So the next part of my solo trip on the east coast was to Suzhou - a handy 25 minutes from Shanghai on the fast train.
Suzhou is known as the 'Venice of the East' due to all the canals and waterways in the city, so fittingly, I discovered, the two cities are twinned. At a population of 1.3million people it's pretty small-fry compared to a lot of cities in this country.
Wednesday 5th (Day 3)
After a lazy start in Shanghai (this was a holiday after all) and a lot of sitting outside Suzhou railway station trying to work out the most fail-safe way to get to my hostel (I settled for the metro) it was 1.30pm before I'd got to the hostel and dumped my bags. I hadn't realised before I'd arrived in Suzhou, that the centre of the city (where the majority of places of interest are) is just one large square which is surrounded by water on all sides - this means that everything in central Suzhou is a perfectly walk-able distance. Good news for me because everything down-south is so big it takes forever to walk anywhere!
On the first afternoon I decided to walk south towards the river and the tourist attractions there. I've always got a soft-spot for water so the combination a river, sunshine and Chinese bridges was a winner. I had a nice time just wandering about watching the locals and taking pictures (whether any of them are any good will be a different story).
On my way there I came across the Confucius temple (every Chinese city worth it's tea seems to have one). They had some old stones with original city plans and layouts carved into them which were interesting to look at.
I managed to accidentally sneak into the Pan Gate gardens without paying (still not quite sure what happened there). The Pan Gate is a water gate for the river that is connected to the last remaining 300m of ancient city wall. This area was very pretty and if only I could speak Chinese I could have latched myself onto a Chinese tour group to tell me all about it (there were a lot of those in Suzhou).
Pan Gate gardens
Strangely time seemed to pass quite slowly so I managed to fit more in than I expected in my afternoon. Walking is definitely the way to see central Suzhou you'd miss too many of the interesting, lively little streets in a bus or taxi.
After stopping for some street food in the form of a baked sweet potato (very popular here, and I'd never had a baked sweet potato before), I just decided to wander the busy streets and alleyways for a while to see what goings-on I could find. I walked down a lovely street which had trees down the middle and was lined with lots of lovely shops - it was hard to limit myself to window shopping and not buying the lot. All the winter coats looked so beautiful and enticing but definitely not required in Foshan!
SWEET POTATO!
Whilst wandering along I bumped into one of the Suzhou based ELAs on his way home from work. I'm getting pretty good at chance holiday meetings it seems! So my evening plans took a much more exciting turn as I ended up joining a lot of the other ELAs, who work in the city, for dinner, fireworks and giant sparklers in their favourite pub (it was November 5th and it's an expat bar). We were missing not having a bonfire though!
Thursday 6th (Day 4)
The promise of a Chinese silk museum was just too much of a lure to ignore so that was where I headed first on my second day in Suzhou. I detoured in past the North Temple Pagoda on my way there - at 9 stories tall I wanted to see what the views over Suzhou were like. From a birds-eye view Suzhou is not the most picturesque of cities but its got sections that are definitely packed with character and charm.
Suzhou from the 9th level of the Pagoda
It turned out the Silk museum was closed. It also turned out the man chasing me down the street had been trying to tell me this. I had ignored him because I thought he was trying to sell me a taxi ride or sightseeing trip like all the overly persistent locals who had approached me were trying to do!
So after this nice man showed me the sign saying the factory was closed he showed me to the nearby silk factory instead. I nearly ended up amoungst a group of Chinese models in long silk dresses when I walked it - that would really have lowered the tone of the promotional video they were making!
The factory (naturally) had a an extensive shop. I very nearly bought a Chinese silk gown but I couldn't decide on which colour - I'm sure there will be plenty of opportunities to rectify the situation. They were also demonstrating how they turned silk cocoons into silk thread and how they stretch the cocoons to make duvets. So my desire for a silk museum was fulfilled. I also hadn't realised how big silk worms work and that you had to kill them to get the silk (I was clueless about silk production before then).
The trusty little guidebook map then led me towards 'The Humble Aministrator's Garden'. This is an enormous, UNESCO listed garden. According to the bumf, one of the top 4 gardens in China. I discovered I was following in the steps of Margaret Thatcher by visiting it (her's was the only picture I recognised on their visitor wall of fame). This was a lovely, and very busy garden, full of little pagoda huts, beautiful flower beds and traditional stone bridges - a nice way to spend a sunny afternoon.
Suzhou was definitely the perfect place for shop window and market stall browsing - I was in my element just wandering around seeing what was on offer. In my wandering I was making a bee-line for Pinjiang Lu. Pinjiang Lu is traditional, canal lined Suzhou street - most of the canals have now been paved over. There were some traditional hand-rowed boats taking tourists down the canal so Suzhou definitely does live up to it's 'Venice of the East' name. I spent quite a while merrily wandering along this street and noseying in past some of the quirky shops - they even had a 'Cat Cafe' (I didn't go in but I think you drink tea with cats rather than eat the cats...)
Traditional hand-rowed boats on the canal
My last sightseeing trip of the day involved me getting lost inside the Soochow University campus - I'm definitely not going to follow the guidebook anymore if it suggests a foray into another university to look at the buildings - thankfully some students directed me out, otherwise I might still be there...
To end my trip to Suzhou I met up with the others again for happy hour at The Bookworm (the pub we'd been to the night before). A nice way to end my little visit to the city.
G x
No comments:
Post a Comment