There’s a lot to be said for husband and wife run setting teams. It allows the natural order of things in the union to be supplanted by something far more important, the trail. Submerged by the responsibility to the hash, normal subjects such as career, home, mothers-in-law, territorial lapses and childbirth take their proper place in the scheme of things. By observation, scribe has noted a seeming majority of failed unions in the midst of hash and subscribes to the theory that it’s joint trail setting at the bottom of it all. After all how could one seriously debate the choice of schools for offspring when there are vastly greater issues at hand, like the venue for next weeks run. But all that mumbo was not on the mind of Bangers and Yeti as they indicated to the pack the direction of the trail as it led out of Hangzhou’s salute to a distant (but failed) civilization, the Forum. Even if the quality of the trail was not going to hold the pack up, there was no doubt that the cunningly obscured blue arrows would do the job. With Cartoon Porn once again pushing from the front, away the pack went, a proper run with some serious looking runners, including even the normally relaxed style of Skidmarks. Along the lakes edge, up and across gardens, by-ways and many cornered bridges for good luck or bad luck, drink more hot water, and false trails to burn. A nice little variation saw Battery Operated calling a meeting in the bush conference room while Pains and S & M shortcutted around the back. Around LeiFeng Pagoda, trail a bit mystifying here, leaving S & M and Skid at the back of the pack on their lonesome and the pack proper vanished. The trails turned the pack around often, yes, it was intentional, and soon crossed the Su Di for another of those endless circuits through Hangzhou’s many answers to Hyde Park. At the end of that pictureskew labyrinth of paths, it was back on Nanshan Rd for a fast run back to the start, all stretching out including Creature Comforts for the run in. The circle saw Bubble Butt named, with Battery Operated taking the lead in the merging of random sights with random thoughts to come up with that name. At least Bubble Butt could see the amount of thought and attention applied to her name, about 5 seconds worth. As proved to date, a hasher either is named appropriately or lives up to the name, so where this leads for Bubble Butt one could but surmise. After a few beers and cast aspersions, the pack minus 7 Up adjourned to the Indian Kitchen. It’s hard to get used to the Indian restaurant concept after Chinese restaurants; scribe needs lessons, especially in the Indian beer mark up policy, cost plus 1000%. Strange, it didn’t make them taste any better. Then Yeti dropped dropped a few over to meet Doggie at the Maya (surprise) after which a late night was enjoyed followed by a morning that was not.

Report on Run #51 – May 25th – Hare S & M – The Non-Consecutive Run
There’s no doubt that the selection of a central and easily found venue run contributes to a decent turnout at a decent time. Now Beishan Lu is a reasonably well known road, being at the centre of the Hangzhou tourism universe, and the Su Di is reasonably well known, being constructed here in Dynasty XYZ and being named after a local politician, which somewhat sullied its credentials. In fact even Marco Polo enjoyed a run on the Su Di, long before the hares chose this intersection as the venue for a run. As it turned out not everybody had a clear idea of the location, including Cartoon Porn, too much mis-spent time on the internet, and Creature Comforts who remained till this Sunday unaware of the Su Di and its fame. So the pack collected until about 5.20, when the hare S & M briefed the assembly on the delights to be encountered, blaming the low lights of the run on her unfortunate co-hare who was really just there to carry the flour; the injustice of it. With the reminder that the trail did not start at the finish, the pack set off for the 4 km plod across the Su Di in Marco Polo’s footsteps wondering at their fate. In fact the trail turned right into the Yangong Di parklands via a variety of FTs and CBs and checks to cross in the Flower Nursery,  a labyrinth of paths and creeks and bridges and stepping stones; a hareing luxury. From there the virgin hare S & M must have become disoriented as the trail inexplicably traversed an abandoned village, still with villagers though, and struck across appropriately virgin forest without either of the hares succumbing to a boar trap false trail. The pack very gingerly crossed the various game trails and equally came out unscathed. Cartoon Porn was keeping the pressure on though, and there was no time for students of botany or vista to absorb the variety of either, it was just on on, along some wooded paths and then a puzzling journey through parks and lakes etc until Yugu Lu was attained, and a brisk canter to the car park near the Maya. The circle was memorable for the lack of everything, including Doggie Style still nursing his dodgy calf around the corner at the Maya, and Acronymph still returning from another suspect 48er. However a mass naming occurred, without board approvals you should know, so complaints will be received, and possibly considered, or maybe not. Nevertheless, Bestiality, Deep Throat, Creature Comforts, Pains, Sheep Shagger, Bangers and Mash, S & M and Kama Sutra and Numb Nuts visiting from Qingdao finally crossed the HZH3 Rubicon. The group were well served by the hot night, the outdoor dining and the Phone Box menu touch. On on.

