It was one of them days. One of them Sundays. We woke late after the victorious runners and assorted hangers on went out for some celebratory teppanyaki and drinks. I went up to KFC for some take out on the bike and had a very pleasant interaction with the staff where we managed to do the whole transaction in Chinese without any of the usual attendant misunderstanding or ’shock horror’ at the foreigner speaking Chinese. Big thanks to the girl who served me, you treated me like a human being who happened to be white, yet speak some Chinese and that made my day.

After lunch and general surfacing related activities we hooked up with L ‘little sister’ and went to Hangzhou World Leisure Expo. This event has been going on in Hangzhou for the last 6 months but we’ve sort of avoided it. Most of the reports weren’t good. Now in the end we went down and avoided the housing development disguised as a ‘cultural experience’ and just went to the fairground, which was cool. It was easily the best fairground experience I’ve had in China, not least of all because they didn’t crash any of the rides we were on into the ground (which has happened to me before). The three of us had a wail of a time. I found a ride that I wasn’t prepared to go on which was new. We went on some whirly thing that seemed to rely on your own strength to stop you falling off which was .. err … a challenge and we discovered that D is less scared of free rides than those which you have to pay for. In the end we did so many rides in quick succession that I was literally dizzy when we walked out.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one day we’d already arranged to go to a friend’s house for dinner. Now this had promise as a bit of an event as A throws quite a dinner party. After a relatively sober (relatively) dinner we sat around chatting for a bit before A suggested we go to a ‘bar’ she’d found exploring the local area when M and I weren’t playing out due to diligent race preparation. Now this bar was something of an experience. It is located on the fifth floor of an office building not far triviality-towers. It was decorated much like the least plush CIU club I’ve ever been in. Everyone seemed to have crazy hair (think extras from mad max) it definitely felt like we’d found some underground den, on the fifth floor. It costs 5 RMB (40p) to get in and is all you can drink green tea. Or you can buy cheap beer. When we went in they were playing that ultra cheesy hard house that I’ve only come across in China. After about 30mins they switched to what I can best describe as Chinese Line Dancing and after another 30 minutes or so they switched off all (yes, all) the lights while everyone danced to some interminable ’slow dance’ song. The slow dance was made yet more interesting by the fact that everyone migrated round the dance floor like they were on some kind of slow fairground ride and the ‘packs’ of young guys who seemed to be stalking the dance floor. The whole thing was great fun and was made slightly more so by the fact that we were clearly the first foreigners to set foot in the place.

好玩儿! (hǎo wán er, good fun) as they say in these parts.

First of all big thanks to C for getting us roped into 杭州西湖跑山赛. So C suggested we join a 30K hike through the hills around Hangzhou, and we agreed. On the day that we went to sign-up D looked at the paper and said something along of the lines of, “you do realise it’s a mountain running race!” Chinese doesn’t have a word like hill you seem to go from lump very quickly to mountain so that’s not where the ! comes from. It was the ‘running’ and ‘race’ parts that earned the sentence it’s !. The less linguistically challenged will of course have read ‘杭州西湖跑山赛’ as ‘háng zhōu xī hú pǎo shān sài ‘ or ‘Hangzhou West Lake Run Moutain Race’ in the first place. I’d sort of committed by this point and it sounded like fun so I signed up anyway as did M and a couple of other people whose knees don’t wobble at the very sound of ‘run 30k through the hills’.

In the end it was great fun, lots of it not runnable and lots more of it I didn’t run but we made it to the half way point by the deadline to continue which was nice. I still bailed at the half way point. Well actually I did about half a k past it which was long enough to get stung by a bee, have a beekeeper pull the bee out the back of my head, get laughed at by a beekeeper and work out that my legs weren’t going to carry me up another 200 meter accent, let alone more than half a dozen more. Not necessarily in that order, particularly not with regards to beekeepers. Ultimately 30k through the hills does not sensible preparation for a 21k (half marathon) on the flat make. M soldiered on and gets oodles of respect for that but I’m saving a little for A who woke up late, started 1 hour late, past us before the half way point and and still finished in a respectable position.

Big up Hangzhou’s runners, marshalls, organisers, the nice people who actually moved out the way, the people who shouted ‘加油!’ (jiā yóu, ‘add power’ a cheer) and a special thank you to the man (also not a competitor) who said, as we drew level “老外很慢!” (lǎo wài hěn màn, foreigners are slow) you made me laugh, as I hope you and your friends noticed.

Photos here

A week ago yesterday, a colleague, a friend, JP was hit by bus outside the office here in China. He is currently in hospital in Hong Kong having been airlifted there last Saturday after 3 days stabilising in Hangzhou. He is still ICU but no longer sedated and the message from the doctors is that all the signs are good.

Everyone here is aware that traffic situation is ridiculous and unnecessarily dangerous but it really brings the reality of that home when someone you are close to is an an accident. Ambling Sheep has more details on what happened including an article from the local rag, which is almost wholly inaccurate, about what happened. No one deserves to be thrust into a situation like this, least of all JP and his family. I just wish there was more I could do more to help.