Suzhou

The great thing about Shanghai is the nice trips away from it. Suzhou is less than an hour away by train and while not quite as nice as Hangzhou, has its own character and charm. There are lots of 'towns' laying claim to be the Venice of the East due to their extensive canal system. Suzhou has calm canals with tiny bridges spanning elegantly across, lined with white washed 2 storey houses coupled with slate grey roof tiles.



There are a number of old houses with beautifully designed Chinese gardens. Not flowers and hedges, but stones, pavilions, small ponds. Walls and buildings separate the gardens creating an illusion of space. Holes in the walls - square, round, hexagonal, pentagonal - create a feeling of framed pictures of different scenes.



The touts can be quite aggressive at the train station but otherwise everything went smoothly. We covered three places: Garden of the Master of the Nets, Coiled Gate and Lion Forest. There are tour groups - both foreign and Chinese - milling around, but the gardens are laid out in such a way that it is very possible to hide in some nook and cranny without seeing anybody. Being in these old houses and gardens was very much like being in a traditional Chinese drawing where the ladies have their hair pinned up and are sewing in a pavilion while the master of the house is practising his calligraphy in the 'pine viewing room'.

Of the three places, Lion Forest was my favourite. We spent about an hour drinking Long Jing at the upstairs teahouse. The haze of the gently setting sun was casting blurry shadows on the walls. Very chilled.



I really like the picture below because it reminds me (again) of Chinese paintings, golden orange leaves trapped between the rows of tiles on a slate grey roof.



We took a five kwai pedicab to their main shopping street - wasn't really of much interest except the sweetie shop for my dad.



Here is my favourite story of our trip. Walking along the street we saw this bird outside a shop. The bird was very vocal, saying 'ni hao' (hallo), and very often 'huanying guanglin' (welcome to our shop). I've even got video footage which if I knew how to put on this blog I would.



Later, at the teahouse in Lion Forest, 2 mynah birds were dangling from the window eaves. Trying to elicit any vocal response from them was not succeeding. We told the lady owner of our 'huanying guanglin' performance and the owner sniffed 'well, these birds don't talk much'. As we left the tea house we could hear the squwarking of 'huanying guanglin' from the lady owner as she vainly tried to teach her birds to say the magic words.....