Run # 46 – The Where in Wushan Square Run – Hare Yeti – Turnout 17 Questions raised by some of the more pedantic hashers, usually, no, always female, related to the actual start of the run in Wushan Square. The old formula often works, just stand around uselessly in some central location and the hashing world will finally come to you. It didn’t happen to scribe who had to locate the trail at the back of the square and follow it backwards to the start which was, surprisingly found at the entrance arch, yes!! As 5.00 pm crept by, the late comers crept in, including Jackie on her bike and Doggie Style on his new Giant. There’s some kind of thing going on here whereby the Giant owners make demands upon the security of the parking location of the bike that takes most of the gloss off the pleasure of cycling. Scribes advice is this; given that if your Giant is stolen, then you’ll be able to buy it back the following week at the market for half what you paid for it. So, this is a form of Chinese National cycle insurance, no premium and a 50% excess. Looks like a good deal, so relax. Anyway Doggie made it back from the Shanghai 1000^th run and still was able to cycle to the start of the HZ run, cycle back, and then set himself to do 20km on Tueday night; what’s he on? After Acronymph, Skidmarks, Hary, Hayley, David, Sevenup, Cartoon Porn, Titman, Jackie, Men Ching, Pushup and a couple of new French runners arrived, an on on was called and the path wend it’s way up, of course, around the stone paths till Cartoon Porn found the trail down some stone steps, from where he set up a continuous barrage of on ons. The pack did a voluntary regroup at the top of the steps for the back markers to catch up much to Cartoon Porns dismay, and then descended to a now delighted Cartoon Porn who in fact was standing on a check back (CB). So Yeti worked this one out very well indeed. Then it was on on around limestone features, up down, left and right and on on again to another regroup in the Maoist era lookout featuring imaginative use of concrete that could only have been designed and built by army engineers just back from the front. New runner Men Ching with Acronymph were last to the top, whereupon the pack went straight back down and followed a trail through some less picturesque parts of the park area, some construction workers accommodation (always makes you feel better about your own digs), some excavations, some poor old buggers vegetable garden with the gate flattened and finally down into a village area. Along the way a couple of Cartoon Porns friends caught up with the pack, which is a testament to the well set trail, and also to some additional marks put down by Doggie for latecomers. A CB in the village area saw the trail wend back up the hill whereupon it got back to Wushan square via Hefang Street. Trying to follow a trail along the busiest street in Hangzhou on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was a bit tricky, so the trail was abandoned and the pack went straight back to the start.  The French contingent and Hentai’s friends shot off immediately to avoid a down down, but Men Ching and David (Aussie) were not pre-appraised of the new-shoe rule and so very reluctantly took their down downs, the former choosing to decant her shoe into her cup; what was the benefit of that again? There was a smokers down down, and a last in down down, several wrong name infractions, and a naming, Aaron being christened Titman. Yeti’s run failed to receive a single vote in favour when a ballot was called as to the quality of the run, but this reluctance to vote may have been more to do with the danger of the circle being mis-identified as an unauthorised political gathering, because the run was good, just about right for a mixed and relaxed crowd. The restaurant in Hefang Street is always a good deal with good atmosphere, so it was a contented crowd who went their various ways after.

I walk to work each morning and on my way to work I look up at Laohe Shan and think, ‘I wish I was up there’. I did the same thing this morning but this time the thought ‘I wish I was up there’ was immediately followed by ‘gosh, up there doesn’t look as tall as it used too’.

It was a tall weekend, 7 hashers setting off on Saturday to attempt to hit all 14 of Hangzhou’s 1000ft hills in one day. We only hit 10 but it was as good a day’s walking as you’re going to get in constant, teeming rain. Despite the packs knowledge of the hills of Hangzhou it was sadly navigational errors that did for us.

Sunday we were off on Hentai’s Magical Mystery Tour, disappointingly 6 of the 7 from Saturday FAILED to show up on Sunday and DOWN DOWNs await them. So it was that a depleted pack (A, H, Pushup, PhoneBox, 7Up) made the long arduous journey out to Hentai’s secret location.

The secret location turns out to be a small village (some how villages in Zhejiang never quite manage to achieve quaint do they?) in the Daqing valley, a new location for all of us.

