China Part 2
Day 6 Suzhou –
Our first stop was the Lingering Garden.
This was a classical Chinese garden, but to be honest, it wasn’t nearly
as beautiful as I expected. There were a
few ponds with bridges and pagodas scattered around the grounds, but when I
think of a garden, I think of a lush green space with lots of flowers and
plants. Like the garden in the Forbidden
City, there were many large rock formations instead of plants. There was a bonsai section that was
interesting, there were many different trees types used, all were beautifully pruned
and sitting on its own stand.
We went to a silk spinning factory which could have been
really interesting, and it started out well.
The following information is from Wikipedia; the lady giving us the
demonstration told us basically the same thing, just is less detail. Silkworms have been cultivated in China for
over 5000 years. Their primary food source is white mulberry leaves which is
native to a specific region of China.
After eating continuously, the larva encloses itself in a cocoon made of
raw silk, secreted from the salivary glands. This cocoon is made of one
continuous thread, from 1000 to 3000 feet (300 to 900 m). 2000 to 3000 cocoons are needed for one pound
of silk. If the larvae are permitted to
survive, they secrete an enzyme to escape its cocoon and emerge as a white
moth. This make the single fiber break apart
and become much less valuable. This
lower grade of silk is used primarily as stuffing for jackets and such. To get the high quality of silk, the cocoon,
with caterpillar inside, is boiled in water.
The heat kills the worms and the water makes it easier to unravel the
silk. The worms are often eaten and are
high in protein. Once harvested, the silk can be spun to make anything. The factory sold silk comforters, pillows, and
other bedding, scarves, clothes, even socks and underwear. I was curious how the underwear worked
out. As anyone who’s ever slept on silk
sheets know, you spend most of the night retrieving the top sheet from the
floor because its so slick it slides right off.
If her presentation had been more about the production of
silk, it could have been really interesting, but alas, we were her live QVC
audience. Who know that sleeping under
silk bedding or on silk pillows could cure high blood pressure, arthritis,
snoring, and a wide range of other ailments.
And as luck would have it, today only, there was a big sale. We were the luckiest tour group in all of
China because every single place we visited where they were selling something,
we hit the one day everything was on sale.
We were her captive audience for at least 45 minutes while she described,
in great detail, each and every piece this factory sold, all the wonderful
health benefits we would reap, and what great prices we got, including free
shipping home. For our convenience, they
even threw in a free carry on suitcase to cart all the bootie home if you
didn’t want to ship it. I will say, at
least she was entertaining and had great presentation skills. It could have been so much worse.
The most interesting thing we did that day was a short boat
ride down the ‘Venice of China”. This Beijing-Hangzhou
Grand Canal is the earliest and longest manmade watercourse in the world. Apparently,
waterfront property in China is not the desired location like in the US. We basically saw the back side of houses, in
the poorer section of town. Some of the
tiny balconies were used to hang laundry, some to grow plants and one, probably
a restaurant, was drying racks of ginger.
We saw one man doing his laundry in the dirty water. Peter said in an effort to save water and
money, some people washed their clothes in the canal then rinsed them in clean
tap water. We could see a few pagodas
right on the water, and they seemed to be used a neighborhood gathering
places A bit farther on, the scenery
changed from homes to restaurants with outdoor seating. This was an area
undergoing rejuvenation and was much nicer.
We got to walk back through a shopping street with vendors selling food,
clothing and other household items.
To top our day off, we drove to Wuxi, to spend the
night. This small city ‘only’ has about
3 million people. We passed Lake Tai,
the 3rd largest freshwater lake in China, but the ever-present haze
prevented us from seeing much. It was so
thick, nothing was clear past about 10 feet.
It sure took the color and beauty out of what we were seeing.
Day 7 Wuxi – More
things to buy, we visited a teapot museum and a freshwater pearl
exhibition. Actually, the teapot museum
was pretty interesting. We were shown
many different designs including teapots whose lid didn’t fall off or spill
when turned sideways to empty the last drop, and other styles where the air
hole was on the handle, so it looked like magic that the tea stopped pouring. The freshwater pearl exhibition was
interesting in that they could grow up to 30 pearls inside one shell. Our destination that night was the town of Hangzhou, about 2.5 hours away. We stopped for lunch at a truck stop. It was actually very nice, there were several
different food stands and restaurant choices, including Dairy Queen, McDonalds,
and Starbucks. There is no shortage of western
food or shopping stores in China. With
so many of our products being made here, we were quite surprised at the
outrageous cost for the Chinese. Forget
about high end name brands like Prada, Gucci, and the like. It’s cheaper to fly to the US, buy the
product and fly back, which would explain why on our flight I saw so many
people checking in 5 or 6 large boxes each.
We arrived in Hangzhou in the afternoon and went on a very
nice boat ride on West Lake. This was
one of the most scenic spots we visited so far, with willow trees everywhere
and pretty bridges between small islands.
On our way back to the bus, we passed through several smaller
gardens. 7 of us stopped for a picture
then hurried to rejoin the group, only to discover, we had lost sight of
them. Uh Oh! At one stop a few days earlier we lost our
two older travelers. These two gentlemen
are the nicest fellows and we usually sit together in the front of the
bus. When I realized it was them
missing, I offered to go look for them.
