Today we visited the historic town of Xitang, which is an hour an a half drive north of Hangzhou heading towards Shanghai.

It is a fairly touristy spot, but lovely nevertheless. I was accompanied by Gené, Joyce from the College, and a driver. We also had a tour guide who was absolutely tiny and whose charm was inversely proportional to her size.

The town is built around a set of interconnecting waterways criss-crossed by bridges. It dates back more than a thousand years and in recent times has been used as a film set for, perhaps most notably, Mission Impossible III with Tom Cruise.

Click on the picture thumbnails to see them full size. Some are bigger than others. There are some lovely gardens here. The photos below are taken in the Drunk Garden, so-named because of its intoxicating nature. It's hard to capture it on film, because of the small confined courtyards that comprise the garden.

Staying on the drunk theme, we also found an interesting bottle lined alleyway that was begging for a derelict called Andy. Things move pretty slowly around here. the dog and the old lady weren't going anywhere fast. The picture on the right shows (L to R) Joyce, our tour guide, and Gené Below we see Joyce and Andy getting their Karma together before lunch. We weren't particularly keen on either the live wriggling snakes or the miniature (and live) Lobsters (crayfish) shown on the right. Here's a few more tourist shots On the left below is the restaurant where we had lunch. Judging by the photos on the wall, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep had also eaten here. (Tom filmed Mission Impossible III here but apparently Meryl just dropped by to say hi).

We found some traditional Chinese opera singers (centre) and their manager seemed very keen for us to get out on stage and take photos of them, much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Finally for this set, Gené does what only women know how to do, namely go shoe shopping, although it really is very hard to find anything to fit any of us Westerners here. Finally, I would like to say a HUGE thanks to Joyce and to the Water Conservancy and Hydropower College of Zhejiang for providing myself and Gené such a wonderful experience in Xitang today.