Gulou area

The hostel I was staying at, the Wushanyi (吴山驿) Hostel, is off Zhongshan Street (中山街), which is in a historic area of town. It is reached by walking under an arch near a historical landmark called Gulou (鼓楼, Drum Tower). You will see a picture of it later. It was raining hard when I first arrived, so I took a picture on departure. This view is looking towards the entrance. Much cheerier than the day before.

And here you are looking in the other direction.

Further down the street towards the eateries.

Zhongshan Street intersects with this pedestrian shopping street which is a continuation of Hefang Street (河坊街). The shopkeepers are just starting off for the day.

This is outside the shop where I ate a few minutes later. No, not at Maccas.

A gateway leading to another well-known restaurant street called Gao Yin Street (高银街).

Alright, enough suspense. This is what I had for breakfast, a zong (粽) with pork.

It wasn't quite enough so I wandered over to another street with hawker stalls and had this porridge of sticky black rice with red dates. More pictures of the other food on sale there in the next post.


I had finished Catcher in the Rye the night before. I hadn't read it before; I thought I had because it's so celebrated. My one line summary would be: Holden Caulfield thinks everything is phony. I can understand the teenage alienation but the references to 1950s USA culture make it less universal; the millieu described certainly isn't part of my background. Future generations will have to understand the context to decipher the story. But then I suppose you have to be specific to depict alienation.


I had also discovered that my travel alarm clock that I brought along didn't work. The alarm hand didn't correspond with the set time. I could compensate for that, but more fatally the clock didn't advance at all. That meant I would have to use my mobile phone as an alarm clock the morning of departure. Oh well, Cheap Chinese Clock was now back in its homeland. And in the bin.