A well used tourist trail ran west out of the village and in to the bamboo forest, we were on chalk and away. But not for long. A few hundred metres in and we’re off chalk. Back to good chalk, no, we’ve not missed a touring. Spend ages looking round, exploring every possible turning off the trail before deciding the work-shy-fop of a hare hasn’t set a trail at all. Unanimously the pack decides that the best course of action is to follow the stone stairs all the way to summit which we did. The route up and the summit affording amazing views of the valley, mountains and the river, batteries being rapidly drained on cameras as the sun gets lower in the sky.

Nagging sensation in the back of mind that I’m missing something important here.

The trail emerged at a small, very communist looking concrete pavilion on a ridge that runs north-south (south-north if you’re Chinese). The pack quickly decide to head north up to what looks like the summit proper in search of views of the hills to the North and West.

From the summit I get my first true appreciation of how much more there is to the hills around Hangzhou, that we’ve just dipped our toe in with the stuff we’ve done that immediately borders the city.

That’s what it is, the sun’s going down! We’ve got about 20 minutes of day light left we’re at the top of a hill, off chalk and we need to get down quickly.

Push-up’s improbable-but-somehow-just-about-passable-trail detector goes off and we clamber over some rocks into the gloom of tree cover at twilight. It’s steep, very steep and as we make our way down I increasingly can’t work out the detail of what I’m stepping into. This is boar trap country and I now can’t look at what I’m stepping on even if I want to. The hills ring out to On On as the small pack attempt to track each other’s progress down the ridge. Somehow we manage to emerge at the bottom and back on to the tourist trail just as the light fails us completely. The timing couldn’t have been tighter. A short 1k run in takes us back to an awaiting hare.

The hare, in his defence claims to have set a trail that took a circuitous route up to the pavilion and then came down by the southern ridge. Down-downs were nonetheless awarded as we saw absolutely no evidence of this. 7Up appeared to be on a mission to get everyone wasted filling everyone’s glass except her own as full as possible.

The pack were rewarded with a dinner including wild boar (shot, not trapped, we wouldn’t to encourage that now would we) and we finally adjourned to Maya for 1 or 3.

On On
DoggieStyle.

Run #38 March 2^nd –

Hares – Bottom Feeder and Pelagic
Hashers – Pushup(bra), Phone(sex)box, Sevenup

The following is a true record of the events as recorded by Sevenup the scribe for this week’s most simple run in HZH3’s history. Man, where should I start? I thought this was going to be easy, but I am not sure I’ll be able to truly convey this Sunday’s sequence of events. Let’s get right to it.

It was a frigid winter afternoon, the rain-drops fell down from a murky sky covering the wintery landscape. The attendance was low, only three hard-core lunatics gathered at Paradise to do some running in sub-human temperature. The pack was off and headed straight to Hubin Lu.

Down the street we run, it was an amazing feeling to be able to view the winter-westlake and run at the same time during the daytime. The trees have already prepared for the wretched winter months: branches were stark bare, their leaves stripped off in the fall; their beauty gone. Cars rushed by in a sea of endless white swirls of cold moisture, eager to arrive at any place warmer, and the cold reached to the bone and chilled throughout the body.

We warmed up rapidly, running along Hubin Road, Baidi, Sudi, Nanshan Road and then back to Paradise, very simple trail, not a single check fooled us on the way, but still it was a long way, though we always had breath to talk about various subjects on the way, especially Pushupbra kept telling us about last week’s Meijiawu gorgeous running and the breast grasping fantasy during the driver licence test(haha).

Passerbys were all busy holding onto their woollen scarfs, though it mattered little for the rain brought the cold, and the cold finally reached to the very marrow of everybody. When facing those three lunatics, either they just give you a strange look, or would say something like “look at those stupid foreigners, what they are thinking?” (Kindly warning to Chinese hashers: whenever you behave crazy, I mean not so Chinese style, stay with foreigners, haha), and of course we also got numerous encouragements at the same time.

As we hit the end of the trail, we were all soaked, shirts sticking onto your body, feet swimming inside shoes, hands extremely cold, only heart was still warm. And that’s the end of today’s hash, no circle, and of course no down-downs either, sitting down at paradise for some rest, and took cabs to Indian Kitchen for dinner.

