Four days in Suzhou

It's 5:00 AM here in Shanghai, and surprisingly, the sun is up. Ordinarily, being woken up by this would be a bad thing, but since I have to get up in 45 minutes anyways to catch my next flight, I now have plenty of time to update my blog. These last four days have been spent staying with family friends Mark and Karen, who live in a very comfortable American-style house with other ex-pats in Suzhou. While it may not be the most authentic cultural experience, it was certainly a nice break from small apartments and smaller hotel rooms with hard beds (and in case you didn't know, all Chinese beds are extremely firm).

I arrived in Suzhou (via Shenzhen and Shanghai) on Sunday night, which gave me some time to get settled in. On Monday, Mark had a day off, so the three of us went to the Nanshan Bamboo Forest, about 2 hours west of Suzhou. I'm still not quite sure what to think of the park. On one hand, it came across as somewhat inauthentic and contrived, like it was fabricated to appeal to Chinese tourists (but clearly not to Western tourists, as no employees spoke English). It seemed like half the buildings in the park were gift shops. Still, despite the cheesiness, it was still in a scenic bamboo-forested mountainous area, and it did have some interesting things, such as the huge museum of bamboo products, colorful ski lift, and walk-in aviary. The best part of the day was the pandas. The two pandas were fully awake (a rare sight) and were wrestling with and chasing each other, and making panda noises, and generally being very cute. Though I'm not sure if I would have enjoyed the park alone, it was nice to go to with friends.



On Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent most of the day relaxing at home, but I did do a few fun things. On Tuesday, it was extremely rainy, so I focused on indoor activities: I visited the silk museum (interesting, but you probably wouldn't need more than 30 minutes to see everything there) and the Suzhou Museum, which has a large collection of Chinese artwork and artifacts (as it turns out, there are a lot of Chinese things in China). On Wednesday, Karen and I went to Tiger Hill, the most famous attraction in Suzhou. At Tiger Hill, there is a large garden, with many old Chinese-style buildings, surrounding a hill. Atop the hill is a huge pagoda, about seven stories tall. Most notably, it has a slight tilt to it, leading some to call it the “Leaning Tower of China.”



Yesterday, I spent the day in Shanghai. It's a very beautiful city and the largest in China. I arrived about noon at the Shanghai Museum, which is similar to the Suzhou museum but much larger. I was able to view most of the exhibits, and my favorites were the jade, the seals, and the paintings, though all of the exhibits were interesting. For lunch, I walked around for awhile before finding a food court to an underground shopping mall. I bought six Xiaolongbao dumplings (classic eastern Chinese food) for 8 yuan and a can of Coke for 2.5, adding up to about $1.70, a pretty cheap lunch in my opinion (a nice thing about China is that the restaurants are much cheaper than those in the US). Next, I visited the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum, which I found fascinating. The biggest thing there is a massive, 1:500 scale model of Shanghai. The model fills a whole floor and is quite impressively done. There is also a round room in which a 360º video is projected onto the wall which simulates flying through Shanghai. At 5, when both museums were closed, I walked a few blocks north to Nanjing Road, a major pedestrian mall flanked with many high-end shops. Not wanting to shop, or to walk the entire distance (and carrying a heavy backpack didn't help), I took the trolley from one end to the other. I then walked to The Bund, perhaps the most well-known feature of Shanghai, a huge promenade overlooking the river. I had a delicious dinner of “Beef with Rice Noodles,” which also has green onions and a sauce similar to soy sauce. I think that may be my new favorite Chinese dish. After taking an hour to watch the river on one side and the European-style buildings on the other, I took the subway to the airport to catch up with the rest of the i5 group.



Today I'm flying to Wuhan to catch the Yangtze River cruise with the rest of the i5 group. I doubt I will have internet access during that time, so I'll be out of the loop for a while. Please pray for safe travels and that the rest of the group will get over their jet lag.