The Much-Hyped Hangzhou Post

I guess I have left you all in suspense long enough, so here goes the Hangzhou post I’ve been talking about writing for almost a month now.  You all can thank United for screwing up my travel plans, which is now leaving me awake on my flight to type this up…

I went to Hangzhou about a month ago to visit my friend Kevin Reitz and participate in a hat tournament* there, which he was organizing along with some other local players.

*hat tournament- a tournament where you pick teams by pulling names out of a hat.  In most cases, players are placed in different groups by skill first so that the teams are somewhat equal, so, for example, each team gets 5 really experienced players, 4 somewhat experienced, and 3 brand new to the game.  Men and women are also picked separately.

Some background on Kevin:

He was the very first friend I met in Beijing when I first showed up in 2008.  I got to China on a Saturday afternoon and showed up to play in a hat tournament to kick off Beijing’s summer league the next morning.  Kevin was the first to greet me, and we have been friends ever since.  He had only been in China a couple of months and came with little Mandarin abilities, but eager to learn.  He had also thoroughly explored Beijing in that time, so we were a good pair: he showed me new places, I spoke/taught him Mandarin.  He has been living in China ever since (approaching 5 years), and he met the love of his life, Esther, playing Ultimate (of course!) out here.  They are now married and have a beautiful son who is just about two months old.  Kevin is also my blog inspiration, as he keeps his up much better than I do.  Here’s a link with pictures of his adorable son and wife.

I took a Friday off to head down to Hangzhou early and spend some time seeing the city, which I had heard so much about.  I arrived late Thursday night and was picked up by Kevin’s father-in-law.  Esther’s parents live just outside of Hangzhou, and Kevin, Esther, and baby Jordan were staying there as part of a Chinese tradition following childbirth called zuo yue zi.  It’s basically a month of rest after giving birth, but here's what Kevin wrote about it:  "Esther is doing her Zuo Yue Zi, which translates to "sitting out a month". Not just common in China, it's a necessity. Here are two different perspectives on it, both very interesting."

Interesting note about Esther’s parents’ house: it’s a rather massive house in a otherwise somewhat industrial area.  Her family was given the land a long time ago by the government when they moved to the city, and then they were forced by the government to basically knock down the old house and replace it with a much nicer one to match its surroundings a few years back or risk losing the property.  Now they have a gorgeous house in an industrial area that they can’t sell, but will remain in the family, being passed from generation to generation.

Since Esther couldn’t go out, Kevin and I ventured into the actual city of Hangzhou the following afternoon.  The city is centered on a massive lake called “West Lake,” which everything else radiates out from.  In my afternoon with Kevin, we walked around the lake, and then he took me to an area that’s kind of like the hutongs of Hangzhou, but a bit more modern looking.  The reason I have psyched you all up about Hangzhou is really for its beauty, so I won’t bore you with many more words…

West Lake

Gotta Love the Willows

Some Cool Walking Paths Along the Edge of the Lake

Hotel on the Edge of the Lake

Band Playing Around the Lake

Gondolas You Can Take as Water Taxis

Dancing Around the Lake

Squirrel Feeding Ground

Really Cool Tree, for Climbing Perhaps?

Other Cool Tree to Sit In?

Hutong-Like Streets in Hangzhou 

Plate Carving

Beggar's Chicken

These are all Made from Bamboo

Buddha of Buddhas!

Kevin Selecting/Posting Teams

Friday evening, a few more friends from Beijing showed up, and we had a delicious dinner of local Hangzhou food before heading to the registration/team-drawing party.  I was rather impressed that they ACTUALLY drew names from a hat.  It was a lot of fun, particularly watching all the local players’ reactions to which team they were on (I didn’t actually know most of the players).

Saturday morning, we embarked on the scariest car ride of my life (maybe second to doing a 180 on I-95 back in 2008).  Kevin was driving his father-in-law’s car, and his teammate who we had picked up told us to just go straight on this one road to get to the fields.  The road turns out to be underneath some major raised highway construction, and since a concern for safety kind of goes out the window in China frequently, there was essentially highway construction going on above us the entire route.  Here’s a list of some things we encountered:

• constant potholes, changes in road surface, ditches, etc…
• cranes lifting up rebar over our heads onto the raised highway
• cranes pouring cement over our heads onto the highway

Needless to say, we were all praying for our safety the whole drive, and I kind of felt like we were in a video game with all the swerving around potholes and such.  Later on that day, we found out there was a highway we could have taken to get there in about 30 minutes instead of spending an hour on the road of death…

Kevin as Jack Sparrow

The tournament was entitled the “Hangzhou Halloween Hangover Hat,” and so for the party (as all tournaments in Asia are costumed), the theme was open to interpretation.  Some people came in full Halloween costumes and some people in what they would be wearing the day after Halloween when hungover, i.e. still partially in costume or in some sort of pajamas.  Kevin did an AMAZING job of being Jack Sparrow, a costume that has circulated the Ultimate team in Beijing.  The tournament party ended surprisingly early, which meant that we all actually got sleep Saturday night (quite unusual for an Ultimate tourney).

As for the tournament itself, I was quite impressed with the players, skill level, and team distribution.  This was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a hat tournament.  I really enjoyed playing with everyone on my team, and I made a whole bunch of new friends.  I also personally felt like I played pretty well all weekend, and though we didn’t win (lost in the semi-finals), I did come away with an awesome bruise from being cleated.  I consider myself lucky that it was just a bruise and she didn’t step on me closer to my knee itself, which could have done some major damage.

My Awesome Cleat Bruise

Sunday night, it was back to Shenzhen with me, but the weekend had been exactly what I wanted it to be.  A huge thank you goes out to Kevin for showing me around and organizing the tournament while caring for a newborn.  I hope to be back to visit in my future travels to China.