PeterN_H

Having recommended Shaoxing to more than one person on this website, I'd be interested to hear from the gentleman who just returned what he thought of it, and whether it lived up to whatever expectations had arisen from posts here.

Sometimes these things can go terribly awry.

Peter N-H
http://members.shaw.ca/pnhpublic/China.html

Neil_Oz

I looked up Shaoxing in a '94 Baedeckers someone bequeathed to me and archaeology aside it does looks tempting. I see that it's only 60 km from Hangzhou, where we have a couple of days - I wonder if there'd be any point in a day trip by bus?

EdEdwards

I'm still very jetlagged, but was intending to write a general trip summary within the next few days. We did, in fact, spend 3 nights in Shaoxing at the International Hotel. It was, as promised, a lower key city that still had a lot worth exploring. We were the only Western tourists in sight, although there were some Western and Middle Eastern business people staying at the Hotel. Of the 4 of us in my family, I'd say the verdict overall is split. I liked Shaoxing very much -- as did my 15 year old daughter -- while my wife and 17 year old did not. I found it to be an easily negotiated city, despite the lack of English speakers, with some very pleasant areas for walking, and a very nice downtown non-tourist pedestrian shopping area. I liked it enough that I would return if I had the chance.

I think we all enjoyed a halfday trip to An Chang the most. As promised in Frommer's description of that small canal town, we were not only the only Western visitors that morning, but the only visitors at all. We found some wonderful, well preserved and private sites, where we were able to explore at leisure, without crowds or supervision. We hired at taxi to take us there and wait, and in retrospect we would have asked him to return for us an hour later, because we enjoyed it so much.

My younger daughter and I really enjoyed the "Lu Xun Native Place" area, where there were only a few other tourists that day. Again, very pleasant, well preserved old houses, and some nice memorabilia of Lu Xun. Don't recall the entry price, but I was shocked that they would price the home of a literary icon so far out of reach of average Chinese. We tried to take a canal boat from the area to visit Ba Zi Qiao, as suggested in Frommer's, but that book's information was apparently out of date. The boatmen kept laughing when we said we wanted them to take us there, until finally one of them used his cell phone to call his English speaking daughter to translate for me, and she explained that their boats were only meant for shorter trips. So, we took a taxi to Ba Zi Qiao. and proceeded with the rest of the recommended walking trip through a very old residential area, which was fascinating because clearly the residents were not used to tourists, and most were very friendly. A lot of very friendly "ni hao's" or "hellos" from them, and of course the best technique for making friends is always to stop and admire their cute kids.

As a relatively non-touristy area, one of the pleasures of Shaoxing was a relief from the relentless "lookie lookie" and "low price for you" of the aggressive street merchants in other towns. Also, there were no friendly English-speaking "art students" accosting us to make friends and sell us their junk. On the other hand, one turn-off was the presence of at least a few beggars who seemed more aggressive than any we saw elsewhere, with the exception of perhaps a few in Bejing. I think that once they latched onto us in Shaoxing, they simply stayed with us as we walked precisely because there weren't any other tourists to go hassle, i.e. it was a reasonable business decision on their parts to keep trying to get something from us despite our clear insistance on ignoring them.

Again in the plus column, we decided to visit East Lake -- which we were warned was an "over-rated" attraction. I was curious to visit precisely because it had been described as a somewhat second rate tourist spot for Chinese people. because such places really reflect on the popular culture. When we visited, there were almost no other tourists, it was very peaceful, and we thoroughly enjoyed the little Disneyesque boatride through the flooded quarry rocks. While the area, of course, didn't come close to the beauty of the gardens in Suzhou, Hangzhou or elsewhere, it was actually quite pretty and relaxing. (Of course, when we visited the top attraction gardens in Suzhou and around Westlake, there were mobs of tourists compromising those other experiences.)

