The Hopkins of Hangzhou

We have been severely behind on writing this recently as things have just been so manic!

Hector started a new Montessori school in January. We have been very pleased as there is a perception that there are no schools for children with additional needs here. However, we can say nothing but good things about them. They have been incredibly proactive and have even helped us to find a therapist in Hangzhou. Hector has already been going twice a week so we will see how that goes. Their approach also made us face up to the reality that Hector may be ASD which in all honesty has been more helpful than pretending everything was ok. Hector has a wonderful teacher who understands his needs and due to a more inclusive curriculum more focus can be put on trying to integrate him. His classmates are very welcoming too. He hasn’t had his normal teachers for 2 weeks due to CNY so we will be very happy for normal school to resume!

Over the break we have had some real development too. Somewhat out of the blue, Hector has become much more independent in using the toilet. Up until two weeks ago he had never taken the initiative with this but now he have to remind him less than half of the time. He also walked nearly a mile up a hill/mountain when we went to see a temple (Tom carried him down as he’s still not too safe when going down stairs!). He is also starting to listen, particularly when he is told not to do something or when you ask him to come to you. Waiting for Didis has become a lot less stressful too as he is capable of waiting for cars while you hold his hand. I have to remind myself sometimes of how far he has come in the last 6 months. When he started school we could not even get him to walk anywhere (he prefers to run) and going to Disney could be very stressful if we were standing in queues. So I am so proud of how far he has come.

We have also started a programme called Gemiini which is an online course that supports children who can’t access traditional speech therapy (or as an addition to this). We really felt that we were getting nowhere with speech therapy, mainly as we just couldn’t go very often. This programme consists of watching the same video 42 times across the week with particular words being modeled. Since he started, we do seem to have seen improvements in behaviour, although of course it’s difficult to know what the causal link for this is. In our view, it certainly can’t hurt and it’s not so expensive to be bothered by the price. There does seem to be a lot more speech pattern babble from Hector recently so we will keep our fingers crossed!

In other news, we have now officially announced that we are expecting another addition! It’s nice to be able to be honest about it as I started showing very early with this one. I feel pretty chilled out about it given that it’s the second one. There is the Chinese medical system to navigate but as we’re going to a private hospital that’s ok. I’ve continued to run except for about a month when we had some complications and other than feeling tired it all seems good!

By Katy

I think we’ve always been aware that Hector is different to Chinese children. Chinese children have always seemed very passive while Hector has been incredibly active. It took quite some time before he could even be pacified with his favorite show Little Baby Bum. This never made journeys easy and when we got to our last big trip in January and he actually slept after 6 hours we counted ourselves lucky.

We always just accepted Hector for who he was in this. Yes, it was challenging. It even seemed normal in the UK where his behaviour would not really be considered atypical. He had always been this way. Even when he was a baby he needed to be moving constantly which I put down to how much walking I did when pregnant! It wasn’t until we got to China that the difference became more obvious but even then it wasn’t really a problem. He was always happy and at nursery things were flexible enough that it didn’t cause any problems.

When Hector started school is when things came to a head. I say school, really it was pre-school. Hector was not content to sit on the carpet. Or to follow directions. I won’t go into details but suffice to say he struggled to settle in. He just wanted to play by himself, although this at least seems to be changing

And then there is language. We had been aware for some time that his language was behind but hadn’t thought too much of it given the bilingual environment. He always seemed to be able to communicate what he wanted and was even very independent so we didn’t worry. School was something of a rude awakening and one that I think we would say we are grateful for.

We really missed the NHS at this point. But we got specialists in and had him observed. And got a very long report to show for it which we now can’t do much about it as it’s the holiday!

So I suppose this is just the starting point in our language journey and so it seemed worth documenting. We bought Hector everything we could think of to try and get him to talk.

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We followed the advice in the recommended book and went with his interests. Although ours may have intersected slightly.

We took him to Disney and practiced the words up and down on the Carousel.

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We also realized that, as long as cars and trains were involved, he could occupy himself for quite some time! We’d been told in his assessment he could only occupy himself for 30 seconds.

