Zhejiang

Another poor night's sleep on the rock hard bed! Out early-ish again, walking over to the station to catch our fast train to the nearby city of Hangzhou. Although a sizeable city in its own right, Hangzhou is the much smaller brother of Shanghai, a hundred or so kilometres to the east.

Our first stop for today was a newly-listed archaeological site on the outskirts of town. We got off the train, caught the metro to literally the end of the line, then another bus out into essentially the fields. Here we found a sparkling new museum dedicated to the ancient culture of Liangzhu.

If you've ever heard the Chinese government make grandiose claims about the 5000 years of history and 5000 years of Chinese civilisation, this is where that comes from. About 3000 BC there was a settled agricultural tribe that lived in the area - they tilled the fields with rice, diverted rivers and constructed large-scale dams and canals, and clearly had a highly-stratified society with craftsmen, holy men, and of course, rulers.

There was a fair bit of interesting stuff in the museum, though it was of course entirely in Chinese. They had helpfully translated the title of each panel, but none of the actual information so it was a bit difficult to follow the narrative.

Leaving the museum, we decided to head for the actual site as well, about 5km away. So we hopped on another bus and headed there. The museum, of course, isn't within the boundaries of the World Heritage site, so just visiting the museum and not the actual dig site means we technically hadn't visited.

The site itself was fairly quiet in terms of visitors (the staff seemed shocked that foreigners had turned up and genuinely confused at what to do), but work-wise it was a hive of activity. It sort of felt like the set of Jurassic Park with swarms of workmen laying pavers, painting fences, tiling roofs and so on. Clearly the World Heritage addition had been a bit earlier than anticipated!

We paid our entry fee and rode on an electric buggy around the site (these are everywhere in China). As expected, there was very little to actually physically see, other than the vague outlines of some canals and where the palace had stood. At least we've been!

I actually found the whole thing rather off-putting, because to me the "5000 years of Chinese civilisation" claim is completely bogus, and thinly-veiled propaganda. These people weren't ethnically Han, they didn't speak or write anything like modern Chinese, they left no records, and of course their society died out. Modern Iraq doesn't claim to have 5000 years of history because the Sumerians lived there in 3000 BC, so this isn't really any different. As I said, the claim feels very much like self-aggrandising propaganda from the Chinese government. Anyway.

Back on the bus, we got to the metro stop and then rode the metro all the way into the centre of town. It was dark when we arrived - the sun is setting earlier! Hotel was okay, nothing too fancy but at least the bed wasn't too hard. Ended up going to a restaurant a few doors away for a couple of tasty noodle dishes.Read more