Suzhou

Yesterday we went to Suzhou for the day. It’s a smaller city about an hour and a half train ride from Shanghai, nicknamed “Venice of the East”. Maybe we didn’t go to the right neighborhoods, but the city we found wasn’t much like Venice at all. It felt just like any other neighborhood in Shanghai, except for the fact that the people in Suzhou are a little less worldly, which means more staring, and more “Herro!”

After buying our train ticket for the return trip to Shanghai, the first site we visited was a 5-story pagoda. It would have been really cool, except it was having repairs done, so the entire building was wrapped in scaffolding, and there was a blue construction fence around the base. Entrance was still 25 kuai.

Next was one of the gardens that Suzhou is known for. The taxi driver dropped us off and we walked down a quaint little alley, almost like the streets of the “classic Chinese village” tourist attraction we visited before. After turning one or two corners, the street noise died out and I heard something that I haven’t heard in over three weeks: nothing. It wasn’t perfect silence, but it was quiet. And it was amazing.

We found the garden itself to be very similar to the one that we went to in Shanghai, but I was fine with that, because they’re so cool to be in. As long as there aren’t too many other tourists, the place gives you a perfect feeling of peace and relaxation. Everything you see is appealing and interesting to look at, but in the least engaging way. We waited for the tour groups and loud Chinese to leave, and just sat on the rocks by the pond for a while, enjoying the fresh breeze and tranquility.


Alice by the pond.


There are always tour groups at any site like the gardens or pagodas. The tour guides carry small flags so that they can be seen and followed by their patrons everywhere they go. Sometimes they use megaphones, but usually not. At places like the pagoda or the gardens, they will pass out stickers for the tourists to wear on their shirts, in case there was any question about who was included in their tour. All they need are name tags (which I think I might have seen as well) and the buddy system, and they could be right back in the third grade. The tour groups are always either Chinese families or retirees from the former British Empire, but never a mix of the two. Luckily for us yesterday, they adhere to a strict itinerary, so it didn’t take long for the tour guide to lead the charge out of the garden and on to the next site.

The loud Chinese that I referred to took a little bit longer to leave, and took the form of two Little Emperors. The term “Little Emperors” refers to the young boys of China. As a side effect of the One Child policy, nearly everybody in China is an only child. Go figure. With this comes the tendency of parents to spoil their pride and joy, a behavior that is especially prevalent with those parents that are lucky enough to have boys, which are still heavily favored over girls. The end result of all of this is little boys whose parents take them to beautiful and historic gardens and then look the other way while the boys run around screaming, yelling, and pouring orange soda in the pond.

On the other side of the same coin, Chinese teenagers (boys especially, of course) are pushed very hard by their parents to succeed. I don’t think I blogged about it before, but last weekend Professor Ferry took us to her friend’s house to make dumplings and celebrate the mid-autumn festival. The man was very good-natured, and an extremely generous host at that. He had a 16 year old son who wasn’t much different than any American 16 year old. You could tell that they had as good a relationship as any father and son, but some of the criticisms he had for his son were downright mean by our standards. Imagine a father telling his American 16 year old son in front of five college students that he hadn’t spent enough time on his homework. Or, perhaps the most embarrassing thing that he could possibly come up with, asking why he hadn’t shown very much interest in girls yet. I’d hate to hear what he says when they don’t have company, and he tells the boy what he really thinks.

Anyway, back to Suzhou. After the garden, we walked around town for a bit, had bad coffee at an expensive shop with painfully slow service, had dinner, and then headed back to the train station.

The trains are about how you would expect a Chinese train to be, full of a lot of people. If the seats on the train were considered to be economy class (which is a fair assumption, since the tickets are 13¥, about $1.60) regular seats on an Amtrak would be a step or two above first class. The leg room is about the same as a normal train, but you have to share it with the person that sits in the seat facing you. On the way to Suzhou, a salesman came into the car with a crate full of socks. He did his whole salesman’s spiel, complete with demonstration of the sock’s jaw-dropping quality and strength, and moved on to the next car. I thought he was pretty good, but nobody bought the socks. Maybe it was because they got on the train to get to Suzhou, and were just not prepared to buy socks. Besides that, the first train ride was uneventful and uncomfortable. The train back was better in both respects. There were fewer people, the car was not a double-decker, and the windows opened, which all combined to make it feel a lot less stuffy. Alice and I sat next to and befriended a young Chinese couple. Toward the end of the ride, I shared my iPod with the girl, who was curious about American music. She decided it was just OK. Nora and Tara found seats in the next car, and from what I hear, had a much more interesting time. They could barely tell us about it without bursting into laughter, so I don’t really know what exactly happened, you’ll have to read Nora’s blog for the story. Something about chickens and a stow-away child… I don’t know.

That’s all for now, I hope this update has been as useful for your procrastination as it has been for mine.