Unlike my students, I was not lucky enough to go on a wonderful hiking trip to Hangzhou at the end of April and I spent my time working in the office instead. I’m not too upset about this because I have been to Hangzhou many times before, mostly to do some high stakes examining work, so I knew all about the heavenly vistas of the famous West Lake and the connections to the equally famous story of the White Snake (a Chinese fairy tale and nothing to do with David Coverdale’s rock band).

 

Around the time my current cohort of students were born, I actually organised a two day hike across the mountains to the south west of the famous West Lake. This was a great experience that culminated with quiet drinks on the tranquil lakeside. In this blog post I will provide some details of this truly memorable trip.

 

First, it is probably a good idea to explain why I have been to Hangzhou so many times. Well, I used to live in Shanghai and the countryside around Hangzhou makes for a readily accessible escape from the concrete of the city at weekends. Furthermore, I worked as an examiner for a certain high-stakes English language test and was often called on to interview candidates in Hangzhou. I was therefore familiar with the famous West Lake and other busy tourist attractions. My aim in organising the trip was to avoid the large crowds and spend two days hiking in the quiet countryside.

 

I worked out a starting point far to the southwest of West Lake by using Google Earth. I printed satellite images of the mountains to use as a map when we were out and about (just to date this trip, it was the very early days of smart phones and the mobile internet and map apps were at best unreliable).

 

I then led a few of my friends who were interested in the hike around to the starting point, which actually proved a little troublesome because the highway on the far side of the mountains from West Lake turned out to be undergoing some major construction work. 

 

We hiked across the mountains enjoying the serene nature and lack of tourists until we came to one of the smaller roads that winds through the mountain area. Here we stopped for the night at a small hotel and ate an al fresco local meal by a small stream. It was very relaxing and we were all in good spirits.

 

The next morning we ate a forgettable breakfast. I ought to mention that breakfast is not the strong point of Chinese cuisine. Indeed, breakfast is traditionally quite desperate! This is one of the areas in which China has made tremendous progress during my time here, but back in those days the options were tasteless rice porridge or mantou (soggy steamed buns). Luckily there were usually some spicy pickles that could make the mantou acceptable and I brought coffee with me, as I always do when travelling around China.

 

We set off across the road and back up into the mountains. The climb was quite steep and the weather was hot so we all worked up a bit of a sweat and it was a relief when we reached the summit. Then the path followed the ridge through the forests. We saw some wild strawberries but thought better of eating any because they were by the side of the path in the sort of place where other users may have stopped to relieve themselves. Just before the point where the map indicated we would be starting our descent through the tea plantations to Jinglong village, we were in for a bit of a shock. There on the path was a corpse. Somebody had covered the body with a shroud but there was no escaping this untimely reminder of our mortality. As quotations about journeys often make clear, life is itself a journey and one day that journey will end, be it atop a mountain in Hangzhou or elsewhere.

 

We walked past quietly at a respectful distance and continued on our way. As we descended, we passed a medical team heading the other way, presumably to lift the deceased from the mountain.

 

Soon we were in the open sunlight of the tea plantations and we made our way down into the village for a local lunch. This village was quite well developed as tour parties visit this place so a bite to eat was not hard to find. After lunch, we took the path up towards the viewpoints that overlook West Lake and the last leg of our journey. Before the path looped around to that point, we also came across viewpoints with views of the distant river and bridges that carried major rail and road routes to Shanghai.

Finally, our trek ended in a quiet garden by the lakeside and over a refreshingly cold drink, my friend commented, “This is the good life!”