The temple of the closed down snack market

While Ellis is still at home, Yong and I have finally finished our final exams and have decided to do a little trip.

This trip was not only for our own entertainment, we also wanted to test the GoPro that we got from a friend for recording videos and  taking photos under water while we are on the Philippines. We didn’t really have any plan except testing the camera and doing something that doesn’t depend on the weather. However Yong heard that the “Snack Market” in the south of the city is going to be closed down soon (Don’t worry, this is not the only Snack market in Hangzhou! You can find another one close to Wulin Square – we might take a look at that one another day!).

This was clearly a reason for us to go there, as we might never get the chance again!

We packed our things and left to take the metro to Jiangling station. From there, we had to do another bus ride of about half an hour and about 10 minutes by foot.

This place is clearly not easy to find for foreigners and by now, there was not a lot to see. Most places have already closed down and it’s quite hard to find a good place to get something to eat.

You can imagine, if there was nothing to tell I wouldn’t be writing this post so I will skip the hour that we spend searching for a place to eat (without success by the way) and directly go on to the interesting part. Between all of these closed down food shops we found a small Buddhist temple! While you can see our Christian churches from far away, it almost looked like this temple didn’t want to be found.

Yes, this is the entrance to a temple. Watch out!
Yes, this is the entrance to a temple. Watch out!

The entrance was completely deserted, so some part of me was actually a little scared to take a look inside – you know, entering a dark, deserted and strange place, that’s how horror movies start!

But we didn’t regret it, inside there were nice people watching over the place. They were just relaxing in the backyard, having their lunch and as soon as they saw us they invited us to take a look around. As there were no other people around, we had the unique chance to take a look into every corner of the temple without being pushed around by thousands of tourists.

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As far as I know, this snack market has been very popular in the past but it closed down due to safety concerns, mainly because of the outdated power lines that could quite easily start a fire. Whilst I agree that safety should come first – maybe replace the power lines instead of closing the market though?

I hope that there’s a chance for this little buddhist temple to survive, as quiet places are becoming rare in a big city the size of Hangzhou.

After this interesting trip exploring the temple we still wanted to get something to eat and therefore decided to eat at a small mall at the entrance of the old market. I had an amazing Pancake/Wrap which you can see below. The other dishes we tried out were some noodles with different vegetables and a soup. I would definitely recommend the wrap, however the restaurant is basically in the middle of nowhere. In future, I will look out for other places which sell these or find out their name.

Tasty!
Tasty!

I hope you liked our spontaneous trip to the temple here!
What do you think about such places, do you need a place to calm down in a big city?
Share your opinion in the comments!

By the way, we got the GoPro working, you will be pleased to hear the photos and videos are a good quality and we will be able to share our experiences in the Phillipines. Nevertheless, we had one little issue that we couldn’t solve so far. Connecting the Camera to my Androind Phone is working perfectly fine via WiFi but creating a connection to the PC via an USB Cable was not successful so far. Either way we will find a way to get the files from the camera, we just have to find the best way.

One thought on “The temple of the closed down snack market

  1. I think it is very important to have a quiete place in a big city. A Place to calm down and just relex. Always hearing the traffic and beeing in a hurry isn’t that funny. I often visit a park and just let my thoughts fly.

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