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We may also have gone a bit mad with buying him books before realizing that we already owned the book he\loves the most. And we also realized that he would read a book, he just had to be interested in it.

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And along the way I realized that my boy was already talking to me even if he wasn’t using words that everyone could understand. I knew what he was telling me. It is incredibly hard when everyone’s child around you is talking, even those that you know are younger. To not be able to hear exactly what he is thinking as all the cute videos on Facebook tell you you should. But over the past week I have tried really hard to listen and to interpret what he is saying. Often what Hector is saying is I love cars and trains. He asks me to sing Row Row again. He wants to share his food with me. He tells me that he loves me. I know that the words will come when he is ready. Until then we will diligently OWL (Observe Wait Listen)!

By Katy

Recently Katy has written a number of blogs about travelling in China and the difficulties we’ve been facing. I decided to instead of telling you more about that, it would make more sense to document some of our actual travels. The first stop on our Summer 2020 trip around China was to Chengdu. Chengdu is one of those cities everyone knows of in China (It’s quite famous for a number of things) but is a bit less commonly heard of outside of China. It’s arguably one of the oldest cities in China with settlements built here going back to the Neolithic age, but it has rarely been a true capital city. It’s too far inland and a bit too removed from either of the two great rivers to have that status.

Chengdu is a great city for getting around via public transit. The metro system is vast, perhaps larger than even Shanghais

It’s incredibly geometric and compose of several inner rings of serviced by enormous elevated highways. We spent 5 nights here and mostly got around by metro.

Chengdu is famous for a number of things, the biggest and most internationally renowned is probably the Giant Panda Breeding Center which is located about 10 km’s from the city center.

Lots of pandas. Basically in the 1980s when China was reopening to the outside world one of their top diplomatic commodities were these adorable (If not genetically a dead end) creatures. Big problem was that they were running out of them, so they started an intensive breeding campaign which has now resulted in China being able to effectively produce hundreds of Panda’s.

The center is one part science lab, one part zoo with most of the grounds visitors can access consisting of large outdoor pavilions wherein a dozen or so Panda’s are on display. You can also walk through a few indoor locations such as two different breeding rooms for the Giant Panda and also a much smaller pavilion for their less popular cousin the Red Panda. The little red panda’s enclosure has elevated walkways so that they can scamper above your head. I personally find them to be way cuter.

Ethically I suppose the goal here is to try and save the Panda’s. Breed enough that you can have a stable and genetically diverse body of Panda’s which you can then reintroduce into the Wild. Mind you they have nearly no natural territory left in the wild to live in since you know…farms. So unless the long term plan here is to plant tons of bamboo and kick people out of the Sichuan foothills, the whole project is long term just a stop gap measure. I have strong opinions of how utterly ridiculous the Panda is, so maybe I’m just biased. Still it was amazing to see so many Panda’s in one place and did make us feel a bit lucky to be stuck in China.

So after we visited the Panda’s we got a taxi ride to our next hotel. It was considerably more expensive than something we would normally stay in, a proper 5 star hotel.

Still it wasn’t anywhere near the price you’d pay in the UK, we got a suite with washing facilities built in and a very impressive balcony for about 70 GBP per night. The hotel also had a terrifying robot butler who served me warm beer.

Next we visited a fairly famous temple/functioning monastery in the middle of Chengdu. Unfortunately Hector became deeply enamored here with…pillars?

This went on for several minutes…visiting temples with Hector is usually a stressful occurrence in which he runs around screaming excitedly and confusing monks.

In the end we kind of gave up on the temple and went back to the hotel. Albeit not before checking out this cute little Pagoda Tower.

The next day we travelled by subway all the way to the Jinsha Ruins Site. This is a rather recent archaeological discovery made not even 20 years ago when they were trying to build a shopping mall (As is often the case in modern Chinese archaeology). A medium sized city from the Shang Era (About 3000 years ago) was uncovered along with a horde of gold, jade and…elephant tusks?

