Heading to Banqiao she zu xiang (板桥畲族乡) from Wuyi（武义）

         It seems like I should get up at sunrise when I travel.  So, at 6 o clock, I headed on the the next destination. This is a good idea as this part of China gets super hot from 11 am to 3pm. I never tested the theory that an egg will cook on the road at 33 degrees. (If only I had an egg , I would have given it a go.)

Anyway, I noticed that I was heading into Lotus plant territory.

View from the tent.

(The road was maybe 30 meters away)

There is a road there......somewhere...

That is one big ox or maybe they are small children.

It's all about perspective, I guess.

On the left hand side it looks like some massive beehives and on the right hand side , it looks like a house was built but the dimensions were deliberately made wrong..

On closer inspection it looks like a hay stack or a massive straw grenade.

        The lotus's here seemed to go on forever. I guess it is one of the mainstay foods in this area. Even the pagoda is surrounded by lots of flowers.

I wonder how one harvests this field.

You can eat the peas from the pods here.

They are a bit bitter but they are apparently good for you.

 （ShiLiHeHua）十里荷花 area

     Anyway, I though I should get a move on and reach the village. I never thought about landslides coring the roads until I saw the one ahead of me. I guess it had happened many times before as there was a makeshift bridge setup 500 meters away. It was scary enough crossing that bridge on a bike but I did see the locals getting ready to cross the bridge with their vehicles. They must have nerves of steel here.

Taking a break at the bottom of the mountain. I was going to drink the water until I saw some fish that I had never seen before trying to eat the skin off my foot. Better not drink this water (and keep the feet out of the water here.)

Damn, I hope no-one was caught under the rubble on the main road here.

The bridge that people use to go up the mountain during landslides

Once I used the bridge, things were plain sailing all the way to the village. Well , except for the heat.

Usually, people do not stray outside in the heat here. I have seen more umbrellas being used in the heat than the rain and now I understand why.

Arriving at the She  (畬) village

Unfortunately , no-one was out practicing the bamboo dancing so I though I better head back to a restaurant and grab some food. Normally I do not like eating fish but as I soon found out 90 % of the restaurants around here are fish restaurants due to having so much of the creatures in the nearby lakes, rivers and streams (A dead giveaway was the name of the biggest city in the area Lishui (丽水) which means beautiful waters. I should have guessed that there would not be too much meat on the menu here!)

Bamboo dancing

Only the hardy souls live at the top of the mountain

Farming at this height must be tough

Fish , rice and a mixture of noodles with random vegetables

          The houses in  the area tended to be quite different. The newer style architecture does not seem as sturdy as the older building (even if some of the older buildings are missing a layer.)

         The murals tend to be a bit different here. I wonder what the hats represent.

These building seem to be slowly disappearing

A 'She' mural from the mountains

As I cycle way from the mountain , I noticed a silo looking object and a shop which looked like it had not been opened in quite a while. I thought I'd better find a place to sleep. I needed some shelter as it started to lash down just at sunset and it continued for a few hours. I hoped that the rain would disappear for at least a few days (well, rain of five minutes every hour would have been welcomed :-) )

To give it a sense of perspective, that is a 3 storey house (on the right hand side of the picture)

These styles of shops have been disappearing in the last 20 years.Modern shops called 小卖部 （XiaoMaiBu） (Little selling areas) have taking over from this DaiXiaoDian (commission shop)

Contrast between sunrise and a lightning storm after the sun has set. 

Taken just as the lightning lit up the sky. 

Heading off into the mountains Yiwu (义务) to Wuyi （武义）

                So , I decided a while back to get a tent and cycle to the mountains to see what this province looks like from a higher vantage point. Normally, I would like to head out to different provinces but it is quite awkward to get out of the province with the virus so this was an interesting alternative.

                I went to the local big market and grabbed a one/two man tent , folded up in my rucksack and headed off in the direction of Wuyi via Fotang (佛堂). 

If I had space, I would have also brought a blanket.

The ground is quite hard.

Inside view of the sweatbox.

There are 2 layers on the opening.

The outside green layer and the inside meashy layer that lets in light and keeps out most of the pesky mozzies// flying insects

     I used Baidu mas to point me in the direction of the first destination (a place called BanQiao She ethnic township (板桥畲族乡))。 I knew that the distance is a bit far to try on a mountain bike so I broke up that journey, too. Every so often , I stopped in a supermarket for some water and usually ice tea to keep my bdy from melting in the heat (usually about 36 degrees.)

           I never realised there were so many tunnels and bridges around here (which in retrospect is a bit dumb!) The tunnels can be quite long so cycling through them becomes quite the experience.

Cycling through an almost 4km tunnel

The trucks horns sound so LOUD in the tunnel!

View from one of the many bridges

Slated house

Ducks enjoying the pond beside the tea fields

The closer I got to the mountains, the more I observed mist at the top of the mountains. I wished some of that mist would descend, though as the heat was something else.

  

The wooden horse of troy.......in China

Either the mountains are on fire or there are 50 cars revving up their engines closeby. (Hmmmmmm......Where is my mask? )

You cannot  have too many trees

Not sure what is in the lake.

I dipped my toes in it and these fish  that looked like see through fish attempted to cleanse my feet of their skin.

