Dag vrienden !
Long time no blog. We zijn er wel nog. We hebben eindelijk wat tijd vrijgemaakt om een aantal foto's te posten.
In april gingen we een weekend naar Hangzhou. Ik had er op zaterdag een bedrijfsbezoek en Kathleen vloog over voor het weekend.
Wikipedia zegt:
Hangzhou was chosen as the new capital of the Southern Song Dynasty when they regrouped after their defeat at the hands of the Jin in 1123.[3] It remained the capital from the early 12th century until the Mongol invasion of 1276, and was known as Lin'an (臨安). It served as the seat of the imperial government, a center of trade and entertainment, and the nexus of the main branches of the civil service. During that time, the city was a sort of gravitational center of Chinese civilization: what used to be considered "central China" in the north was taken by the Jin, an ethnic minority dynasty ruled by Jurchens.
Numerous philosophers, politicians, and men of literature, including some of the most celebrated poets in Chinese history such as Su Shi (苏轼), Lu You (陆游), and Xin Qiji (辛弃疾) came here to live and die. Hangzhou is also the birthplace and final resting place of the scientist Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD), his tomb being located in the Yuhang district.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, commercial expansion, an influx of refugees from the conquered north, and the growth of the official and military establishments, led to a corresponding population increase and the city developed well outside its 9th century ramparts. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Hangzhou had a population of over 2 million at that time, while historian Jacques Gernet has estimated that the population of Hangzhou numbered well over one million by 1276. (Official Chinese census figures from the year 1270 listed some 186,330 families in residence and probably failed to count non-residents and soldiers.) It is believed that Hangzhou was the largest city in the world from 1180 to 1315 and from 1348 to 1358.[4][5]
Because of the large population and densely-crowded (often multi-story) wooden buildings, Hangzhou was particularly vulnerable to fires. Major conflagrations destroyed large sections of the city in 1132, 1137, 1208, 1229, 1237, and 1275 while smaller fires occurred nearly every year. The 1237 fire alone was recorded to have destroyed 30,000 dwellings. To combat this threat, the government established an elaborate system for fighting fires, erected watchtowers, devised a system of lantern and flag signals to identify the source of the flames and direct the response, and charged more than 3,000 soldiers with the task of putting out fires.
The city of Hangzhou was besieged and captured by the advancing Mongol armies of Kublai Khan in 1276, three years before the final collapse of the empire.[6] The capital of the new Yuan Dynasty was established in the city of Dadu (Beijing).
The Venetian Marco Polo supposedly visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century. His book refers to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world." He called the city Kinsay (or Kinsai) which simply means "capital" in Chinese (actually Polo used a Persianized version of the word). Although he exaggerated that the city was over one hundred miles in diameter and had 12,000 stone bridges, he still presented elegant prose about the country: "The number and wealth of the merchants, and the amount of goods that passed through their hands, was so enormous that no man could form a just estimate thereof."
The renowned 14th century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta said it was "the biggest city I have ever seen on the face of the earth."
We logeerden er in een charme hotel "Tea Boutique hotel". Het hotel doet zeer on-Chinees aan. Minimalistisch moderne kamers met hoge plafonds. Het chinees restaurant is van hoge kwaliteit en het personeel is super vriendelijk. We spendeerden 2 dagen en verkenden het meer en het park rond het meer.
Hieronder de foto's.
Dag vrienden !
Chinese opera in het park.
zelfontspanner 1
Zelfontspanner 2
Zelfonstpanner 3
Zelfontspanner 4
Wat een schoon nonnenklooster
What next bij de thee in het klooster.
Relaxte keun
Catwalk of Causeway? We are not alone!
De planten staan in volle bloei....
Liefde is......
Ondeugend.
Chinezen en hun vissen. Ze duwden ons bijna in het water.
Tepel
Mijn nieuwe dress code al bemerkt? Volgend jaar weer volop mode: de gilet !!!
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