Thousands of elephant tusks dug up in sacrificial pits. Yes central China used to have elephants. I did not take too many photos here as I prefer to look at professional photographs in text books, which are often available at big sites like this. Luckily the site is apparently famous enough to validate the creation of an English version of their big photo/historical source book. Often the case in China is that museums and ancient sites will have a book shop filled with awesome books written of course, entirely in Chinese script. It’s always quite exciting to find something that’s been translated well.

I did take some photos though. Particularly of something Katy found most impressive/confusing. The Onyx Wood.

These are tree’s. Some of about 67 tree’s which have all been petrified and would have existed at the time of this civilizations Apex and before. So your looking at the trunks of 8-3,000 year old trees. Now fossilized forests are not unheard of. 15 years ago I visited one with my family in Australia. But the sheer height and quality of their preservation here is jarring. Also the fact that the park your walking in must have been submerged under so much mud and dirt just 20 years ago.

Later that evening we decided to do something risky. Take a toddler to an Opera well past his bed time!

But this wasn’t just opera it was Sichuan Opera. Sichuan is the province Chengdu is the capital of and also a term used to refer to anything unique to the region such as their food, music, dialect and most importantly their style of performing arts. Sichuan opera is known for a few things, having shows that are more narrative based with actual dialogue, conversations and not just endless singing (Like Beijing Opera). It’s also famous for the use of masks and face paint to help actors play multiple characters/roles. Typical plays depict famous war heroes, fantasy stories and sometimes a bit of both. Sichuan opera is also quite famous for it’s use of ‘face changing’ that is to say actors will in a blur of motion change the mask they’re wearing to depict a change in mood or a different character.

Hector seemed to enjoy it. What we saw was very clearly made for tourists. It had all the things you’d expect in Sichuan opera. Story, face changing, masks, fire spitting (Yes really) elaborate costumes, comedic clowns, but it also had puppet dancing, musical performances and lacked any real structure. It was more of a greatest hits of Sichuan Opera than an actual cohesive performance. Which was a bit disappointing.

See above apart of the performance…Katy seemed to really enjoy it too and Hector was shockingly well behaved. Probably because we bought him a giant bowl of fruit…though I did hear that he may have smashed a toilet while Katy had him in the women’s room.

The next day was my birthday. Which meant I could decide what we were going to do (Which…is usually the case anyway.) We started by going to the tomb complex of Liu Bei a very famous 3rd century Chinese King and quasi-Emperor. His two best friends are basically fictional characters now after 1200 years of opera’s and plays about their lives which became truly fictional when The Romance of Three Kingdoms was published 600 years ago. Still it’s always cool to visit the grave/temple of someone as famous as Liu Bei. There were awesome statues and sculptures through out the park!

We then went to get lunch at a Tibetan restaurant in the Tibetan quarter of Chengdu. Yep they have one. Chengdu is the closest major city to Tibet and the Himalaya’s can be seen in the distance from some parts of the province. There are something like 80,000 ethnic Tibetans living in Chengdu as for many of them it’s the ‘Big City’ they move to seeking out new opportunities.

I really should have taken more photo’s here as the food was excellent. Hector really enjoyed eating sugared bean, corn and peas.

Next we visited Wild West Brewing. Which was a bit of a hassle tracking down. They’re location on Google Maps (Unsurprisingly) was not accurate nor was it on Baidu! I in the end had to get the Wechat account of the owner from my Beer Group friends. We did manage to get there but found that the server/delivery man were the same thing and he was out delivering beer across the city. So we ended up waiting outside for him to return.

We did eventually get in and did some Chinese practice with the bar tender. I had a flight of their beers (though I chose to stick to just 4 mini beers and not the 15 you could technically order as one super long flight)

We then tried to make our way to one of the other lauded craft beer places. A Belgium place owned by an expat who makes his own beer. It…took awhile to get to on foot due to construction and when we got there…it wasn’t what I was expecting. Very loud and packed with people playing loud music and most of the beers on offer were just imported bottles. I guess it felt a bit anti-climatic after the excellence that was Wild West Brewing.

The following day we got on a train to Leshan to see a giant buddha and go up an even larger mountain. But that will have to wait for the next posting!

