Suzhou Day One

I don't know quite what I expected, but I didn't really think I'd spend this much time being so very cold during this trip. I'm always underestimating the amount of time we will be spending outdoors, as well as the coldness of the temperatures. Therefore I dress too lightly, don't bring my gloves and hat off the bus or otherwise insure that I will be too frozen by the end of the day's activities to really care what I've just seen. Today I resorted to buying a "RL Polo Sport" watch cap from a street vendor. Made of acrylic it was not very warm, but better than a bare head. When we get driven from the bus parking area to a tourist site zipping through the cold air in an open vehicle only intensifies the cold.

Sometimes the unintentionally hilarious translations are amusing enough to help make us forget our discomfort for a minute.

Today we left the haven of the Ritz Carlton in Sanghai and drove by bus to Suzhou. It is called the city of gardens, and is in a southern part of China full of lakes, ponds and canals. In fact on the way there we crossed the Grand Canal which is the second largest manmade feature after the Great Wall. It stretches from Beijing south and ends in Shanghai. It was ordered to be built by one emperor, and added on to and extended by several others. Parts are in bad repair, but here in this region it's still an active waterway.

On our way we stopped at Tongli, a "water town", built on a series of canals. The town is 1000 years old, and we toured a few historic museums.

I was much more interested in the street life, a well as some of the snacks.

Our Bryn Mawr guide, June, stopped for some "stinky tofu", which lives up to its name. It's apparently like French cheeses in that the taste is much more mellow than the smell. June says it's now hard to find in tourist areas as the vendors have been pressured to stop sellng it as the odor bothers foreigners. However, this town is small enough, and infrequently visited by foreign tourists. The same booth was selling fried crabs on a stick. (That's June in the foreground of the photo of the stinky tofu vendor.)

In one of the sites we visited a man was doing papercuts by hand. I bought a few to bring home, as they were excedingly lovely, and very well priced.

This was a blind musician, playing the 2-stringed erhu, and wearing a costume from another era (note the amplifier he has hidden in a plastic bag at his feet):

This was the stage in the center of town where they performed opera:

I was too slow with the camera to capture any of the performers.

This sign led to an attraction we, sadly, had no time to visit:

Lunch at a Suzhou restaurant was designed to push our culinary limits. Among the total 15 dishes it included eels in hoisin sauce, pork tendon, baby abalone in herb sauce, silky tofu with hairy crab, and stewed chicken in a pot. Chinese Wendy made the servers bring the pots back off the tables and take the heads off the birds before serving the dishes to us again. The feet, however,were still there.

I liked what I saw of Suzhou from the bus. A bustling small city, with colorful vendors and shops.

After lunch we went to a massive, complicated garden called "The Humble Administrator's Garden". I missed the whole story of why this obviously extremely wealthy official referred to himself as humble. The sun was near setting, and the views through the garden were extremely lovely in every direction.

And I was very, very cold. 

Later in the Suzhou Pan Pacific Hotel, I had a hot bath, and a salad for dinner. Tomorrow more Suzhou gardens and back to Shanghai. Only 2 more full days of this trip. I can't believe it's almost over. I also can't believe I've only been gone a bit over 2 weeks, it feels like months.