Fatigue begins to set in . . .

Leifeng Pagoda, Hangzhou

Wednesday June 29

OK, it's getting hard now. I am in Max' apt by myself. There is no water (so I can't take meds) or food, phone, internet; I lost my wallet somehow in Hangzhou including my cap1 card so I have no keys. Totally stuck. Jacob said he would help with phone calls but danced out with a couple of girls, students? hours ago. Max is sick as a dog in Jacob’s place, don't want to wake him up. And if I leave, I am out, keyless. Ian this place I buy water several times a day.The toilet doesn't work, you have to stick your hands in the tank and lift up the flapper valve to flush. The place I have found to go online is the Starbucks at People's Park. There must be someplace closer but the clerks at the 7-11 couldn't tell me and neither could the boys. They basically use phones to  communicate. I am permanently sticky and grubby (Max owns no soap on principle, so washing hands involves using shampoo. Somehow I feel like I can't hear or see very well/as well around here. Esp the boys, who speak very fast and in shorthand, while looking and speaking in another direction. They hear each other I guess, but they are on the same wavelength too. Just the everyday things are hard. My clean laundry is in Jacob's place and I really need it. Nothing ever gets really dry. And for some reason, the street has been very cacaphonic with car horns this afternoon so a nap escape has not been possible. I am stuck in this tiny apartment with not much and not much I can do about it, in Shanghai. Also, Max is leaving tomorrow around noon and has not checked his flight (He got an email from the agency) an the place is full of stuff that is not and cannot be packed. Does he plan to leave it all here? The boring girl will be nastily shocked and may do something about it. These guys have gotten way beyond what ordinary standards of basic maintenance are and may not have realized it? Seems like a point of pride with Max. Gives the place 'character'.

The trip to Hangzhou was fraught. We took the Gautier Bullet train which was lovely-- spacious and fast, past rice fields reflecting the night sky. All along the tracks were tiny fields with rice, groups of fruit trees, shade trees growing. But once we got there, the queue for the taxi took longer than the train trip, over an hour, and Max was getting sick from his Chinese meal at the western restaurant where his school had their end of year banquet.

We signed into the hostel, went for a brief night stroll at the lake, and came home, Max ready to crash. We had wireless access so I deleted another hundred  viaqqa ads. And so to bed.

Max really couldn't get up in the morning. I went out early to walk; the lake was smooth as glass; it was gray and misty. Lots of people fishing, pole tips in the water; tai chi-ing, just sitting or walking; two girls playing netless badminton. I had this idea of using lake water to make a watercolor, but couldn't really reach it. By breakfast, the worst seemed over for Max, so I went out again while he recrashed upstairs. I went to the  Leifeng Pagoda. There were photos of it in 1928 in which it looked like a giant worn stele, without the eaves or anything. But the PRC did a year of archeological excavation and then built a new on in 2002. So it's kind of a Disneyland thing. There are a number of famous poems about sunset over the lake and pagoda. There was a glass elevator so you could go up and the eaves were set up as rings around the pagoda that people could walk on to view the lake and city, and take pictures. (Lots of Chinese seem to take pictures at these sites of themselves standing against a gift shop counter or other irrelevant background. Go figure). So I got a picture. But then the spitting got to be serious rain, and I was soaked and dripping. Everyone else just whipped out their umbrellas and stared even more at the inscrutable, well, foolish weiguaren. So I straggled back and we left Hangzhou shortly thereafter. Might be a worthwhile return trip.