Trip to Suzhou

The May Day holiday in China has apparently been reduced from a week to 3 days. That meant no classes Thursday (May 1), Friday and Saturday with a return to work on Sunday, yes, Sunday! Our Friday classes were transferred to Sunday. Suddenly, someone remembered that Sunday was Youth Day and they were entitled to the morning off, so no classes in the morning. Then someone else (perhaps the same clear-thinking dude) realised that bringing the teachers back for 2 periods in the hot afternoon was probably not going to go down all that well with students who would probably skip the afternoon class, so on Tuesday – yes, just before the Thursday holiday! – Sunday afternoon was canceled and we had a 4 day holiday. A bit late for a 4-day trip. When we consulted with our two English-speaking Chinese friends about going to two places, they firmly advised against it. Too many people!! The holiday produces too big crowds. Go another time – not appreciating that our only blocks of free time to go any distance are always on public holidays! But this is China and we expect crowds. We’d probably be concerned if there weren’t any. So, we side-stepped the advice and arranged a 2-day trip by bus to famed Suzhou, crowds or no crowds, and off we took. Hostelbookers on the web (used throughout our travels in Peru and Ecuador) got us a hostel/hotel for one night, our Chinese colleague bought us our bus tickets for Thursday, and we caught the 7.05 am bus (another 5 am get up!) to Suzhou looking forward to seeing the famous Chinese-style gardens.

Since Suzhou is directly north of us, we hoped we might see en route some genuine countryside, you know, trees, forests, perhaps big swathes of crop land. No dice. Same-old industrial and urban growth with some fields here and there but nothing like an agricultural countryside reminiscent of the Fraser valley or the farmland of south western Ontario around London. And the same-old grey pollution-laced skies, and perhaps even a little “lacier” than ours. Suzhou is a couple of million or so (!) smaller than Hangzhou (incidentally, “zhou” is pronounced “joe”), and not as wealthy or as rampant with building and renewal. It has many tree-lined streets

– much appreciated as it was a hot, muggy day – and many man-operated pedicabs (3-wheel tricycles) and motorized 3-wheeler scooter cabs, both of which are seldom seen in Hangzhou. Probably evidence of the better jobs available in Hangzhou. Our hotel was situated most conveniently on the main drag and was no hostel but a well-equipped hotel. At $37 a night, a bargain.

We visited 2 of the gardens, the first called “The Humble Administrator’s Garden” (Chinese names are so evocative, even poetic), a large garden of 5 hectares (12 acres) which features small trees, streams, ponds, bridges, hillocks for elevation, and large rock sculptures and formations, all in a formal intricate landscape design giving delightful vistas over the ponds surrounded by shrub and rock, and interspersed with the remains of the residence of the former wealthy owners in the form of pavilions and small pagodas. There were very few flowers – apparently not part of the “design” of Chinese gardens – or flowering shrubs, but some colour was provided by rhododendrons in large pots. It must have been a delight to live in such a peaceful environment where meditation would be easy, and “tamed” nature attractive. The other garden we visited called “The Garden of the Master of the Nets” (a reference to some incident about fishing and nets in the past) was a tenth of the size of the Humble ….garden, but its smaller scale and integration with the total preserved residence which you walk through and out of to see the other parts of the garden makes it most appealing and its scale manageable visually. It has a central pond ( of right proportion with buildings all around and, to quote the Lonely Planet, ”its most striking feature is its use of space…nothing appears cramped.” Well said. In certain of the inner courtyards, you just wanted to linger in the shade with a book, or a nice cup of coffee and a danish. Well worth the journey from Hangzhou.


We also visited and scaled its large pagoda which is part of a working monastery in the middle of the city ( and got a good view of its pollution-filled air), and its only remaining original city gate and defensive wall dating from warring times.
Another (very modern) interesting feature of the city was its pedestrian-only street which on that day was crammed wall to wall with shoppers and bargain-hunters. (Apparently, fantastic sales are run on these non-religious holidays, or so our colleague tells us. She got a 700 yuan blouse for Y400.) As you looked over the “mob”, all you could see was >

this sea of black heads – NO ONE in China has hair of any other colour or shape except those very few that indulge in "hair-colouring" – swaying as gaps emerged and then were quickly closed. Making our way through it, we spotted and hustled in to a Starbucks which gave on to this street. It was crammed full of young locals (no blond or grey heads in evidence!) who seem to have really taken to the coffee culture, and the noise was deafening from their noisy conversations. They are much louder than we are when they talk in a group. We had dinner in a large restaurant after the Humble ….garden and the noise there from the diners was 3 times what you would hear in Canada. And not a note of music to augment the cacophony. Simply amazing.

Two things about Starbucks is worth noting here: (1) They have not adapted or changed their offerings in the slightest from North America: identical-looking and tasting cakes and cookies, and identical range of coffees, and identical taste. I beg pardon, 2 things are NOT offered, cream for the coffee and butter for the scone. I complained but the server looked blank. And (2) the price does not vary from city-to-city; Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou had identical prices for each item. Interesting. We met 3 “whitey” teachers here who were visiting from their schools from a place on the coast called Quindao, a rich resort town, they said. One was from Quebec, one from Seattle and one English-emigrated Aussie. May visit them if we go up that way.

We wanted to visit a nearby “water” town called Zhouzhuang which is full of canals and bridges and cobbled lanes dating from around 1100 AD. but we were told there was only one bus a day there and we had already missed it. (Lonely Planet says there are frequent buses but who do you go with – local knowledge or possibly out-of-date expert knowledge? We chose the former – our non-existent Chinese made it a no-brainer!). Suzhou is also famous as a silk producing centre but so also is Hangzhou and we have the National Silk Museum here which we visited only last week so we skipped the silk museum in Suzhou. We got back safely on Friday evening with 2 days to rest, catch up on blogs and emails and teacher prep, and a ride on our newly acquired bicycles to the National Wetlands Park, about 2 blocks from our apartment. With this our second outing away from Hangzhou, we are beginning to feel like we are getting to know China. The planning of our around-China travels in July must now get into high gear. Less than 2 months to go!