By Katy

So we weren’t originally sure if we would be able to go on holiday this summer what with toilet training combined with potential speech therapy. However, after about two days of toilet training Hector seemed to be doing amazingly well and so we decided we would risk going away.

Possibly because Disney is so familiar Hector did really well for the first few days with no accidents on the first day at all. And even after that he still did really well but a few things really hindered us.

1. Hector refuses to speak and so we can only guess when he needs to go
2. Toilets in China are variable and sometimes there are only squats
3. The carrier makes it even harder to know when he actually needs to go!
4. No easy access to laundry facilities (no Jihua I’m not paying 12RMB for one pair of socks!)

This results in needing both a potty in a box and what we  commonly refer to as ‘the frog’.  The latter is amazing as it takes up so little space and thoroughly recommended for those who always have access to civilised toilets!

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By the end of the trip we had really admitted defeat and done what everyone had told us not to and resorted to nappies. But I’m pleased to report that this did not have the catastrophic effect that is often implied. After a day he is already nearly back on track.

We have always been able to do pretty much what we would otherwise have done due to the carrier. However now that Hector is 12.4 kilos it’s becoming too much for Tom as I can’t manage to carry him at all particularly when we do things like walk up Tai shan! So we now need to train hector to tolerate baby reigns. We have resisted this for a long time as he hates it so much but the speed Hector runs at means that letting him walk is not safe otherwise!

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Our other challenge has been hotel rooms. As mentioned previously we tried to stay in suites but Hector is pretty resistant to going to sleep in new places. Then there is the fear that he will break or damage something. Probably the worst one was him finding a pen and attacking the sheets but there were others…

All this might lead people to wonder why we bother to travel with a child at all. I think we are something of a rarity, many of our colleagues with children don’t travel the way we do. But for us this is why we came here. We want to experience everything as a family. I’m often amazed when I stop and think how many countries Hector has already been to (UK, Canada, Vietnam, Belgium, Thailand, Cambodia, France and China). And ultimately it makes it simultaneously more enjoyable and more stressful!

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By Katy

Last weekend Tom, Hector and I went back to Shanghai to go to Disney, partly to return some shirts that were too big but also just because we could. We got to the hotel pretty late after some difficulty with finding it. Even though the hotel was on booking.com they had written the Pinyin for the hotel incorrectly and so it took some investigating to even find it all. Unusually for China, Google maps saved the day. However, when we got there we were told we could not stay there. This was at about midnight. Hector was asleep. And at first we got pretty angry for being treated differently to Chinese nationals.

However, on reflection we came to the conclusion that it was more incompetence than racism. We didn’t have our passports at the time as we are currently renewing our Visas. So even though we had all the necessary paperwork this seemed to confuse the staff. All they really want to see is the stamp in your passport saying when you got to China. So because they couldn’t see this they panicked. For some reason many Chinese people seem unaware of the travel ban for the vast majority of foreigners, perhaps as it doesn’t affect them. Thankfully we have a great HR department and they were able to smooth things over. They wanted a copy of our Visa page which had been right in front of them the whole time but never mind.

The whole thing inevitably got me thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement. There haven’t been any protests here but it has certainly made the news. Of how it must feel to encounter racism all the time. It is easy to think that America is the only country that has the problem and I found myself thinking that Britain does not have that kind of problem. But of course that just shows my white privilege – that I could be so unaware of racism in my own community. I have spent the past week or so unfollowing people with views that I just cannot support. Saying that ‘All lives matter’ and therefore completely ignoring the problem. To use just one example I’ve seen, we don’t say ‘Save the trees’ we say ‘Save the rainforest’. Comparing the murders of white people by criminals to the murder of black people by those that should have been protecting them. Saying that the protesters are selfish for protesting their human rights when the life of a nurse (white in the picture) did not matter. Again, it crossed my mind at first that the protests were badly timed. But on reflection I think they are right and necessary when this has been allowed to go on for so long.

I remember watching a Fresh Prince episode about Carlton being pulled over by the cops and crying. That it can be as relevant today as when it was made just shows how much change is needed.

