Weekend in Shaoxing

Hey! I spent this Saturday in Shaoxing with the other NSLI-Y students!! The city is known for its beautiful canals, like Venice, and it is home to one of the most famous Chinese writers, LuXun. In fact, he's known as the father of modern Chinese literature! We got to tour the house were he was born and grew up. This house (more like many, many buildings), known as the "San Wei School," was built around 1890, and was owned by the wealthy Lu family. LuXun grew up there and studied there since his childhood. After becoming a successful writer, he returned and expanded the house into a school, which many young Chinese students attended. We also got to see two beautiful gardens where he studied!!! These pictures are from the gardens :)

Yesterday, I went to the swimming pool with my host sister and her cousins and had a great time!!! It is indoors and huge! There were many people there of all ages exercising and getting swim lessons. We just did laps and talked. I spent the rest of the day at her grandparents house and finished it off watching a Mission Impossible movie marathon with them! (they're a huge fan of Tom Cruise, lol!)

Today after school some classmates and I went to a nearby hotel to get a special massage, called "cupping therapy!" One of my Chinese teachers got it done and recommended it to us, and told us that it's healthy and promotes blood flow and gets rid of any muscle knots...so we tried it.  It's an ancient Chinese form of medicine where hot cups are suctioned to your back for about 10 minutes, then afterwards they are taken off I was given a short massage. It only cost 10 US $ and was definitely worth it! I wouldn't say I would ever do it again though. I don't particularly feel any better now and I wouldn't say the massage felt so great either. Maybe the lady thought my back was really tense, but for some reason she put way more cups on me than the rest of my classmates and she massaged me for longer too. And I'm not much of a fan of massages, lol. But now I have a bunch of bruises on my back. (cool???)


I can't believe its week 4 already. There is still so much to explore in Hangzhou!!!