Bai Juyi's Top Ten

Until the British started using it for their opium port in the mid-nineteenth century, Shanghai was a minor Chinese city without historical significance. I haven't seen much in the way of ancient architecture and even the Jing-An temple is underwhelming compared to, say, New York's Metropolitan Library. The oldest neighborhoods along the river bank are neat but they're hardly in good shape and many are being demolished to prepare for the World Expo (hosted by none other than Toothpaste Man).

Because nothing says innovation like dental hygiene...

So there's an attitude that I vibe from the locals where they've evolved to a higher mental state, the sort that comes from years of hanging around coffeehouses before being picked by your dad to manage his air conditioner factory. Which isn't quite as bad as New Yorkers who get picked by their dad to manage other people's hedge funds, but it's the same idea. Wait, come to think of it, they have hedge funds here too.
But there's a city about 170 km to the west whose glories stretch back to the invention of rice, where gods and goddesses walked among men and divulged their secrets to the worthy. This is Hangzhou which, during three hundred years of the medieval era, was the largest city in the world with well over a million people. Today it still has a very cool lake that Lin and I visited last week.

The area was cultivated over the centuries by different governors and emperors and most recently by Mao Zedong. One of them was Bai Juyi, who had a half dozen other aliases and certainly some wicked special moves in Soul Caliber IV. He wrote the official poetry travel guide to the lake and enumerated ten scenes that were to be considered the most sublime, as in under the citrus. I recall that one of them required snowfall and another one required a harvest moon. I don't remember what the rest were but I took enough photos that I certainly pegged one by accident. Ohk, now I remember the rustling lotus blossoms that we encountered. Those were on the list.


It was a very hot day that we rode around the lake. The humidity wasn't stifling but by the time we made it halfway around I realized that I'd spent nearly thirty yuan just on liquids. We explored a bit of the hills and came across a grotto clustered with locals. They were happily lying on blankets, playing cards in the shade. It seemed a whole lot more comfortable than a day at the beach.


For the most part I've been taking it easy until my professor and my coworkers return from their vacations. After I return to Beijing next week I'll have more time to travel and I'm currently deciding between the Yunnan highlands or the Borneo jungle. It's about time I had a vacation where I packed a machete and a flare gun.