One way we are directly affected by the ban on foreigners is our school not being able to recruit more staff except for from within the country. With the recent outbreak in Beijing there is even more reluctance to allow foreigners in. I say outbreak – currently there are about 200 cases in Beijing and it has not spread beyond Beijing except for single cases here and there. We won’t know until 2 weeks later if it really hasn’t spread but it really does contrast other countries who are reopening with much higher numbers than this.

Everyone in our office is coming to terms with the fact that we don’t know when we will see our families again. We are all separated from parents, children, grandchildren, brothers and sisters. None of us thought that we might not see these people for more than a year. The theme music of our office has become ‘Welcome to the Hotel California’. Although we technically can leave, we could not come back while the borders are shut and so we all feel trapped. It is incredibly hard to not know when we will see each other again. So to our family we love you and we miss you and cannot wait to see you again.

By Katy

So I decided some time ago that I wanted to go to Shanghai Disney for my birthday. Unfortunately, Shanghai Disney closed in January for ‘epidemic prevention’. But the other week it reopened so here follows what it is like to go to Disney with epidemic prevention measures in place!

So we are annual pass holders at Disney. We worked out that going 3 times a year was enough to justify this so we bought annual passes in December. Normally this would make going to Disney pretty easy but unfortunately these days we have to reserve in a more complicated manner than getting normal tickets. This resulted in us actually buying tickets as the reservation process was so complicated and we didn’t want to not be able to go. But in the end we managed to both get a refund for those tickets and reserve with our annual passes. Hooray! And of course, being China, the reservation is a QR code.

We got the train over on Friday after work. We were thoroughly prepared for being pulled aside as foreigners but thankfully, perhaps as Shanghai is one of the most multicultural cities in China, that did not happen and so we were able to meet our friends Jane and Ernie in Disneytown before 8. There was a temperature check and a healthcode check and we were required to wear masks but no over the top precautions really. We tried to go to the Cheesecake factory but it was too busy. It only takes one hour to get to Shanghai for us and then one on the subway to Disney due to the magic of bullet trains!

Going to the hotel was more of a headache. It took nearly an hour to check in, partly because of the long queue and also because of apps that we had to inexplicably get. We already had our Shanghai healthcode. Oh and because whenever a foreigner stays in a hotel they have to have their passport photocopied so that they can let the police know where you are. And somehow this took 15 minutes. With Hector running around the lobby like a crazy person. But at least the room was nice! We stayed in a Marriott, somewhat upscale from the kind of places we normally stay but it was my birthday.

So after a pretty relaxed breakfast we got to Disney at about the right time to enter the park at 10.30 (actually we were 5 minutes before our alotted time but we got away with it). They are currently restricting the time that annual pass holders can enter the park and staggering it and we weren’t lucky enough to reserve 9AM. But for as long as this lasts they extend our annual passes making it essentially free to go to Disney. People at this point seemed to be honouring the instructions to leave a gap between their party and the one in front. We hired a stroller for Hector which he seemed pretty happy about in contrast to our trip to Japan where he would constantly try and escape it! I think he has worked out that being in a stroller is a lot less work than walking.

Queues all day were never too bad. The longest queue we stood in was for Pirates at 75 minutes. We managed to do the following rides:

• Pirates (75 minute wait – so much better than the Florida version as it is completely immersive!)
• Tron (60 minute wait but said 40 – but worth it for the sheer joy of this ride!)
• Stitch experience (15 minute wait)
• Dumbo (just Tom and Hector)
• 7 dwarves mine train (FP)

We tried to do the following rides but either queues just did not move or we arrived too late:

• Crystal grotto (apparently 40 minutes but queue stopped moving after that long!)
• Pirates show (arrived too late)
• Frozen show (arrived too late)

Normally shows are not a problem but in the current situation they seem to be operating at 50% capacity. In fact they have only just started having shows at all!

