18 January 2008: Haircut

Today is a little warmer than yesterday. There is not snow all over the ground anymore. Chris and I only just made it downstairs in time for the last 5 minutes of breakfast! The food options were not that exciting though, with mostly Chinese style foods available for breakfast. I get the feeling that Hangzhou must be a destination for many domestic tourists, but not so many international travelers.
Chris and I desided to take advantage of the weather, and go for a walk to the "silk market". It turned out that the market was pretty much just a strip of shops that all claimed to be selling 100% real silk. It seemed that if we were going to buy anything that was silk, we should have bought it here. The shops didn't seem touristy at all, and many of the shopkeepers were busy filling orders, packing stock into boxes for shipping.
We stumbled upon Mau's old holiday house (I think). It was fairly large, and was set inside a walled compound. The buildings had now been converted into shops, but the external parts still remained in the original style.
My hair was getting long and a little out of control, so Chris suggested I get a haircut. We found what looked like a busy hair salon near the silk market, and asked for a haircut. Nobody in the salon spoke English, so it was impossible to tell them how I wanted my hair cut. In the end, they washed my hair, massaged my head, rinsed my hair, cut my hair, rinsed it again, then blow dried it. They put a big parting line down my left side... I don't think they understood that comb-overs are for old people in western culture. No matter, I managed to put some gel through it when we got back to the hotel room.
Chris and I wandered down to the West Lake for the afternoon. We stumbled upon an outlet shopping mall, which seemed to be good value, but Chris and I couldn't find anything we particularly liked. When we reached the West Lake, I could hear music, and there was a large group of people gathered in the distance. We made our way along the shoreline to where the music was, and discovered that there was a musical fountain show running near the edge of the lake.
We stayed to watch the fountains for a while. They were quite mesmerizing, moving in time with the music and making shapes in the air with the falling water. I can only imagine how impressive it would have looked if the day had been sunny. The day we were there it was quite grey and overcast. Sometimes the fountains of water looked like they blended in with the sky colour.
Near the fountains, Chris spotted a squirrel. We watched it playing in the trees for a little while, and I managed to get some photographs. We don't see squirrels in Australia, so it was pretty cool to be able to see one.
That evening, we went to the movies. We wanted to see if they had any English movies. The only one showing was "The Pursuit of Happiness". When we got into the theater, the movie had already begun. I guess they don't show advertisements at the beginning of the film like we do in Australia.
At the end of the film, the credits hadn't even began to roll, and they flicked on the lights! No dimming up of the lights like in an Australian cinema, but just hit the switch, and the fluros come on all at once! I was shocked. It was like watching the movies at someone's house, and someone just hit the wrong switch!
Outside the cinema, there were people trying to sell you the DVD of the movie you had just paid to watch. The cinema operators didn't seem to care.