TALE OF TWO CHINESE CITIES
Plenty to see, but leave the cash at home
It was a gloomy morning when we arrived in Hangzhou, China. The overcast sky turned the entire city to quiet, grey grandeur under light drizzle as our bus pulled away from the airport to the city.
There were a lot of construction along the way. Fast-growing cities in China are always building something — always transforming themselves — that people who visit them once every few months would already notice the difference. For someone going there the first time, it’s practically another world, but also one with balanced mixture — like yin and yang — where hitech innovation meets history and rich culture.
Hangzhou was clean. City streets were lined with trees and shared bicycles. People zoomed around quietly on their bikes.
We explored the streets with a pocket full of cash, which we realised a little too late was almost useless in this cashless city. A bubble-tea shop we stopped at didn’t have change for our banknotes. A lot of transactions conducted at these shops are now done through mobile and online payment platforms like Alipay, to the point they often have no cash on hand.
So, no bubble tea for us that morning. Elsewhere, there was a beggar on the street wearing a QR code badge around his neck for money transfer. In some places, it doesn’t even take a mobile phone, but rather a person’s face to pay through facial recognition payment technology. A cashless society is clearly inclusive and advanced, but not so accessible to international visitors.
We dropped by Xi Hu, or the West Lake — a place of picturesque and classical beauty that is also a Unesco World Heritage site. And that overcast morning, the lake and the pavilion fell into a grey gradient like it was drawn by ink at the hands of old master. While it was pretty crowded, the atmosphere around the lake was serene, with willows and lotuses adding green and specks of pink to the sombre grey.
At night, a bus brought us to Hefang Street for a place lined with antique buildings selling souvenirs and local delicacies. Souvenirs adorned with Chairman Mao’s face seemed pretty popular.
On any trip, a journey isn’t complete without a taste of local cuisine. While most are easily likeable, a few can be difficult to embrace. We tried xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), which was great when we had it for breakfast one day. The braised pork belly known as Dongpo pork, named after the Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo, was soft with both fatty and lean meat.
One dish that had everyone feeling hesitant was the hate-it-or-love-it stinky tofu. It wasn’t too bad when deep fried, but really harsh on the senses when braised or stewed. The taste and odour stayed long on our palate after it was consumed.
With limited time, we found ourselves too soon at the grand Hangzhoudong (Hangzhou East) station to catch a highspeed train to Shanghai Hongqiao station. It took less than an hour at the price of 73 yuan (about 312 baht) to get from Hangzhou to Shanghai. We ate Lay’s potato chips with cucumber flavour to kill time, not managing to doze off in that relatively short duration. As the train approached our destination, we were all ready to break into the iconic theme song of the 1980 Hong Kong TV series The Bund, or as Thai people know as the “Godfather Of Shanghai”. But we saved that for our bus ride to the hotel instead.
Shanghai was more vibrant and bustling compared to the calm and quiet Hangzhou. In subsequent days amid our busy work schedule, we managed to visit some of the city’s highlights. The must-visit destination was, of course, the Bund, which inspired the aforementioned song.
At the Bund, colonial buildings along the waterfront were bathed in glorious golden lights at night-time. On the other side of the Huangpu River is Pudong district where skyscrapers were lit in colours of the rainbow. Remnants of the past came face-to-face with the future. The eye-catching Oriental Pearl Tower stood tall, as well as Shanghai World Financial Center that looked like a giant bottle opener, and also Shanghai Tower — the country’s tallest and world’s second tallest building after Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
FAST-GROWING CITIES IN CHINA ARE ALWAYS BUILDING SOMETHING