The park is operating at 20% capacity but groups are not allowed to mix meaning that some rides were only loading at about 50% capacity, hence the queues were about the same as normal. This also meant no single rider lines which was unfortunate as this is how Tom and I would normally get so many rides done in one day! The following rides normally have a single rider line:

• Tron
• 7 dwarves mine train
• Pirates
• Maybe some others that I’ve forgotten!

We also had an enjoyable break at the Cheesecake factory. I was thankful all I ordered was one piece of cheesecake even with Hector’s help. Hector also got to go back to probably his favorite part of the park which is not actually in the park. The playground!

Oh and very importantly I finally found some ears to my liking! I have wanted some sorcerer Mickey ones for quite some time but they don’t sell them anymore so these were the best I could do. I love the Fantasmic show which heavily features sorcerer Mickey. All the better for our 20% discount in the shop!

In terms of other epidemic prevention measures Hector got away without a mask and it was possible to have it pulled down most of the time. And most people ignored the ‘don’t stand here’ spaces to the point of bumping into you. But they would not be opening if it was not safe to do so so it’s all really just to make people feel safer in our opinion!

The final part of the day was a buffet dinner at Lumieres. Somewhat stressful as we thought we could get the ferry across to the restaurant but eventually we found the bus. We ate far too much and I got the dubious pleasure of having Happy Birthday sung twice in a row.

One final difference also evident at Lumieres was that characters are not allowed to do photos with guests currently. To us this was pretty welcome as they were only allowed to dance at a distance! We had already seen this with characters in the park waving from the castle instead of doing character meets. No doubt this doesn’t help with queues at other rides as these can be very popular attractions.

I think it is fair to say that we have developed something of an emotional attachment for Disney (particualarly Shanghai Disney). We have both always been into Disney but it really is a magical place! It is our happy place. When asked our favorite castle (ie Magic Kingdom) park we would say Shanghai, perhaps as it’s our home park as well as there being so many unique versions of rides there. So when it was shut for so long, even after we had returned to China, it became something of a symbol of everything that we could no longer do. Being able to go back felt like a sign that the epidemic was finally starting to be truly over.

By Katy

So we finally got permission to leave Hangzhou this weekend. Hooray! So we decided to go to Linhai where you can see the wall. Well, the Southern wall rather than the Great wall but it looks exactly like you imagine the Great Wall to look.

So we arrived on Saturday. Getting to the hotel took longer than expected as we were required to register because we are ‘waiguoren’ ie foreigners. Now the first time this happened it was mildly annoying but not unexpected. However, this or similar things happened at least 3 more times on the trip. When getting tickets to go to East Lake/the Wall, on the train, getting back home. Each time we found the page in our passport showing them we have been here since the 14th of March. I would not call it racism as the people required to do this are just doing their jobs. But it is confusing that people do not seem to know that the borders were shut on the 28th of March. We could only conclude that it is a kind of laziness where they just have not bothered to change the rules. It’s fair to say that by the time we were finally home I was getting very annoyed at the shouts of ‘waiguoren’. For some reason Chinese people seem to think that just because you don’t understanding everything they’re saying you don’t understand some of what they’re saying. Particularly very common words like this. I would not say it makes it impossible to travel, just very frustrating.

On the plus side I had some of the best noodles I have had in China so far.

Generally the food was incredibly cheap in Linhai, cheaper than Hangzhou. I managed to ask for a bowl in Chinese which made me happy. Generally we understood much more Chinese this trip. Frustratingly we cannot always communicate what we want due to tones. Even a simple word like ‘fourteen’ although we did get across ‘March’. But we could understand how to fill in the registration forms so at least we’re getting somewhere. For those not in the know Chinese ‘tones’ change the way you say something but also the meaning. The most common example I know of is ‘ma’. Of course context is important but some Chinese people are unwilling to try and understand foreigners unfortunately even when the context makes it obvious what you are trying to say.

We also went to the old street and to the Pagodas on Saturday. Again this was much prettier than we expected and felt more authentic than Hangzhou.

So on Sunday we went to both East Lake and the Wall. East Lake was rather amusing for us as it is the poor cousin of West Lake in Hangzhou. But actually we both really liked it and its small size made it feel much more peaceful and it was certainly less crowded than West Lake ever is!

