Now all I need to know is about flights from Amsterdam to Midlands, UK and I can skip both London and Shanghai… Wow.

]]> http://www.viewhangzhou.com/2010/03/klm-does-the-decent-thing/feed/ 2 http://www.viewhangzhou.com/2010/03/longjing-new-tea-1y-per-leaf-3/ http://www.viewhangzhou.com/2010/03/longjing-new-tea-1y-per-leaf-3/#comments Wed, 24 Mar 2010 05:27:57 +0000 SWG http://www.viewhangzhou.com/?p=1555 Despite the dustbowl that Hangzhou became on Sunday – something to do with the Gobi desert migrating to Japan – we decided to go for a wander and see of they had started picking the new tea yet. After all, what’s a bit of dust and pollution compared with a seriously respectable smoking habit. So off we went. It was fairly early in the afternoon and had a little trouble catching a taxi but then scooted, surprisingly quickly, thanks to the new tunnel under Lingyin Road, down to Nine Creeks Village (九溪村 | jiuxi cun) on Qiantang River. We had planned to take the taxi up into that first tea-drunk village as the walk is boring, but the road was chokka with cars the whole way. I couldn’t figure out if they were trying to park, or drive, or just organise an impromptu air horn requiem to google.cn. Whatever it was, it was time to walk, because the cars wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.
At that village, turn left up the Nine Creeks trail. I had on my trusty walking books, but felt a little like one of the Chelsea Tractor drivers you see in London – pristine polished Range Rovers quite unnecessary for dealing with the odd pavement hop – the highlight my boots got was kicking a few annoying children out the way, and the odd stepping stones over the streams. I guess there are 9 streams? Up into Longjing Village  (龙井村), where we looked for some late lunch, but all of those people have quite rightly given up cooking. Why cook when you can live like a king selling expensive tea? Through Longjing and on up Manjuelong Road (满觉陇路) and into the higher part of Yangmeiling Village (杨梅岭村). At no point did we see any teapickers, nor any of the happy-faced old men crushing the tea into their electric woks. (Happiness having something to do with the title of this post).
The view from the top of Yangmeiling Village is good. We couldn’t really see much because of the dust storm, but  trust me, it is pretty good. We settled into a restaurant overlooking the whole thing and ordered food. Of course we had the requisite boiled ‘local’ chicken, (农家本鸡煲 | nongjia benji bao) ‘local’ being a euphemism for tough. The poor thing had spent its short life running away from dogs and cars, little did it know that the real enemy was the hand that feeds it. However, like all these long-distance sprint chickens, it does really taste better.
And a cup of New Tea. To be fair, the 30Y for a cup is not expensive in the whole scheme of tea, but my glass had 33 leaves in it – I counted – so about 1Y per leaf. The price for a pound / jin? 2,500 – 3,000Y. Gulp. How many leaves in a pound? Our joyful restauranteur told us his was a little cheaper, “You know, nege de, but if you go into Longjing Village, maybe 3,000-5000Y”. There has got to be 5,000 leaves in a pound…
We had a choice after lunch. Take the Y3 bus down the hill into Beishan Road and walk to Maya, or walk back to the river. We took the bus, but if you’re interested, you can ask around the village for somebody to take you into a town by car – no meter, so haggle. As for the walk, done that before. From the top of Yangmeiling Village, head straight down into the village proper and keep going. Generally fewer people than the Nine Creeks route and about half way is a temple – Li’An – which can be shockingly quiet considering the land we live in.

I bet you all know them, but just in case you’re new in China here goes anyway – these intros are from Google(-ish).

Koubei means literally ‘word of mouth’ and it was based much around user comment. People also referred to it as Yahoo Koubei as it’s one of the websites linked to Taobao 淘宝. Now, it is China’s largest life services website, covering dining, entertainment, housing, housekeeping services and tourism covering pretty much every city ton village and hamlet in this huge country. Since its founding in June 2004, it has always been supporting and promoting the domestic life of the e-commerce service industries, as well as to meet all the wonderful and weird demands of Chinese people. The Founder Li Zhiguo 李治国 worked for Alibaba 阿里巴巴 for five years. (So, now you kind of know the reasons it’s relating to Taobao, huh)

大众 means ‘everybody’, and 点评 ‘comment’, so 大众点评网 means ‘Everybody’s comments’. As such it can be a bit of a free-for-all. It was founded in April 2003, is has become China’s largest city life Consumer Guide. It’s mainly focused on providing reviews and comments on food and beverage, leisure, entertainment, lifestyle, and an information-sharing platform for Chinese people. On top of all this, it is a very focussed city guide with more than 460,000 merchants in over 300 cities. Currently it is the most popular and the largest restaurant reviews website. It is also largest local search portal web2.0 style in China. Call it a cross between Craigslist and Google, in Chinese. CEO Zhang Tao 张涛 studied and worked in America for a few years.

