MICE CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE

ITB China 2025 was followed by interesting fam trips to the city of Hangzhou and Yuhang district. To set the scene, it’s a city that has more inhabitants than the entire Czech Republic and is located about 180 kilometres south of Shanghai. Known mainly for housing Alibaba’s main headquarters, the West Lake and Xixi Wetland Park, the city of Hangzhou is definitely an interesting place to visit.

Hangzhou has a humid subtropical monsoon climate with four distinctive seasons: hot, humid summers, cool and damp winters, and pleasant spring and autumn transitions. You can see there fields, small rural structures, rich flora and fauna, large tea plantations, mountains, forests with a plethora of species, and magical rivers. All of these create inspiration for poets and writers as well as tourists and visitors.

Renowned Italian traveller Marco Polo came to Hangzhou following the course of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and marvelled that it was the most magnificent city of heaven in the world while American diplomat John Leighton Stuart considered Hangzhou to be one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in China. According to French historian Jacques Gernet, the Song Dynasty was the Chinese equivalent of the Renaissance, and Hangzhou was the Florence of its day.

Liangzhu Museum is located in the Yuhang district of Hangzhou City and is an archaeological site museum promoting and displaying Liangzhu culture. It is listed by UNESCO and the theme of the exhibition is “Liangzhu is a sacred place that testifies to 5,000-year-long Chinese civilization.”

We visited this museum as well as the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City. Both places display exceptional presentations showing the outstanding contribution made by the Yangtze River Basin to the “Diversity in Unity”, featuring the origin of Chinese civilization.

Do you prefer tea or coffee?

Today, many people in the West as a whole cannot imagine starting the morning without a cup of coffee, be it from Starbucks, Costa or somewhere else. Ask yourself who earns the money from such a big trend? Yet in Asia, people usually drink tea or hot water. And what about if we ask whether you are a tea or coffee person as we would ask whether you prefer beer or wine? I was sure before visiting China: coffee, definitely. But now I am not so certain, as the tea from China is the best in the world. And what about if we would, for a change, create something “Slavic”? And then what could we create from that as our own trending drink?

Located in Jingshan Village boasting an excellent ecological environment with a forest coverage rate of over 96%, the Jingshan Temple is another “must-see”. This thousand-years-old temple is the important birthplace of Zen Buddhism and when we came to visit the beautiful mountaintop temple, there was a meditation. Naturally, I joined the group of monks to experience lovely unforgettable moments.

Also important to Jingshan Village is its tea production which goes back more than 1,200 years. Jingshan Tea Ceremony was the next amazing activity prepared by the organisers, Hangzhou Municipal Bureau for Culture and Tourism, for our group of MICE and Tourism buyers and B2B media.

During the tea ceremony, we had the opportunity to learn how to beat (whip) tea from a small portion, and to add some warm water to create a delicious drink, and then to decorate it in the cup. The ceremony is accompanied by a nice musical performance – to be precise, production of pure tones from various musical instruments. I am sure that these tones have some healing power that goes magically into the tea! The holistic philosophy of life would put all the pieces together into one integrated whole.

Xixi Tonight Cultural Show, a performance on a lake that comprises AI, modern technology and special effects, pulled spectators into the action and presented a sad story about unfulfilled love. You need to have a programme of the story in advance as otherwise it would be hard to understand the story just from the performance that shows beautiful visual effects.

The death came via the form of a book filled with white pages disintegrating and flying in all possible directions, and by the flight and spreading of wings of a strange white bird. The spectacle was assisted by policemen standing behind the spectators – presumably to make sure everything was fine and the spectators were okay? It was a strange feeling, to have the police behind us in the theatre. Maybe they were part of the performance?

Our group stayed in the splendid five-star Narada Resort & Spa Liangzhu, situated in a beautiful natural environment amongst a lake, gardens and romantic trees. The excellent resort offers 312 lovely rooms and suites with balconies, equipped with outdoor baths. You can take a bath on your balcony while watching stars on the night sky or the lake with its peaceful waters and trees with birds singing in the background.

The Grand View Ballroom can host MICE events (250 people) while in total, the resort offers nine meeting rooms with a capacity of 1,636 persons. We had a delicious dinner with the welcoming presence of local authorities and delegates from Hangzhou and the Yuhang district including the city mayor, and we attended the destination’s presentation, and various presentations of local products and souvenirs.

For one night, we stayed in luxury accommodation in the middle of the shopping streets in the city centre so despite the rain, all the delegates went to the markets.

Another place that you should visit in Hangzhou is the tastefully managed Museum of Parasols and Western Umbrellas offering facts from the history of the objects in question and a staggering collection of parasols and umbrellas, some of which are really pieces of art.

The museum offers children and adults creative workshops where they can make various objects, including umbrellas, various objects from silk, ceramics as well as learn about paper cutting or produce accessories from leather. The children love it, they are very creative and you don’t see them playing with their mobile phones.

The West Lake Boat Tour is a boat tour on a lake which is on the UNESCO Heritage List, and has inspired a lot of poets, writers and artists not only from China but also from all over the world. So, let’s take some inspiration from that too.