The final highlight was walking along the Southern wall. Not the Great wall but pretty much the same thing. Very pretty but lots of ups and downs. Hector was particularly tired.

Until next time!

So it seemed time for an update on Hector’s adventures in China.

The start of the week was a childcare nightmare. We had a tentative date to go back but this was before kindergarten restarted. After much panicing and some pleading we found a solution. Phew! This means that for the first time Hector is being looked after by an Ayi. For our readers not in China the word Ayi has some different meanings. It can mean Aunt, cleaner or childminder. We have always avoided having an Ayi unlike many of our colleagues with children of a similar age. We never felt an Ayi was the right fit for us or Hector. We liked the socialisation that Hector got from attending nursery. Hector has never had attachment issues possibly because he has gone to nursery from the age of 1. So we also felt there were benefits with an easier transition to school. Yes it is true that we have to deal with a lot of illnesses acquired from attending nursery. But ultimately we felt that starting younger meant developing a better immune system younger. The nursery that Hector attends is also mainly Chinese speaking and we were very keen on him becoming bilingual. No signs of this yet although he may say ‘bu’ for no which roughly translates to ‘not’! Nursery also has the benefit of providing a great variety of activities without anyone having to deal with the mess or without having to have an endless range of creative supplies!

We have not always seen eye to eye with the Ayis. There are the constant requests for jackets while at nursery instead of turning off the AC. Also Hector frequently runs around without even a shirt on at home perfectly happily. This resulted in us trying to find more indoor jackets when it is becoming quite warm as Hector has actually outgrown most of them. We thought that this one fitted. We were wrong…

Hector also sometimes comes home with his fringe tied up. He refused a hair cut this week after coming home with his hair tied up and so this happened.

These things would be unthinkable in the West but here we just kind of accept it. It does kind of highlight why we were pretty set on nursery. We knew Ayis had a reputation for not letting kids be independent. This has some benefits. Kids here seem to be more passive and more obedient. They are toilet trained earlier. (So far we call it a good day if he sits on the potty or toilet.) But they are also very reliant on adults and sometimes don’t even feed themselves (I should have taken some pictures to illustrate what does happen when Hector feeds himself). Hector got some pretty strong comments when we were on a week’s training as he covered himself in sauce. But to us it was normal and expected when a child eats independently. Once Hector got used to using a spoon you couldn’t get it away from him!

Mostly at the moment Hector is happiest when playing with something that moves. His addiction to trains continues. It’s probably best we didn’t actually call him Thomas so he can avoid the teasing his Dad got.

Further updates to follow on Hector’s adventures!

So Katy already wrote about our trip to a tea plantation this weekend, so I thought it is long over due that I write about our two other trips around the city. Primarily to the home of a a long dead but quite eccentric Qing era merchant who built a rather elaborate and impressive home in the center of old Hangzhou. Perhaps more impressive is the fact that it’s survived all of the changes Hangzhou has faced in the 150 years since it’s construction. The home features a garden which includes an artificial mountain and cave network! Speaking of people trying to artificially replicate nature we also visited the artificial island sitting in the middle of West Lake known as 3 Pools Reflecting the Moon. It’s an island in the middle of a lake with a lake in the middle of it!

As Katy may have mentioned before we currently can not leave the city limits on pain of not being able to go to work for 14 days. With any luck they’ll change that soon, but for now we’ll have to keep ourselves entertained by all that Hangzhou has to offer within the city limits. Well…what it has to offer which has so far reopened.

So to get into this place we had to produce our green QR code and also fill out a rather convoluted app. In the attend the local staff got so fed up with trying to communicate with us in Chinese that they kind of just waved us in. Right now there is this rather strange thing in Hangzhou wherein’ some tourism sites require foreigners to sign in with their passport details. This is continuing to confuse and befuddle me, particularly as Foreigner’s like myself can’t even enter the country anymore and haven’t been able to do so for going on 17 days. So even the last of the last to make it in will have completed their two weeks quarantine. Then again the way Chinese people are treating the pandemic at this point is rather broad in spectrum. Some are wearing masks and living in terror of public transport should there be asymptomatic people…who are some how not creating new cases that are not asymptomatic. Whilst others are not really wearing masks, or like my own Chinese friends, completely ignoring even normal levels of hygiene. (I guess sharing food in the center is a traditional element of Chinese dining, I’m on board with it, but plunging chop sticks which have just been in your mouth into the same food other people are doing the same as…I don’t know that’s pushing it a bit, and that’s from a guy who regularly engages in 5 second rule.)

