris, were distracted by a long table full of Chinese and Indian ladies indulging in a lavish celebration of some sort, who had invited a belly dancer to entertain them, very sinuous with a jewel in her navel and tassels round her hips which she vibrated to great effect. Chris says we should have swapped seats to let him have a better view, especially after she smiled at him through her hair. The music she danced to was deafening.

The dancer at the restaurant

We walked back to our last bus of the day under the willows underlit with floodlights, quite magical, with boats sailing by all lit up with changing colours past an elaborate fountain in mid lake, Chris quizzing me on how I'd work out the force of the water coming through the nozzles if I knew what height it reached in metres.