Lastly, for now, since we explored various questions regarding chou doufu in another post titled "Hangzhou", I can now report that simple fried chou doufu is in fact quite pleasant to my taste. It's ubiquitous in Shaoxing, served by street vendors, generally with a nice light chili sauce. Unfortunately, the rest of my family hated the smell, which was, I think, a major contribution to my wife's and older daughter's negativism toward Shaoxing. When we went to the open cafe at Xianheng Jiudian, associated with Lu Xun's Kong Yiji, the smell was so strong that the rest of the family refused to eat with me there, and so we wound up in the restuarant inside the hotel (which we knew to be poorly rated, but everyone was starving by that point). There, I ordered their "rotten thousand sheet steamed meat cake", and it was too strong even for my tastes! Although I'm a fan of very strong, smelly cheese, I found that this dish smelled and tasted like the smelliest cheese well past its prime, with a pronounced sour overtone. I could only take a few bites of it before I relieved my family of the ordeal and had the staff remove it from the table. The wonderful thing about China right now is that, with the PRC managed exchange rate, a culinary experiment like that probably cost all of a US dollar.

As I mentioned in another post yesterday, getting to and from Shaoxing by bus was extremely easy and cheap. The buses from Hangzhou and to Suzhou were spacious, airconditioned, and fast. At the bus stations, people often went out of their way to help us, because of our language difficulty. Generally, whenever we reached the limit of our communication ability using mime and the very few words of Mandarin that I had picked up, they would call for someone who spoke at least a little more English. Often, someone would lead us to where we needed to be. (Continued on next post)

EdEdwards

In summary, I would recommend Shaoxing very highly, as I really enjoyed it. I think my wife's problem with the smell could have been avoided if I had been a more accommodating husband and avoided some of the strolls we took on "smellier" streets. And, I think my 17 year accomo dissatisfaction had to do with the lack of "excitement" in Shaoxing, which probably translates into the lack of frenetic tourist shopping, which for many of us represents a plus rather than minus. Personally, I consider Shaoxing one of the highlights of our trip.

Many thanks to Peter for all the help he gives on this website, and especially his recommendation for Shaoxing! We had a great 3 weeks in China, and Peter's assistance was invaluable.

PeterN_H

Many thanks to Ed Edwards for taking the time out from jetlag to reply.

The boatmen are always problematic, which is why they are so highly regulated. If the characters for Ba Zi Qiao were still there on the list of rates then they should have taken you, regardless of whether they felt like it or not. But every China guide is out of date by the time it hits the shelves, so who knows?

I'm glad the suggestion worked out (at least for some of the family) and that the destination was as advertised.

Next time you'd probably find Quanzhou, further south in Fujian Province, appealing for much the same reasons. And there's no chou doufu.

Peter N-H
http://members.shaw.ca/pnhpublic/China.html

EdEdwards

Actually, we couldn't find any posted rates for the boatmen. Rather, there were a few touts who seemed to be working with them, and one had a list of boat options in English -- but these were limited to 30 and 60 minute local roundtrips. At Ba Zi Qiao we saw neither any boats, nor any postings about rates, and at East Lake, other than the boats for the little Lake trip we took, there were no indications of any boats linking to the rest of the Shaoxing canal system. All of this gave the impression that the Shaoxing canal boat system may no longer exist at all. When we took a walk around the Ba Zi Qiao canal area, there were several places where the canal seemed blocked, with intensive labor going into some kind of dredging or widening -- so perhaps the system is undergoing a temporary overhaul of some sort. At Lu Xun Native Place, we dd take the little 30 minute local round trip, to get some feel for the canals, which was interesting enough seeing the boatman paddling with his feet.

Also, a clarification -- on my last post I somehow inadvertently substituted some nonesense letters in the text -- but of course I was referring to my 17 year old daughter's dissatisfaction with Shaoxing for the very lack of "excitement" that I found rather appealing.

xgao

Peter, just curious, why you pick Quanzhou over Xiamen? Is it because Quanzhou has more historical sites?