So, it seems I’m supposed to write a slightly cynical, thinly-veiled criticism piece about Chinese New Year. Well I’m sorry to disappoint but I’ve had a lovely time and I’m sure all the firework wrappers get recycled. So there.

We hired a car to make the whole thing easier as we were off to see the out-laws. The car meant we could come and go as we pleased and didn’t get stuck anywhere. It also meant that, when we had a few hours to spare to we were able to make a quick dash back into the city centre to grab a quasi-pizza. M was kind enough to come up along in united in adversity kind of role.

We had some lovely, traditional food, plenty of things that fell into my ‘edible’ category which was nice. We were all made to feel very, very welcome by a whole string of relatives. M and I escaped and climbed a hill and a sort of fell back down it. In discussions afterwards it seemed to emerge that it was ‘their hill’ whatever that means.

I (while not actually playing a game) improved my knowledge of ma jiang some what and learnt a dice game which M and I have since adapted into a drinking game.

I undertook the most scary driving experience I’ve had at two miles an hour with no snow. Through some villages with a precipitous drop off a crumbling concrete edge on one side into a river below with precisely one car and one of the two wing mirrors distance to fit through between the parked car on the other side. There are no photos as the passengers were all too scared to think to take pictures.

We went out to a night-club on one of the nights and managed to get L a bit drunk (turns out she isn’t invincible). We also had some great fun playing with fireworks and some of the younger relatives (mostly at the same time). We thankfully only witnessed one firework related accident and nobody was hurt really.

And so after three mad-capped days it was back to Hangzhou and straight into the Italian restaurant at the Shangri-La, the food provided by the outlaws was lovely but as any westerner who has ever eaten Zhejiang cuisine, three meals a day for three days in a row (quasi-pizza not withstanding) will testify, you need to come back to some stodge. A nice bottle of pinot noir to restore our faith in red wine as a concept helped round the whole thing off.

D has yet to re-appear (we left her there) and as has been commented elsewhere Hangzhou is eerily quiet (if you ignore the constant fireworks) as most people are also still in their home towns. And it’s back to work.

Photos to follow.

Update: There are now a few of the more interesting pics on flickr.