Tea time!

A town named Longjing near Hangzhou is famous for its tasteful tea, a little museum explains the history of tea culture: why on earth Chinese people started to drink trees, how the dynasties used it to pull up the country's economy, how to recognize different types of tea, how to prepare the best tea ever? The museumbuildings are spread in a beautiful garden, surrounded by tea plantations. Tea smell is allover, and no one is around. Considering that we are road tripping during the Chinese New Year, being alone in a museum is quite incredible. You end your visit with a cup of the famous Longjing tea, given the price however, we did not.

Tea plantations in Hangzhou

Tea museum

As we had started our day with a "natural" visit, we headed to the Buddhist Lingyin Temple, a few kilometers away. No buses around, we are in the middle of nowhere. Let's follow the highway and take a walk through the country side. In a little village, we admired a woman smashing a turtle's carapace with a chop, as village people admired the two tourists we happen to be. In China, no matter where you are, people rarely get to see white people. Even if they are used to it in places of interest, they stare at you because they are, in some way, happy and proud to have they country visited. Moreover, Julien has dread locks and my height is 2 meters, does not help does it..

We finally made it to the park where the temple is supposed to be. We discover Buddhist sculptures incrusted to the rock, their layout on high places and down in caves are amazing. On top of it, the sculptures perfectly fit the natural scenery, offering to the visitors a wonderful sight of the park. We decide to climb the hill ahead of us, to take a picture of Hangzhou. As we walk, we can hear rising sounds of drums hit in a ceremonial rhythm. There are too many trees around, we won't have the opportunity to see the city from the hill, let's go back down to find the temple.

Doors are closed, few people are coming out. The little Buddha at the gate explains us "the temple is closed". Quick look to my watch: 2:30pm. Whatever, never mess with religion. Let's enjoy the park a little more and go back in town. I was chillin' around while Julien was playing Karate Kid with a branch of bamboo, when we bumped into Dara and Nicolas. These guys are two EPITECH students who came with us from France to China, we had no clue they would be around. They were as disappointed as we were by the closed Temple, we exchanged anecdotes about our trips, and took a bus to downtown to see how Starbucks was doing.