Thursday in Suzhou– another beautiful day
The Humble Administrators Garden was first stop on our tour. It was built in the 1500’s, by a retired imperial inspector Wang Xianchen. He got the name for the garden from an essay called "To cultivate my garden and sell my vegetable crop is the policy of humble man". It covers about 13 acres with a large pond in the middle occupying a fifth of it. Besides the many flowers, plants and people, there were lots of mosaic sidewalks, rockeries, bridges and framing windows (interesting openings in walls that ‘frame’ the outside scenery).
It was hard taking pictures because of the crowds of people, but even with the mob you can get an idea of the beauty, planning and the amazing attention to detail. One section contained a large selection of bonsai plants. I admire them but would never have the patience to cultivate them. One of the many ponds contained some mandarin ducks that were very pretty. My photograph does not capture the colors on the male. The link below has some great pictures of the garden that I found on the Internet. They are worth the time to look. http://www.hpmuseum.org/china/trip3/suzhou.htm
Tracy told me a neat story about how the son of one of the owners lost the whole garden betting on a game of Mahjong. I am determined to learn how to play. I will see if I can con one of my students into teaching me. They told me it is a game that old people play, and I guess I qualify. I promise I won’t bet the homestead in Georgia on a game of Mahjong.
Ouyuan or Classical garden was the next stop our tour. Besides the bonsai, flowers, water, and zig-zag bridges it had a very large man-made yellow stone rockery that was full of kids. Its’ history was a neat little love story of how the husband built it for his wife. To leave the area you took a very short Venice-like boat ride. There was a paddler but no singing. Since I had declined the ‘rickshaw ride’ part of the tour, we walked thru the town. The houses along the canal are part of Suzhou’s historical district and can’t be torn down which means that most of them were empty due to the cost of making them livable. It was very quiet. We walked through the local vegetable/meat/fish market. They have really shrimpy shrimp, along with lots of fish, eels, and strange vegetables (including a lima? bean that looked like it was on steroids).
After another lunch alone we went to the Hanshan temple. This working Buddhist temple was made popular due to a poem about listening to their bells. According to Buddhist legend, everybody has 108 kinds of annoyances per year and each bell tolling can help people dispel those coming annoyances. (I kept thinking back to when I taught middle school – I think that they might have meant 108 annoyances a day and not per year) During New Year's Eve, thousands of visitors gather at Hanshan temple to listen to the one hundred and eight bell tolls at the same time praying for luck and happiness in the New Year. They have 2 bronze dragons (they looked like a cross between a mean dog and a turtle) that you rub for good luck or money. I did my share of rubbing. This was one of my favorite places, even with the crowds it gave me a peaceful feeling and smelled great with all the incense.
We finished up the tour and I was dropped off at the hotel about 3 pm and strolled around my hotel area again. On my wanderings I discovered a foreign language book store, a grocery store that carried ‘coke light’, a Confucius Park with a really cute dog and a Pizza Hut. So guess where I had my 6th solitary meal? Yep, you guessed it. Well at least it was an American restaurant. I carried the leftovers back to the hotel and ate leftover pizza for breakfast – how American is that? The pepperoni pizza tasted the same but the garlic bread was not even close to the real thing. Wrong kind of bread and just the barest hint of garlic. Garlic is not their favorite spice. In this area the Chinese food seems to contain a lot of cilantro (not one of my favorites) and of course msg (which I do like but make my feet swell).
On the way back to the room I finally noticed that there was a very small ‘business center’ in the hotel so I jumped on their solitary 6 Yuan/hr internet computer and caught up with my small corner of the English language world. The room smelled like a giant ashtray but it worth it and anyway I had a warm “Coke Light” to drink so I was happy.
I don’t think it was the same guy as Wednesday night but I was lucky enough to get a repeat performance of a Chinese male banging on my hotel door for entrance. I decided not even to bother answering him. I had the lock on and it was getting boring. He quit before I had to call the front desk. Weird.
Side note - It is VERY loud today in the very echo-y, marble floored, large hallway. The workmen are yelling at each other and it is hard to concentrate. Nothing is quiet in China. I am going to crank up my country music just to let them know I am alive and kicking and taking my part in contributing to the noise.
