A few weekends a go the group of us hired a minibus and headed to Anji for the weekend. Anji is in Zhejaing province and is about 5 hours drive from Shanghai. Anji is famous for its 60,000 hectares of bamboo groves and it produces 12 million commercial bamboo poles annually, making it China's biggest producer of Bamboo. Because of this everything in Anji is bamboo, it is literally everywhere. Bamboo hats, bamboo boats, bamboo houses, bamboo models, bamboo chairs they even produce bamboo beers and of course they eat bamboo for dinner as well! 
The first day of our trip we went to the Bamboo Garden Museum. Which is a big park containing the largest number of different bamboo plants in China. The park was quite peculiar, in a typically chinese way, as it had a bird show (with singing parrots and a peacock throne) and other strange attractions such as zorbing and a rodeo bull. It even had a go-kart track which we thought about testing our skills on but then we saw how ridiculously slow the karts were going, however one chinese guy did manage to completely total one of the karts into the tyre wall and seemed to give himself an aneurysm. The best thing about the park was the lake and we took a bamboo boat around the lake for an hour or so. I've tried punting once before in Cambridge and was quite awful so this time stuck to the rowing part, xuan and I let Dan take part of the more tricky punting task. Our boat faired rather better than that of the girls who seemed to spend most of their time stuck on the side. After the boating was finished we looked at the panda exhibition and then made our way out for some dinner - bamboo all round!
Next we went to a river rapids. These were hardly the most dangerous river rapids I've ever been on but they were probably the most fun. It was basically just one massive water fight. I thought this might be the case when we got off the bus as they were selling water pistols and buckets but nothing could really prepare me for the onslaught that came. Every time we got near a chinese boat they would shout "GET THE FOREIGNERS" and lie in wait for us as we approached. I was sat on the front of the boat and got absolutely soaked every time. One boat gave up on rowing around the lake and just waited in the middle for other boats to attack! The whole thing lasted the best part of 90 minutes I think and by the end I was wetter than I have ever been before. We all got on the mini bus absolutely dripping from head to toe! Luckily our hotel was among the best I have stayed in in China (and only 70Yuan for 3 person room) so we could all shower and get changed in comfort. The food in the hotel was awesome and we discovered that apart from Bamboo Anji also grows a lot of potatoes! So that evening we feasted on fried new potatoes and pheasant casserole!
The next day we went to the forest where "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" was filmed and then went to a mountain / waterfall park (which again turned into a massive water fight between Xuan, Emma and myself). The views here were absolutely stunning and when we got to the top of the mountain it was amazing to see how the locals lived in such a rural environment. By the time we got back to the top it was already park closing time so we were "escorted" out by a friendly guard - meaning we had to take it at slightly quicker pace than we had possibly wanted; this did however mean that most of us were more than ready for a good sleep when we got back on the mini bus to come home.
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