Hangshou #2

West Lake about 8:00 a.m.

July 1

Sitting in a lakeside cafe in Hangzhou drinking white tea and sweating. Trying to see the colors of the water. Is it a little pink, inside the blue-gray? Maybe a different brush would help with the willows...can't find the groove. 

Tea plantation

We went to the  Lingyin.temple yesterday, passing tea fields of green green green pompoms covering the hillsides. At the site, there was the usual long runup of tourist shops selling...silk underwear, umbrellas, toys, batteries, but no postcards. We took a funicular up the mountain to the temple-- and sensational views all around in the muted Hangzhou palette. And it was wonderfully fragrant. The temple was OK, with many statues and chanting monks (or were they? One was yawning... saw then filing to the bus stop later.) The camera battery gave out so no pics of Jacob and I at the summit. There were thumb-sized golden dragonflies all over the top of the mountain, levitating around the temple courtyard despite no obvious water. Drones? On the walk down, there were distinct strata of insect sounds: near the top, cicadas; in the middle, something making a sound so loud and abrupt it sounded like ducks quacking, though we never found out what it was-- then all of a sudden we were below them. Then, crickets. Along the way, we found a gorgeous iridescent deep blue thumb-sized beetle on the ground.
At the bottom of the mountain there were caves and grottoes covered with dozens or hundreds of carvings in every nook and cranny, mostly bas reliefs iterations of the Buddha, done by different hands over the years. In one place, there was a row of them, each done in a different style in the same sitting facing the camera pose, looking a bit like the last supper. In others, there were inscriptions. It is amazing that in this one tiny place, over centuries, people converged to make these carvings; in another they built gold mines; in another, cities. This place seemed so isolated even though it showed the hand of man over many years, each  sculptor with his own history.

We met a Chinese guy who loved American basketball who wanted to spend the evening with us-- or with Jacob. For all his intolerance of 'boring people', Jacob spent a lot of time on this affable guy, practicing his Chinese.

cat's ear pasta

We looked for a particular restaurant on the causeway. The causeway turned out to be a long walk along the lake, a park dotted with various features; one was called 'Red Carp Lake', and we could hear the carp plashing in the twilight.  At night it is as lovely as in the daytime, velvety dark with satiny highlights and reflections. Though the restaurant we were looking for was closed by the time we got there, we found another and had a large Hangzhou cuisine meal including cat-ear pasta (named after their shape only) and the famous vinegar trout, to my taste overrated.

Jacob and I spent time sipping tea at a lakeside cafe talking and me painting. We touched on China vs America, on each of our goals. Jacob said what I know: that I should take a step back and think about what I really want to do. I have more restrictions (location, salary and benefits, we have different ends of age issues) than he, but still choices. I may need some help me to completely think outside the box.