Day 55: Suzhou (蘇州)

Morning train to Suzhou (蘇州)
We took a morning train from Nanjing(南京) to Suzhou(蘇州) and got in during the late morning.  After we took a wrong bus from the train station that ended up going away from our hotel, we grabbed a cab and got in to our room with no problem this time, which was a relief after our last hotel. Although we were staying at a chain hotel that we have stayed at several times during this trip , this was the worst branch we had stayed at, but it had A/C and internet so it was fine.

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Train to Suzhou(蘇州)

The city of parks
Throughout our trip in China, we constantly saw advertisements on TV for Suzhou calling it the Jewel of China and advertising the gardens so this was a must see.  The city had a much smaller feel then most places we had been and the main attractions are different traditional Chinese gardens throughout the city that  are dated to approximately 500-1000 years old.  We decided to just see one garden so we picked the largest garden, Humble Administrator's Garden(拙政園),  which was built around 1500.

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Outside the garden

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Charlotte on a garden bridge

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Bonsai tree (盆景園)

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Ponds are all filled with lotus during summer

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They like circular doors in their gardens

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Cold mountain Temple(寒山寺)
After the park we took a bus, which ended up taking an hour to go about 4km, to Cold Mountain Temple(寒山寺).  This was named after a a 7th-Century poet-monk Han Shan whose poems had a large influence even on 20th-century literature.  His influence has shown up in the writings of Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac and the Irish Nobel prize-winner Seamus Heaney.  The main focus of the temple and park is displaying a poem by Tang dynasty (610-900 AD) poet, Zhang Ji(張繼), that immortalizing the scenery of the temple and the surrounding area(楓橋夜泊).

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Temple (寒山寺) and a park from a nearby bridge(楓橋)

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Entrance area to the temple

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The poem that describes the temple

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The fish in the temple seemed to like swimming in a circle

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A pagoda in the temple area

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The worlds largest Buddhist bell* (*Its a recreation as the real one was stolen by the Japanese and is still in Japan)(寒山寺鐘樓). Japanese people like this temple a lot and a lot of Japanese tourists come here on 12/31 to hear the bell.

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A large version of the poem

Evening in town
After our tourist sites we spent the night in another old town.  We tried to take a boat around the canals, but they wanted about $20 a person for a 30 minute ride, so we decided against it since we are in the area of canal towns and we will have a lot of opportunities taking boat rides through towns in the next few days.  We then tried to eat at the most famous restaurant (松鶴樓).  When we got to the restaurant we went up to the hostess and behind us was another western couple and their son, who looked a couple years younger than us.  The son came up and butted in while we were talking to the hostess trying to get in front of us and get his own seat.  His parents looked mortified and told at him to hang back and wait his turn, to which he responded he did nothing wrong.  It was obvious that he had been in China for a while and his parents were probably just visiting him.  While we would expect this from Chinese, it definitely felt strange having another westerner whose family obviously doesn't normally act that way try and jump in front of us.  For the most part in China a strange phenomenon occurs where you will be pushing your way through a crowd, knocking people out of the way, but when you see another westerner you take a step back and allow some space and are courteous to each other.  Once you have passed you return using your bag as a shield to knock people out of the way, so it felt strange having a westerner act that way to us.

After this we finally got our seats for dinner, just to find out they didn't have any of the food we wanted, so we ended up going someplace a lot cheaper and got some good food there.

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Over the river we saw a tug boat with a long chain of boats it was pulling

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Suzhou at night

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Suzhou canals

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Suzhou old town streets

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Street vendor making pastries (海棠糕)

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Charlotte eating a street pastry (海棠糕﹐梅花糕)