Peter came along and bitched the whole way about this not being a
private car tour where you did whatever you wanted. We found them patiently sitting on a bench
near the exit. Come to find out, Peter
had told them to wait there and he would get them on the way out if they didn’t
want to walk with us. Guess he forgot that point. With this fresh in my mind I was relived not
to be lost on my own. We had a general
idea of where the bus was and headed in that direction. We decided to call Peter, so he wasn’t
looking for us. He asked where we were
and of course we couldn’t tell him exactly.
Lucky for us there was a police officer standing nearby. He looked a bit surprised when out of the
blue, someone handed him a phone, but he answered and after a brief
conversation he handed back the phone and motioned for us to follow him. Yup, even in China, the Popo are here to
help. He took us directly to the bus,
where our driver was talking to Peter and confirmed that the wayward tourists
were safe and sound.
Day 8 Hangzhou
and Green Tea Village where we learned green tea cures most ailments
known to man. I will admit, the Chinese
people do love their green tea and have much lower instances of almost
everything that kills us in the west; high blood pressure, diabetes, heart
disease, cancer… This time I fell for it
and bought a 9-month supply of green tea extract. If it doesn’t get confiscated at the next
airport I go through, I’ll let you know how healthy and young looking I’m
becoming.
We headed back to Shanghai and visited Bund, the waterfront
area in the city center. The Bund offers
a spectacular view of all the skyscrapers including Shanghai Tower, the world’s
2nd tallest building, and the Oriental Pearl Tower, a
distinctive TV tower with its 2 large spheres that are 50 and 45 m in
diameter. We took a night cruise and saw
an amazing light show. Most of the
buildings were lit up with colored light shows.
Some of the lights made up huge bubbles that seemed to float up and
down the building. The TV tower glowed
red, blue, then purple. Some of the
wider building’s lights looked like water cascading down the side.
Day 9 Shanghai.
After changing hotels every night for the past week, it was nice to be
in the same place for a second night. We
started out the day with a Maglev Train Experience. This train was developed by German and
Chinese engineers and can travel up to 430 kph or 267 mph. It really didn’t seem that fast until another
train passed us. There was a loud noise,
almost a bang, and the entire train shook, but only for the 1 or 2 seconds it
took to pass. It was my understanding
that we were taking the train to a shopping bazaar then taking the train back,
Peter talked about a round trip ticket.
We stopped, and the train headed off in the opposite direction, but I
figured we were changing tracks to continue our journey. Imagine my surprise when we got off the train
and got right back on our bus. I asked
Peter, if the train was so fast, how did the bus get here? Well, apparently, I was the only one not
paying attention because everyone laughed.
As it turns out, we just rode the train there and back to experience a
train going 430 kph. Oh well, happy to
be the morning entertainment. Eventually
we did make it the bazar, but it was really more of a pedestrian shopping and
food area. There was a nice pond in the
middle and small streets heading off in different directions. There were a few street vendors, but the vast
majority were shops selling upscale souvenirs like silk scarves, tea pots,
jade, pearls etc. I did find a tea shop
and bought some jasmine tea. It was
horrible! At the Green Tea Village, they
warned us about buying poor quality tea from the locals, I guess they were
right. I tried a cold fruity tea drink
from a different booth that was really good.
Next, I tried some deep fried, lightly breaded corn on the cob. Again, terrible. The corn was cold and chewy while the
breading was hot and very greasy. I gave
up on trying something new and settled on KFC for lunch. I noticed many of the patrons were using
plastic gloves to eat the messy chicken with.
Kind of a good idea I guess, keeps your hands clean, but it looked a bit
awkward to me. I had a chicken wrap, so
it wasn’t an issue. I should have waited
to eat; our next stop was an area that could have been any European city; all
western food with outdoor restaurants and cafés. As I expected, I’m so over Chinese
food. I knew not to expect it to be like
the Chinese food in the US, but I was surprised to discover much of it was
greasy and far fewer vegetables, either cooked or raw, than I found on my
earlier trip to SE Asia.
Our last stop
of the day was a Chinese Opera that didn’t interest me. Those of us not going to the show had an hour
to kill. Since it was dinner time by
now, I went in search of food and what did I find but a Vietnamese restaurant;
my favorite!
We all piled
on the bus to head home about 8pm but didn’t make it a block before we were
stopped by the police. The bus driver
got out, then Peter got out. I’m
surprised the bus didn’t tip over as all 40 of us piled up against the windows
to see what was happening. Peter got on
the phone and the police and driver seemed to be in a debate. Eventually the police gave the driver a
ticket and we were on our way. Peter’s
father was a retired police officer and Peter seemed to have friends all over
the place. As soon as he got off the
bus, he was on his phone trying to ‘fix’ it.
He got a hold of someone, who called the officer and told him to give
the driver a ticket and let us be on our way.
Otherwise, they could have held us for hours. Peter said by the time we got to our hotel,
even the ticket would have been erased.
The driver’s crime? One of the
bus wheels touched the white dividing line.
Link to photos in part 3
A note about the photos - due to the heavy haze/smog, all of my photos have been edited to bring out the color and cut the haze.
Before and after example
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