"My new Home (for now!)" Hangzhou by piglet44

Well we did it!We did what we wanted to do,took early retirement and moved to live and work in China for a year (or maybe more!)
So I am adding our location as Hangzhou,although we live an hour away from Hangzhou in a town called Lin'an in Zhejiang province and we work at the Zhejiang Agricultural and Forestry University which has a beautiful campus full of trees and flowers around a lake with a waterfall.
So we have already visited Hangzhou on two trips and we will probably be there many more times,since it is close and we have a bus that goes from our University campus right into the city.

people dressed up next to the Lake

So the first time we went into Hangzhou we got horribly lost as we don't know how to read Chinese.Although we had a map it wasn't always easy to find the street name in English and also the distances were very confusing.We saw a short distance to walk on the map and it turned out to be very far, and we also found many smaller streets were not on the map at all.So last Sunday,wiser,we got on the University shuttle bus together with a friend,Ting,who is an English teacher here,and he helped us find our way around Hangzhou.

Calligraphy Museum

There are many beautiful walks to do around the Lake and there are some causeways you can walk out onto islands in the middle of the lake.If you want you can take a boat out on the lake too,although we didn't do that.
There are beautiful tea houses around and many families out strolling at the weekends.There is also a little museum of calligraphy.

• Pros:The city is beautiful- lots of places to see
• Cons:Easy to get lost,and crowded on National Holidays
• In a nutshell:Ready to explore more!