My first impression in Hangzhou

My first impression in Hangzhou

By Waqas Hassan

World famous quotation is first impression is last impression and whenever we go to new places or meet new peoples or try to do anything new our first impression highly matters, so now I am here in Hangzhou China and from first blink to until I start understanding things here I will consider my thoughts and impressions as a first impression which I would like to share here.

What I cover with my first impression is about Food, architecture, hospitality, shopping, technology,  nature and culture and here I want to describe very shortly about these things that how I found these things in Hangzhou and how much they surprised and how much they are different from other world.

Hospitality: Let me start with hospitality which is much related to Chinese tradition, well I saw some reflections of Chinese hospitality when I met Chinese students in Siegen university and also when recently Chinese students group visited Germany, they all were very warm and caring, but the full insight of this traditional and great aspect of Chinese society I fully covered when I reached here and everybody welcome us with very open heart and shining smile, everybody is willing to help us and they did as well and want to make our stay much comfortable in china which I believe I will never forget.

Food: Once I was working in Italy and a very famous chef told me that 3 most famous cuisines in the world are Italian, Indian and Chinese, as before I tasted Italian and Indian so it was my wish to taste Chinese gastronomy and when this thing happened I admit that chef was absolutely right. There is no doubt that Chinese food is healthy and tasty and has much kind of dishes, the most interesting fact related to food is chopsticks which I believed I never be able to use that but surprisingly I am getting better with them. My weaknesses in this point are first I am vegetarian and second I can’t remember the names of dishes so sorry for these facts.

E-services (Technology): Most amazing thing I observed in china is their technology and its use in daily life and china is far ahead in this field from western countries, I mean from food to shopping, from hiring taxi to getting bicycle, from buying grocery to paying utility bills, in short in every aspect of life people of chine use E-services and even many shops and vending places don’t accept cash which is annoying some time, but on the other hand the blockage of western social networks raise question about equality and transparency.

Nature: I cannot make any guess about whole china but about Hangzhou I am sure that here they love nature and protect it, here I can give some examples in this regard which I observed so far, mostly in Hangzhou they build tall buildings and made hubs and plants millions of trees around these hubs, everybody is very caring about nature and plants trees everywhere like I seen beautiful gardens in university and city center areas, everybody use electric motorbikes and generally in city they use electronic buses for public transport.

Architecture: The places I visited so far I see some amazing piece of architecture which Impressed me a lot and I want to say that after Italy I see Hangzhou which have these kind of amazing architecture buildings and places.

Shopping: Shopping is passion for every tourist or guest person so as I have also and just within first 4 days I found so many shopping malls and almost every brand of the world especially western brands, so now I have concern about my money because shopping in Hangzhou is endless, until now I listed west lake cultural square and Hangzhou shopping tower in my favorites but here is much to discover.

Culture: Culture is to vast to describe and I am skeptical if I am right or not but I am trying to say what I observed so far in Chinese culture that they are so much caring people, they are not racist at all, they wants to help you with their best, they are very shy people but much informative and intelligent. The disturbing thing among them is that they are so depressed because of their study or work burden, young people are also under pressure from their families and society for their future and relations and that’s the reason I found that many young people wants to marry earlier.

I believe that in our stay in china especially in Hangzhou here is much more to discover yet and I will know many other and accurate things about all the aspects which I mentioned above and surely I will try to capture all the moments with my camera and writing as well as in my memories.