Before I got to Hangzhou, CL contacted me asking when I would arrive.  She seemed very excited to see me when she met me with LJ at the train station.  It’s been six years!  She accompanied to my hotel and then we went to her flat where we had my first pizza in China, and some green tea.  It was great to meet her husband and daughter for the first time.

My first impression of Hangzhou is that it is a very beautiful city – trees in all the streets and gardens or greenery in many places.  I was surprised though to hear the taxi driver on the way home from CL’s house tell me that pollution is also bad here, and that the sky is rarely blue.  As it rained today, maybe the air is cleaner, I don’t know; tonight it didn’t seem as bad as in Beijing.