So anywho! We visited the house of the wealthy merchant. It was pretty cool. Of course this does sit neatly on the long long loooooong list of tourist attractions made for Chinese people for Chinese people (Other than the biggest attractions IE: The Wall, there is rarely more than a faint attempt at putting things up in English or accommodating non-Mandarin speakers) which is fine, it is China after all. They have more than enough domestic tourists to treat the rest of the non-Mandarin speaking world as an after thought. So this site, like many is really enjoyable for visual spectacle than actually being informative/historically enlightening. Luckily I’m familiar with the era and the man that built this house so some dots could be connected.

When this place was built Hangzhou was a good 2 or 3 centuries past it’s glory days. During the 10th to 14th centuries Hangzhou was one of the most populated and wealthiest cities on the planet. Far enough from the ongoing raids and wars of the north, close enough to the ocean and located at the terminus of the Grand Canal (A system of rivers which go all the way up to Beijing) Hangzhou was able to capitalize on trade. Throw in the fact that Hangzhou was home to some of the best tea plantations and silk manufacturers in the world at the time, it made Hangzhou the locus for a lot of what was the Chinese economic power house (Of the 8th – 17th centuries specifically) of the…well world. Still though Hangzhou’s days of glory were well past it by the mid 19th century Hu Xueyan managed to become very wealthy as he held a controlling stake of Hangzhou’s biggest shopping street.

I really wish I had taken more pictures here come to think of it. Most notable were two false mountain peaks in the style of nearby Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) and a small cave network. Even the steps leading up to the second floor and his tea-house have been sculpted to resemble a pathway carved up the side of a mountain!

The following week we visited Three Pools Reflecting the Moon.

Constructed by a variety of different poets/government officials over several centuries. It’s actually sculpted in the shape of the Chinese character Shi (ten). It’s covered in little temples and rather stagnant water. In the past it was the site of a Buddhist monastery and temple where people would release captured fish/birds as a form of ritual sacrifice (Well without the death of an animal atleast). Supposedly it gets its name from the fact that the stillness of the enclosed lake (Within a lake) reflects the moon beautifully at night. To be honest I am a bit skeptical of this, I don’t think I’ve seen the moon once since I moved to Hangzhou between all of the overcast and light of the city. Still I imagine even 50 years ago it could live up to it’s name sake!

Indeed it was quite a popular destination amongst the locals. Whom are I assume mostly locals as travel between provinces is still rather restrictive/complicated at the moment.

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It’s a rather peaceful place and does give you a really good panoramic view of the lake and all of the city/mountains that surround it.

Oh one other place we visited was the tomb of Yue Fei. Yue Fei is quite famous within China (And especially Hangzhou) as a great general who defended the ailing Song Dynasty from marauding hordes, protecting China time and time again…until the Emperor decided he didn’t like him and had him murdered. A few decades later the Emperors successor thought it best to dig up his remains and re-bury him in a proper monument/temple complex.

The complex is relaxing and rather nice and considerably less elaborate than the Vietnamese tombs we visited in Vietnam (I should probably make a post about that sometime) However it interestingly has a lot of the same features, such as this honor guard of statues.

Perhaps most interesting/unique is the inclusion of a few statues of the supposed traitors who got Yue Fei killed in the first place. Cast in iron (And occaisonally refurbished over the past 800 years. They kneel dejectedly towards the burial mound of the hero they wrong.

So that’s pretty much what we’ve been getting up to around Hangzhou over the past few weeks since we got out of quarantine! Hurray! Now to do more Chinese lessons.