Suzhou!

Tired of the hustle and bustle of the city, myself and three of my girlfriends in the dorm (Charly, Mal, and Andrea) packed up and made our way to Suzhou! Suzhou is a famous water town in China located close to Shanghai. It's nickname is "Venice of the East" because of all the canals that the city is built around. The location in proximity to Shanghai and the promise of some gorgeous site seeing made it an easy decision to travel there!

 It takes about an hour and a half or so to drive to Suzhou but we instead took a train, which turned out to be the bullet train! So instead it took exactly 22 minutes and we had arrived at our destination! Before we left I had booked us 4 beds in a 6-person dorm style room at a random hostel. I went for the cheapest option in the beat area so we ended up paying around $3.75 per person per night. The hostel we stayed at was amazing! It was along a canal and located in the heart of a famous night market street with great shops and awesome places to eat!

We arrived later Friday night so just spent the night having dinner in our hostel's restaurant/bar and planning our weekend's excursions! Thanks to "Lonely Planet: China" we had a full weekend's worth of activities in mind!

 

Friday morning we were up at 7am ready to start our day! Our first stop was to the Humble Administrator's Garden (pictures are above), a short one mile walk away from our hostel! The garden was very large and modeled after the traditional style of gardens that China is so famous for. We meandered for most of morning around ponds, through pagodas, along rows of bonsai trees, and across

stone bridges enjoying the beauty of the gardens while also trying to avoid getting too close to the numerous Chinese tour group that occasionally flooded an area o the garden ruining the tranquility with those ever so powerful loudspeakers.

One we'd thoroughly explored the area we went directly next door to the Suzhou History Museum. Apparently tour groups do not frequent the local museums because I found the Suzhou History Museum even more peaceful than the garden, but then again, maybe that's just the nerd in me. The museum had lots of modern works of art done by local artists of the Suzhou scenery, silk paintings done in the traditional ways of a few different dynasties, and (my personal favorite) ancient artifacts organized by the age periods. My favorite discovery was a ceramic pot from 7,000bc. Standing there looking at a pot that is 9,000 years old is such a surreal concept to try and grasp! As my roommate Charly so eloquently put it "This pot makes it seem like Jesus and I could have been buddies!". There was also very impressive displays of traditional Chinese ceramics and jade carvings that were really interesting to see! 

From the museum we went to a Buddhist temple a little further in Suzhou than our hostel was. A pleasant surprise was that cabs, once outside of Shanghai, are incredibly affordable! We only paid about half the price we would have had to pay in Shanghai to go the same distance! When our affordable can ride was over and the driver told us we were at the temple we walked towards where he said the entrance was without seeing a typical temple entrance that we're used to. Instead it was just a big door half cracked open, we stepped inside and it looked like a typical Buddhist courtyard so we continued walking into the main temple area. It was very still and calm, not touristy in the least, which was a nice change of pace from temples we had encountered on many occasions. We arrived just in time to watch and "ahh" at the Buddhist monks' closing day chants. It's a very moving experience even when you aren't as familiar with Buddhism or understand the meaning of the chants. As we walked out of the temple we decided to stop at the area where you burn incense and pray to the gods, even though we are not Buddhist we took a moment to pray to whatever we believed, a calming and happy reflection of our lives and the loved ones in it. Shortly after the calming ceremony of contemplation, we became embarrassed and felt dumb when realizing that we had technically "snuck" into the temple through the side gate and had bypassed the 25 kaui entrance free required for that temple... Oops! 

After returning home to our hostel we all took a short nap; a full day of activities will wear a person out! When we awoke we decided to walk along the market street that was literally out our hostel's front door, shop a little, and find a place for dinner. A pleasant way to end a busy day!

Saturday morning and up again at 7am! Breakfast in our hostel's bar/ restaurant just like the day before and we're off on another round of exploration of this city called Suzhou! We went to the Blue Wave Pavilion first thinking that we would be there for an hour maybe two. Turns out that the pavilion was massive with so much to see and do that we stayed for 4 1/2 hours! There was a giant coy pond that stood still between the two temples, an eight story pagoda 1,000 years old, lots of land and walking areas with waterfalls and Chinese styled gazebos, and an ancient city wall. The ancient city wall had two massive entrances (one by land and one by water) guarded off by draw bridges that were used hundreds of years ago to keep the city's enemies from being able to enter, very similar to the types of walls seen in Medieval movies to protect the king and queen's castle. We got off the wall and ended up taking a wooden boat ride through a small part of the river that went through the gate's entrance. Our boat rower was an older woman who sang us beautiful Chinese songs, which are traditionally sang on boats, it was such a cool river cruise! We ended our time at the pavilion by walking up the 1,000-year-old pagoda! Unfortunately, unaware to us when we began climbing) we were only able to climb to the third story before the stairs were blocked off. Apparently climbing all the way to the top of an 8 story 1,000-year-old pagoda is not aloud, but the views even from the third story were spectacular and you could look over the entire property! 