I was going to setup camp here for the night but I decided it was a bit early in the day so I moved on to a local town which contained a couple of murals.

Picking tea in the fields

Never noticed these hats as much in other parts of the country

It could be a picture of a bird and a dragon

Nice water fountain feature in the middle of the village

The Ox is an important symbol in this part of the country 

Actually, in other mountain parts of the country, too

         I realized near sunset that I should seek shelter for the evening, so I found a level piece of ground about 30 meters from the road and at an elevated point 20 meters above the road to put up the tent and catch a bit of kip.  The Kindle comes in handy for a bit of reading before sleep time. I also noticed that I would tend to go to sleep not long after sunset and get up not long after sunrise. This is quite different to the normal scheme of things. Interesting.......

Zhuji (诸暨) - The home of ugh....socks and XiShi (西施)

        So I decided to try the bicycle out for a longer cycle yesterday. I heard that Zhuji wasn't too far away so I headed off early to avoid the scorching heat.
       I forgot that it is more about the humidity than the heat here. After abut 15 km , I thought I might achieve the impossible and fully convert from a solid to a liquid. The only thing that saved me was drinking litres and litres of water and (not so) iced tea.
   Anyway, it was good to stop in some small villages and relax.

Where next, Michelin man?

Different style from the norm here

3 storey houses are all the rage in the countryside

       As I am sure everyone knows , Zhuji is home to many sock making facilities as well as home to one of the 4 famous beautiful woman from the past. (四大美女) I went to the village of XiShi but all I could see were new apartments and shopping centres. Not such a beautiful sight. Although, I did spot a fine flowere arrangement that she would have been proud of.

There are more flowers per acre than ....ugh....sheep

There seem to be murals painted everywhere in China .  They definately add to the atmosphere of the place.

I think the original Ronaldo had that child's haircut at one time.

gangs of fish in the pond

           After hours of cycling , I reached the ouskirts of Zhuji and decided to visit a temple. It was the first Buddhist temple in Zhejiang where I actually saw some monks. I am not sure if they were too happy to see me though. They saw me strolling about the temple and then asked if I could take the temperature test. Then they gave me a new mask and sent me on my way.
           Well , they did give me some apples before I left. I guess this is a symbol of peace (part of the word for apple 苹果 and peace 平安) sound similar in Chinese so I am taking it as a peaceful gesture (In some parts of China, Christmas Eve is known as pingan jie and people give apples on that day.)

A peaceful place

Burning the incense

The temple was located in the countryside right beside some fields which seemed to be full of birds looking over the produce.

guarding the food

Apart from this , I happened to cycle by an amusement area , an empty amusement area. It looked like it was built but never opened.

I think it is Halloween themed.

Trying to escape the floods (before the floods have arrived)

To be honest , it was nice just to cycle around and look at the different buildings.

Many houses had this kind of antenna  at the top of the house.

older slated house by the lake

Hangzhou (杭州) - meijiawu （梅家坞）

  Hangzhou is a huge city about 100km from Yiwu. On one level it is an IT hub. On a different level, it is a very traditional area in Zhejiang. As one famous dude said, 上有天堂， 下有苏杭  (above is heaven , on earth is Suzhou and Hangzhou). I guess the famous traveller Marco Polo agreed with that phrase when he visited Hangzhou a few centuries back....

                                                                                                             The man himself (Well, a statue of him)#

Although things have changed a bit sine Polo's time, Hangzhou still remains a beautiful place

The center of Hangzhou contains the west lake. You can see old style boats mixing with touristy dragon sized boats here.

                                                                                                    Traditional style boat                 

Nice comparison between old and new

 If you go to see the west lake, you will see a statue of a buffalo. It is a tribute to an old story which states that the lake used to go dry and whenever it went dry a golden water buffalo would refill the lake with water. Locals wanted to catch the buffalo so they naturally drained the lake. As expected the buffalo appeared and he spewed out water in an angry manner. Legend has it that all the locals that were waiting to catch the buffalo were drowned in the water and the buffalo has not been seen since that day.

Trying to catch the elusive golden water buffalo

Better not make him angry

Apart from the water buffalo one can see other animals in the area. I was lucky enough one such squirrel take some nuts from a tourist.

No need to feed this critter

This day was a scorcher of a day so people found refuge in pagodas or just places with roofs (or parasols)

A nice place to read

  One can also see the phenomenon of wearing old style Hanfu garments.. Woman (predominantly) like to dress up in the old style hanfu and get their photos taken or just take a stroll (as these clothes are very breathable on a hot day.)

These clothes were used for three millenia 

(right up to the start of the Qing dynasty 1644 when it was outlawed)

I came here to see the tea fields. So I grabbed a quick lunch and heaed out to MeiJianWu to see and then sample the tea.

Egg , rice , tofu and meat.

The tofu goes well with the other components.

The famous LongJing tea (龙井茶) from Hangzhou

One can go to the village and sit at the teahouses.

One buys the leaves and top up the cup with hot water from the flask provided while one can watch the scenery.

 At nighttime, one can go back into the town and see the pagodas shine.

Travelling in style ....

assuming there were people there to move the carriage.

Maybe I could volunteer to lift the carriage.

Next time....

A pagoda lighting up the sky at night.