By the way, it’s my honour to write the hash trash for Bottom Feeder and Pelagic’s running again

Hares—Bottom Feeder and PelagicHashers—Pushup(Bra), Phonebox, Licked Dick and SevenUp It was a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon, and the Laohe mountain was covered in clouds. It looked like as though it was going to be a rainy hash with only the “not so smart

Hares: Mickey (Mouse) and Doggie (Style)
Runners: Kevin, Nick, Jessica, Jerry

Imagine a sky grey like cigarette ash. And now, in the tiny rooms of the hearts of four courageous runners standing shivering at the corner of Hefang street and Yan’an Road, imagine a string quartet, the music soft, but driving, waxing and waning in tune with motivations of the hashers to actually start running on this blustery, cold, and heartless day. However, dear readers, fear not, for our runners, after a bit of huffing and hawing, embarked upon the journey laid out before them by Hares Doggie(style) and Mickey(mouse) – but not without some apprehension after being told that along the trail another set of arrows had been marked by someone else. Multiple explanations were offered: Shanghai hashers, a school group, some smartass with a piece of chalk and a penchant for mischief greater than that of hashers, but the true reason was never discovered. The trail first took our undaunted runners through the orgy of shopping that is Hefang street, through the crowds of Chinese people baffled by the four runners tearing ass through the street, screaming incomprehensible incantations behind them as they made on their merry way. Several intersections proved troublesome, but dear readers, our runners are used to searching under car tires for chalk arrows, and with a bit of cursing by the virgin runner, the runners carried on in the strange ritual.
Taking a turn up into the woods, the runners came upon a WC regroup, which was well utilized according to the designs of the hares. The trail was well marked, even abundantly due to aforementioned arrows placed by other party, which never upset the delicate balance of our cool-headed runners’ emotions. The confusion of the dueling arrow sets climaxed in a “chutes and ladders”-like sequence with the complexity of “read it and wipe” logic puzzlers designed to be solved on the can. After several deriding false trails, careening out of control down several steep streets, the runners were vomited out upon a well-received On-On Home. Upon seeing this, the runners jauntily made their way back to the eagerly awaiting hares. They finished in almost exactly one hour fifteen minutes, winning the arrival bet for Doggie, who estimated that time exactly.
After donning several extra layers, the Hares and Hounds waited eagerly for the arrival of the Tianmushan contingent (Jackie, Pushup(bra), Phonebox, and the now named 7up). Acro, claiming an injured ankle and expressing concern over the amount of beer provided by the hares for only a total of seven people, showed up just in time for the arrival of the Tianmushan-ers. Upon their arrival, the circle was convened by Doggie, and preparations were made for the very public (read: middle of the square) donning of a good number of beer coats. Down-downs first went to the Hares, although there really wasn’t too much berating to be done. A Down-down went to the virgin Nick, the physically Biggest Virgin (two meters) in Hangzhou Hash history, although Bottom Feeder wasn’t available for his traditional virgin speech due to some ominous sounding emergency apartment hunting. Doggie presided over a solemnly comfortable naming ceremony for the now-dubbed 7up. Narratives of the weekend were given by the Tianmushan-ers, and Jackie’s was especially berated for its length. However, the pack readily accepted the “liberal” new family consisting of Papa Pushup, Mama Doggie(style), and sisters Jackie, 7up, and Phonebox. Otherwise, the Down-downs were given in relatively rapid succession, as there was in fact a good bit of beer, and it was cold enough to warrant quick application of beer coats. Upon the finishing of the circle, the pack left under full steam for a nearby Chinese restaurant, where a hearty and loud dinner was enjoyed. After said dinner, and many a strange look from the natives trying to enjoy a peaceful Sunday night dinner, the decision was made to form a taxi cavalcade bound for Maya bar. Other than ragging on Nick the virgin for bringing a certain much boasted of and – at least to Jackie and this story weaver – a disappointing “special lady friend,” drinks at the Maya bar were enjoyed in the normal manner of hashers worldwide – with gusto.

On-On!

kevin

Hares: Gerry, Push-up (Bra) – Hashers: Bottom feeder, Pelagic, Rhian, Lillian, Kevin, Skidmarks and virgins Eva, Miki, Jessica Wan

It was a pleasant November Sunday, perfect hashing weather. The pack assembled in front of the Holiday Inn, and I showed up late though I am the one who lives nearest. The trail started out innocently enough just along the Feng qi Road leading to the Fengqi crosshead Bridge, then we passed a small park, and an overhead pass above the railway. Soon we entered the agricultural university, and the most of the remainder of the trail wove around inside it (good trail, hares!), where a long time search for arrows on ground and trees commenced. What we found were two tricky circles on the ground, and one even with wavy trace inside – indicating swimming or boating? With Bottom Feeder’s guidance, we successfully found the way out. The well-hided arrow passed through a building and leading a way to one side-gate of the university, which was just another “ FT