 

Since we spent so much time in the pavilion, by the time we walked out and back onto the streets of Suzhou we were starving! So instead of going to a restaurant we managed to swipe a table at one of the local bakeries! I'm not quite sure I've mentioned the bakeries in China in my blog posts but let me tell you, they are INCREDIBLE! It makes me wish we had more of them in Colorado! They have desserts, pizza like things, sandwiches, break with eggs bakes in the center, and so much more! For lunch on this particular day I decided to get a pizza-bread-thing resembling Hawaiian pizza with pineapple and ham, a long doughy bread stick with a drizzle of what they called "cheese" (the Chinese don't eat the same cheese as the states, but this was a close second in comparison), and to wash it down got a tiramisu latte! We were quite happy with our random smorgasbord of bread for lunch!

It began to rain that afternoon so, knowing we ha lots to do that night, we went back to the hostel for another well-deserved naptime. For dinner we headed to a popular shopping street to find a particular restaurant and experience a traditional Suzhou style meal... But like many of our plans, this one ended by the restaurant owner looking at us with a frown saying "mei you, mei you!" or "don't have, don't have!", so with no available tables for us we proceeded to the next best thing, Dairy Queen. With my dinner of a large Oreo blizzard in hand, we departed to our first evening activity, a cruise around the main river of Suzhou! The cruise was an hour long showing us many beautiful areas around the river that were lit up at night in beautiful colors! There was a traditional Chinese singer who provided entertainment for half of the trip as well! The final destination was a large pagoda on the river's edge lit from top to bottom with lights illuminating its massive size and beautiful shape! 

Back on dry land we took a cab to our final destination, a hole in the wall teahouse with live music playing nightly. The teahouse only had four tables and lucky for us we managed to secure a spot at the only one open. The tea ceremony in china is very interesting! We had our own personal "tea guide" who conducted our ceremony. She first made a pot of tea, filled up each tea cup, then picked up each cup pouring the tea over the top of the teapot, only to refill the cups again and passing them around for us to do a cheers with our first cup of tea. She was with us the entire time always making sure our cups were filled with wonderful green tea! She was learning English and we are learning Chinese so lots of our conversation was going through words and phrases with her and us helping here with the same in English! The live music at the tea ceremony was all traditional Chinese instruments and songs and we got the chance (for a small fee) to request songs for the artist to play! The tea ceremony was a very traditional part of the Chinese culture that we were finally able to experience and in such a personal and comfortable setting.

7am came once again and we all ventured out for our final morning in Suzhou. We went to another beautiful garden with the theme of "harmony between man and nature". There were small Chinese gazebos, stairs, and other man-made features but because of the garden's purpose, they had been so well incorporated into the natural surroundings that they fit perfectly into the tranquil environment. My favorite moment was when a Chinese man came up to us with his 3 or 4-year-old daughter and said something to her in Chinese and she began to sing the ABC's! It was so cute!

When we left the garden we walked down the street and happened upon an 800-year-old Confucian temple! There were a few statues of Confucius, lots of bells and gongs, and bonsai trees around the temple but the coolest part was what was waiting just beyond the back gates of the temple's grounds. Out the back was a street market where vendors had laid out blankets and set truckers out on the blankets for sale! We were the only foreigners in the area so we knew they would try and take advantage of us so our bargaining skills had to be top notch! My favorite moment of bargaining that's happened to me since coming to China occurred within ten minutes of entering that market. I saw a teapot that I really liked and went to ask the vendor how much it was me: "duo shiou qian?" vendor: "liu bai Kaui!" me: "600 Kaui?!" that's almost $100 in US terms. I told him I would pay 80 kaui and only got him down to 400 until I moved onto the next vendor who did the same for his teapot that I liked but went to 300 kaui. Neither prices I was willing to pay so began to walk away when I got stopped from vendor #1 saying he would sell his for 300 also, which prompted vendor #2 to run over saying he would go down to 275, then a third vendor came up with one of his teapots saying he would sell it for 250! Before I knew it I had at least 7 vendors surrounding me all fighting among each other continuing to lower their price so they would be lower then the previous vendor and therefore hoping I would buy THEIR teapot, all while I sat their quietly watching them compete for my business. Finally ever one of the vendors was down to 80 kaui, my original asking price, and I decided to take advantage of the situation and demand that now I wanted the pot for 50 kuai instead which (reluctantly) they all agreed too. So I ended up choosing the very first pot that I found and paying only 50 kaui from the original 600, which is $7.92 down from $95.02. 

And with that final price of excitement and victory, we headed back to the train station to return to our fast pace, populated city of Shanghai with some great stories and memories of our travels to Suzhou!