Suzhou, China

Louise Moon, 2005

Shanghai recently had a week’s vacation, which will end tomorrow. The irony of Chinese vacations is that you get a week off and then have to “make up” for the time you were given by working on the weekend following your vacation.

My week was spent mostly in Shanghai, as I am still too poor to travel, and even my most modest attempts at leaving the city were thwarted by millions of Chinese with exactly the same idea. After some scrambling to get a train ticket, I finally managed to secure one, only to realise that it would be exorbitantly expensive. Furthermore, I would have to leave on a Sunday night, arrive on a Monday morning and return again on Tuesday night, with no certainties regarding my accommodation. After briefly imagining myself sleeping along the side of a road somewhere in China, I decided not to purchase the ticket, opting instead to stay in Shanghai.

On the Wednesday, however, a friend invited me to come and spend two days at his apartment in Suzhou and learn more about this tourist destination a mere 45 minutes away from Shanghai. The Wednesday night was spent doing nothing more exciting than watching episodes of "arrested development" and laughing at a dysfunctional American family, relieved that ours is so normal.

The Thursday we went into Suzhou with a purpose: See all there is to see! We started by getting a coffee at the Starbucks, as nowhere else in Suzhou knows how to make coffee. Carrying our Starbucks coffee into the place where we would be eating. (The things a foreigner gets away with in Asia never cease to astonish me!) My breakfast was a lovely two-egg omelette with canned mushrooms and something that vaguely resembled "spam" as the filling. Yum!

We then went to the "Humble administrator's garden". As it turns out, there was nothing all that humble about the garden. The size could easily rival most modern cities’ largest public parks, and has a lovely unplanned feel about it. There were hoards of people, but I still managed to take a couple of pictures – “stranger free” – whilst seeing how many “strangers’” pictures I could jump into at the last moment! Some of those people are going to have to answer some funny questions about the Westerner smiling in the background of their picture.

After the not-so-humble humble garden we proceeded to the Suzhou museum. A disappointment to say the least. There were some references to Peking man and a couple of amateur paintings; apart from that the most striking thing about the museum was the two art works, whcih bore no relation to the museum, of rocks surrounded by bonsai trees and water to create the effect of a miniature mountain/forest/lake scene.

I then got to see how silk is made, and I can honestly say that all of my years of raising silkworms did nothing to prepare me for what those suckers are good for here in Asia. We saw how "one-worm" pupas are different from "two-worm" pupas and how they extract the silk thread from the pupa to make the material. Our guide had us touch the hands of a very uninterested-looking old lady to show us how the oil in the silk kept her hands white and soft even after 30 years of this harrowing, and obviously boring, work. She gave us a little smile as we left, so she hasn't entirely lost her sense of humour at seeing stupid foreigners who know nothing about silk!

We then went on to what is supposedly the best of Suzhou's many gardens, the Tiger Hill garden, a very large and open garden with a pagoda that resembles the leaning tower of Pisa in its centre. I enjoyed simply walking through this peaceful garden, watching people go about their business. Just as we were about to leave, we came upon a parade. The thing that set this parade apart from others I've seen in Asia was all the children participating in it. The children were mounted and fastened to their costumes, creating the effect of standing on very narrow objects. It was an amazing illusion and it made me do a double take when I first saw this five-year-old standing on what appeared to be a stick as wide as a pool cue.

As we left the garden we caught a boat to the city centre. The boat took us along the canals of Suzhou and 500 years back into the past. The houses were old and the river was lined with people washing their clothing or vegetables – I very soon picked out which restaurants I would not be visiting for my supper! There were many beautiful bridges along the way, which my guide helpfully explained the history of, nothing of which I understood, as my Chinese is still too poor!

It was easy for me to see the attraction of Suzhou as a tourist centre of China. It's a unique mix of the old and the new, as so much of China seems to be these days. I hope that this will be the beginning of many such adventures in China.



LitNet: 15 November 2005

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