So I ended up teaching English in China after all. It wasn't quite how I had originally envisioned it, though. Instead of teaching structured lessons to a classroom of university students, I taught an old man how to say a handful of sentences in English while sitting on the banks of the Grand Canal in Hangzhou, where I've just spent a rather unusual day and a half.

I arrived in Hangzhou yesterday afternoon after a bumpy six-hour bus ride from Huangshan. This bus ride was significantly less pleasant than the others -- particularly because I woke up yesterday feeling sick to my stomach from Mrs. Hu's fried eggplant of the night before. (That reminds me: if you go to Huangshan, go to Mr. Hu's Restaurant, down the street to the right as you face the Xiaoyao Binguan. Mr. Hu speaks English and is very friendly and helpful. If you need anything, just ask. But stay away from the fried eggplant.) Only twice have I gotten sick in developing countries, and both times I had a long bus ride the next day. Maybe I should stop taking buses. But I digress....

Hangzhou, located about two hours south of Shanghai in Zhejiang province, served as the imperial capital during the Southern Song Dynasty. Its central attraction is West Lake, over which Chinese aesthetes have marveled for centuries. Like Shanghai, Hangzhou is developing and changing extremely rapidly; and as with Shanghai, that means that Lonely Planet is all but worthless there. They list three cheap hotels: one is an inconveniently-located university dormitory, which I was told is always full; the others are both gone. After discovering that the third was closed for renovations, I sat down on the banks of the nearby Grand Canal for a rest. (The Grand Canal, which begins in Hangzhou, stretches all the way to Beijing, and long served as the principle means of transport between northern and southern China.)

A Chinese man approached me and began speaking to me in Chinese. I told him in Chinese that I didn't understand and that I didn't speak Chinese. So he sat down next to me. Given that I've only learned some two or three dozen words in Chinese, and that his English was limited to "Hello," "Byebye" and "Okay," we communicated a surprising amount of information. He is 64 years old, weighs 73 kilograms and is from Hangzhou. We discussed my age, my birthday, my nationality, where I'd been in China and what means of transportation I'd used to get there, how long I'd been there, and when I go home. I taught him how to say such useful phrases as "I go America," "You go America," "I take plane America," "I weigh 73 kilograms" and "You I friends." (Chinese doesn't really have prepositions or articles, and feeling that they were a bit beyond my ability to explain, I left them out of the English sentences he wanted translated.) It's a bit disappointing to have met someone who lived through one of the most amazing chapters of twentieth-century world history and not be able to talk about anything but birthdays, but there's only so much you can say in tourist Chinese.

This morning I went down to the park beside West Lake. They have developed the eastern shore into a very nice public space a bit reminiscent of the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC: a fairly large body of water rimmed with willow and cherry trees, paved walkways and classic Chinese pavilions. There are an ever-growing number of restaurants, bars and cafes along the lakeside catering to domestic and foreign tourists. While it's certainly not very backpacker friendly in terms of cost, I'd definitely recommend a day or two in Hangzhou to those who can afford it. They're even building a Hyatt right on the lake. I took a boat out to the islands in the lake, and although they were clearly once quite beautiful, they've now succumbed to tacky tourist souvenir shops.

From there, I wandered north, planning to buy a ticket for an overnight boat up the Grand Canal to Suzhou. En route, I spied a foreign language bookstore. Since I was halfway through the second read through of the books I have with me, I ducked inside. While perusing the selection of mostly classic English-language literature, a Chinese man began speaking to me. I mentioned that I was looking for the Chinese epic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Thus began his quest. He hunted down a clerk and asked where it might be. He took me to look for it. When it wasn't there, he insistently led me to another bookstore. There he hunted down a clerk who brought me an edition with Chinese on one side and English on the other -- in five volumes. I'm still not sure that it will fit in my backpack, but after all that effort on my new friend's part, what could I do? So I bought it. Supplied with ample reading material, I told my new friend that I was going to walk up to the ferry terminal to get my boat ticket. He decided to walk with me, even though it meant a walk of at least three-kilometers in each direction. So far he hadn't tried to sell me anything. He'd been nothing but kind and helpful. When we finally reached the ticket office, it turned out that there were no tickets left for tonight. I decided to go to Shanghai instead, so my friend put me on a bus to the train station and said goodbye. And then, like that -- he was gone.

Now I'm in Shanghai, which will be home base until I fly home. I've seen practically nothing of the city yet, but there will be time enough for that.