Monday, 19 September 2016
China: Day 7 - Hangzhou to Yichang
Our wakeup call was 1/2 hour earlier today, as we have to catch up in our activity schedule. Breakfast at the hotel included a lot of western cuisine along with the wide variety of Chinese dishes. It was nice to actually have a waffle - with syrup (?), fried eggs, and breakfast sausage.
We eat all breakfasts in our hotels, buffet style and all you can eat. Most of the breakfast buffets have offered fried eggs, but generally a lot of various vegetable dishes. There is always apple and orange juice, sometimes pineapple or grape juice. At one buffet they had sausages that were red, and I just couldn't bring myself to try one first thing in the morning.
Our first stop today was at a tea plantation that produces green tea. They gave us a quick look at some tea bushes, then an explanation of how they wash them in small vats. Since they only pick the tea leaves in the spring, there wasn't any production in process. We learned that the best tea leaves are picked in April and should have a yellow tinge. Not dark green. You get the best nutritional value from green tea by brewing it with room temperature water. Many Chinese put tea leaves in a bottle of water and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes before drinking. The warmer the water the less time you have to wait before drinking, but never, never boiling water - max 80 degrees Celcius. The trade off to faster preparation with warmer water is less nutritional value. The rest of the excursion was another sales pitch asking us to buy some very expensive green tea. We did learn about the 3 types of tea. Green, Oolong (sp.? ), and black, each a different level of fermentation. This plantation only produces green tea which is pretty much a daily staple for all Chinese. In China they keep the best for themselves and export the rest.
From the tea plantation we started a 3 hour drive to Shanghai to board a plane to Yichang. Along the way our guide fed us with a variety of Chinese pastries. One was a large cupcake that looked and tasted a lot like angel food cake, although a little yellowish in colour. There were two small cakes, about the size of the palm of your hand. One was called Lotus Leaf cake that was shaped like a lotus leaf, and another called Shoe Bottom cake. No need to explain why. They looked to be made the same, pastry outer with a poppy seed type filling, but one was salty and one was sweet.
It was about a 2 hour flight from Shanghai to Yichang. We arrived at night, so it was a difficult to keep track k of our route to our cruise ship. It was about a 40 minute drive, ending with a ride down a rough, narrow road in iur bus to the pier. We boarded our ship President 8. We met in the second floor dining room to receive our roo keys and VIP passes.