In Beijing, 饭统网 Fantong seems more popular. In Shanghai, Dianping is much more used, and in Hangzhou, Koubei is the best. Membership is free for all of them and as a member there are discounts and special offers. Have a look at these websites before you head out to eat, or pay a little attention when you dine out or spare a second asking the staff, and you will save taxi fees or other little treats. Dianping includes merchants Hatsune, Banana Leaf, Westlake One, Double Star, Papa Johns, Zen, Burger King, Ladinna, Jura Restaurant, Iceason, Dairy Queen, Segafredo, etc. Koubei has Mingren Mingjia, Bro Ding’s Black Fish Restaurant, Xiang Wei Guan, Fengdu Restaurant, Yun Shui Yao, Yoho, and loads more. As you can see, there is a broad range of restaurants on offer.

Rumour says in Shanghai that even the best restaurants care about their reviews in Dianping. Newly-opened places beg for the diamond level reviewers attention, but woe-betide if those diamond Level reviewers write something terrible; there’ll be no business. A diamond level reviewer friend of mine once wrote a critical review of an Italian restaurant on Dianping and the owner emailed him, apologised profusely, and invited him for a free dinner there.

I hope the same will happen soon for VH reviewers.

It’s a nice shop though. Top floor has a collection of coffee table art books, some mangled by years of people thumbing through them, others wrapped and in perfect nick. Middle floor has a slightly odd range of English language airport thrillers and classics. Also a hardback copy of Dan Brown’s latest if you are into that…

[mootools]

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The link to NCIKU.com from this site has been up since the beginning and has had several thousand clicks. This is pretty cool as nicku is pretty awesome and anybody trying to study Chinese should definitely have it in their toolbox.

I first ran into nciku on Sinosplice.com, a site that, despite its obvious popularity, I find patronising. (I must be the odd one out.) The Sinosplice post is about how we should all say ‘NCIKU’, because it clearly isnt a pronounceable name. Pasden argues that it comes from the Chinese name for the site 词酷 or cíkù. The ‘n’ is for the nth number. n词酷 then means ‘cool gadzillion words’ or some such, and one should said ‘n-cíkù’. n词酷 is much more than dictionary though. It is a thorough language tool, and while they plan to expand into other languages, its power and versatility will probably shine most with Chinese.

The mobile search too – http://m.nciku.com

n词酷 is owned by Korean search engine market leader NHN, who, since conquering Korea want to colonise elsewhere. Rather than plowing on into Japan and China with their own brand, they are testing waters with a new product – n词酷. This helps explain the main interface on n词酷 – a search bar. There is no need to define what language you input – it will automatically recognise English, pinyin and of course both simplified and complex Chinese characters, n词酷 then simply runs a search of its daily updated database. Listed in the returns are definitions, translations, pronunciations both phonetic and spoken, and examples showing usage. Pretty much everything is clickable, wikipedia style, taking you onto public dictionaries, etymology and more.

Pretty novel as well is the handwriting entry tool. Nothing very special about that in itself but this one is built for us paleface who might not know the stroke order of a character. Just ‘draw’ it, and n词酷 will offer suggestions, then show you what the meaning is, how to use the character, and there is an animated pop-up showing you the real stroke order. No more conting srokes or trying to figure out the radical in order to look up a character.

n词酷only started in 2007 and already has an Alexa rank (in China) of about 1600 – ie the 1500th most visited website. In just 2 measly years. They must be getting something right.

Note that the original form is printed on both sides, you had better try the same…

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Shanghai to Hangzhou

Number	Shanghai Main Departure	Shanghai South Departure	Hangzhou Main Arrival	Journey Time
D5685		07.20	08.43	1.23
D3105		07.25	08.51	1.26
D5551		07.39	09.05	1.26
D5689		07.44	09.12	1.28
D5653	08.00		09.47	1.47
D5553		08.33	09.59	1.26
D5657		09.30	10.48	1.18
D5663		11.45	13.03	1.18
D5667		13.07	14.25	1.23
D5665		13.12	14.35	1.23
D5673	13.46		15.35	1.49
D5655		15.04	16.30	1.26
D5471	15.05		16.44	1.39
D5675		16.40	18.06	1.26
D5687		17.47	19.19	1.32
D5669	18.58		20.47	1.49
D5681		19.03	20.21	1.18
D5683		20.03	12.35	1.32
D5475	20.10		21.55	1.45