On Sunday, we left for our class trip bright and early in the morning from our hotel. We met our tour guide, David who has been touring people all over the world for 20 years. He is Chinese but speaks English, went to Indiana University and has a son at Purdue (small world). We learned as we got further into our trip that he was the typical Chinese tour guide-get off the bus, take a picture, get back on, no time for moseying around or shopping, that's for sure. His most heard phrase on the trip was definitely "OK! Let's go!" whenever we got on or off the bus or to and from any location.
Anyway, we headed out for Suzhou, the first stop on our 3 day trip. The city is about an hour and a half north of Shanghai and is a famous old water town built around a canal. Upon arriving in the city, we made our first stop at Tiger Hill, a park area with a huge pagoda and a lot of gardens, but unfortunately no tigers. We followed David around, stopped when he told us to take pictures and even got 10 minutes to wander by ourselves. He quickly regretted giving us this freedom when the 40 people on our trip were not back on time. Joe and I knew ahead of time that this would be a problem. You ask people to be back in 10 minutes and they're back in 30, but eventually we got everyone rounded back up and we were back on our tour. We walked around for a couple of hours and then it was back on the bus to the next place.
Not what you want to see at the entrance of a park.. ancient Chinese people loved stairs apparently
Carnival games by the pagoda - a New Years tourist trap
The Tiger Hill Pagoda- what I like to describe as the leaning pagoda of China
Me and Joe at the pagoda, you can see that even at the bottom the structure is warped and leaning.
The lions on the stairwell brought good luck if you rubbed their heads
Chinese people are such hippies
Bamboo! Joe wants to build a garden full of bamboo and bonzai trees some day
Another area of the park with a lake and a lot of Chinese tourists
What we learned to follow for most of the trip if you didn't want to get lost - David and his blue flag.
After Tiger Hill, we were taken to lunch at the silk factory before we went on a tour. It was the first of many Chinese style meals with the lazy susan in the middle and the constant flow of dishes from the kitchen. A lot people turned their noses up because they were sick of this kind of meal, but Joe and I just treated it as more food for us! After eating, we headed down to the factory for a tour of the silk making process as well as the gift shop (of course). We didn't end up buying anything because it was all ridiculously expensive and looked the same as the fake stuff you can get at the markets.
Joe eating one of the weirder dishes at lunch- duck tongue.. Naturally we had to get a picture of him using the duck tongue as his own.. and if you're wondering, he said it tasted like chicken.
Silk cocoons being harvested for the fibers
Ladies pulling silk sheets into the inner part of a quilt- it felt like a cloud when you touched it.
When we finally pulled everyone out of the silk store, we headed to our last destination of the day, a garden called the "Concubines Garden", where the many wives of emperors lived in ancient times. It was an interesting tour and the area was beautiful, filled with small lakes and lots of areas for sitting and contemplating life. It left some girls on the trip thinking that being one of many wives of the emperor wouldn't necessarily be a bad life- I think they were all a little tired from a long day if you ask me.
A view of the garden and one of the lakes.
Artsy picture through a stained glass window.
Me and a girl who really wanted to take a picture with me. She was so tiny that when I sat down on this bench, we were eye to eye with each other.
After she took a picture, her friends wanted to join.
Bonzai tree garden
This is how crowded the are was with Chinese tourists. Needless to say, our tour guide could easily spot the 40 of us by looking for the white kids.
At the end of our long day, we went to our hotel, a Holiday Inn in the middle of Suzhou. We were all delighted with how nice the hotel was, with great views and soft beds and even more excited to find out that we would get a breakfast buffet in the morning. We had some time in our hotel before dinner and then we met up to go to another Chinese family style meal together again. We were very happy with having all of our meals booked and paid for before we left as it took a lot of pressure off of us having to plan everything. After dinner, Joe and I walked around the area with some friends and saw the canal at night. We also found a night market, but due to the New Year it was all closing up when we got there around 9 pm. We ended up going back to the hotel and watching Chinese TV until bed time.
It's not a city in China without some neon decorations.
Yet another wall, we just can't get away from them
Suzhou at night
This section of China is brought to you by KFC. On this street there was literally a KFC across from another KFC.
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