苏州 - the venice of the orient

first of all, i added a link to picasa photo album, which is where all the pictures that i don't have the patience to put in the blog can be found.  hopefully it works.

two weekends ago we took a trip to suzhou, pronounced soo joh, (苏州) a city located about 45 minutes away from shanghai by train. suzhou is called the venice of china because it is a water city, full of canals...like the real venice. suzhou is also known for its gardens, because it's full of them!! we left early saturday morning, walked to the metro station, took the metro to the train

 station and then a train to suzhou (which was surprisingly cheap, 11RMB, for a pretty nice

 train; i've heard horror stories about chinese trains, but this was definitely not one of those

 trains).

 

we headed to the ming han tang hostel, where we planned on staying, to drop off our bags before exploring the city, which is where the complications arose. firstly, none of the taxi drivers we showed the address to had any idea where it was and secondly, there is massive construction going on in suzhou right now, so it is really difficult for cars of any sort to get around. this is how we ended up taking 2 and 4 person motorized rickshaws to our hostel! upon arriving we learned that not only did the reservation adam had made the night before not go

 through, but they also did not have enough space to accommodate our group for the night

 because there were 14 of us. crap. after about 45 minutes of searching all the other hostels in suzhou the staff at ming han tang helped us find rooms at another hostel and booked it for us.

by the time we all got to the other hostel and figured everything out, we only had time for 1 garden, because they all close by about 530. we decided to start with the humble

 administrator's garden, which was about a 10 minute walk along a canal from our hostel (also on a canal). 

 the humble administrator's garden is the biggest of the suzhou gardens and i

 almost accidently missed the majority of the garden. after circling through the area near the entrance several times, i thought i had seen it all and didn't want to look at the same

 unblooming flora (unfortunately most of the plants in these gardens won't bloom for another month or so...) until 530, so i left with a few friends. after leaving we discovered that we had

 actually missed the main part of the garden and luckily i still had my ticket, so they let me back in! unfortunately tony was not so lucky. this garden really was enormous!! there were ponds,

 rock formations, gazebos, trees, and a bonsai garden! unfortunately, these gardens are THE

 tourist attraction for suzhou, so it was really crowded and not quite the peaceful, 

reflective setting it must have been for the humble administrator!

bonsai garden!!!

after leaving the humble administrator's garden we decided to take the equivalent of a gondola ride on one of the canals before getting dinner. luckily we had andrew with us, who is basically fluent in mandarin and bargained our boat ride down to 20rmb per person. we hopped in our boats for a leisurely ride in the canal while our boatman serenaded us with christmas songs

 (because, as we've discovered, christmas never ends in china....there are still christmas

 decorations and christmas trees everywhere!!) and frere jaques (i have noo idea how to spell

 that one) in chinese. he occasionally switched over to chinese songs, which sounded more like the final screeches of a dying cat!

everyone on the boat

after a quick stop back at the hostel, we headed towards the main street in suzhou to find dinner and good bargain shopping. the restaurant we ate dinner at wins a gold star for its fantastic translations of chinese dishes into english for the english menu, such as:

we got an early start on sunday and headed to the master of nets garden (网师圆) after quickly grabbing some street food. i really like the master of nets garden, which is the smallest of the suzhou gardens and much more tranquil. this garden really seemed like it could have been

 some ancient chinese person's garden. and then my camera died. and my phone.

after master of the nets garden, we went to the lion forest garden (狮子林), which was more of a rock formation maze than a garden, but it was awesome. i'd enter one part of the rock maze and wander through, each path leading me somewhere completely unexpected and would emerge to see friends popping out of various spots in the rocks like prairie dogs.

then we headed off to tiger hill (虎丘). tiger hill is a huge, beautiful garden/park thing that contains the oldest pagoda in the yangtze river delta area. the place was so huge that even though there were quite a few tourists...it felt like we had the place to ourselves.  

only one of many amazing signs at tiger hill

the oldest pagoda....ever!!!!

we wandered through a bamboo forest and desecrated the harmony by taking obscene pictures. we restored some of the yin (or is it yang) by sitting peacefully near a pond, waiting to catch glimpses of jumping fish.

then we walked down an alley right outside of tiger hill jam-packed with stalls selling all sorts of antiques and souvenirs. we grabbed some street food dumplings (饺子) and milk tea before getting into a somewhat sketchy minivan with a drive who offered to take us to the night market. in china they really understand the meaning of minivan...unlike american minivans, which are still obscenely huge vehicles, these minivans are truly mini. despite our worries that

 this guy was about to take us to some dark alley where him and his buddies would harvest our organs, we arrived at the night market with all of our kidneys. 

the night market was more alleys full of stores and stalls selling all sorts of things from socks and lingerie to lanterns to hiphop clothes to knock-off designer purses (on which the leather felt suspiciously like plastic...) to birds to dumpling soup, which we ate for dinner (the dumpling soup...not birds) at a place where you watch the guy make fresh noodles before you eat them!

monday morning we woke up, learned that riots had just broken out in tibet and explored the other side of the canal by our hostel. we stumbled upon a very local, outdoor market, bustling with monday morning shoppers, where we bought the most delicious muffins of my life (3kuai for about 30 little muffins!) and saw vendors selling all sorts of fresh food items: tarps covered in ginger, huge bags of mushrooms and chili peppers, both pre and post butchered snails,

 turtles, crabs, chickens, and other sorts of unidentifiable meats, and fresh fruit and vegetables!

market

afterwards we visited the silk museum that had duplicates of some really really old silk items and people making silk tapestries in the traditional way. unfortunately they didn't allow pictures. these machines were incredible and absurd at the same time: they were constructed entirely of bamboo and looked like one of those crazy contraptions found in da vinci's sketchbooks. one person sat at the bottom doing the actual weaving, while the other person was perched on top of the machine carefully pulling the different threads of silk to ensure the correct pattern. it was nuts.

then we went to the north temple (北寺 塔), which has the tallest pagoda south of the yangtze river. we climbed all the way up and got some pretty awesome views of suzhou, which is a huge city (as it turns out the population is close to 5 million!)

me standing in front of the north temple pagoda

view of suzhou from the top of the north temple pagoda

and then wandered around the garden, which had some trees that were actually blooming with flowers, more rock formations, a small lake with jumping fish, and a small island in the middle of the lake with a gazebo. adam and i enjoyed a nice cup of 绿茶, green tea, in the garden. then we made a quick stop for dumplings ( or dumps as we've begun to refer to them as colloquially) before cabbing back to the train station in order to get back to shanghai in time to celebrate st. patrick's day!