Friday – last day in Suzhou. A few sprinkles today but did not need the umbrella until I got back to the train station in Hangzhou.
After my cold pizza breakfast I got another “communication fix” on the computer. We started our tour at 10 and drove to 2 fishing towns Luzhi and Zhouzhuang (no I can’t pronounce either one). The driving thru the countryside was more interesting than expected. You have to remember that I have only seen a narrow part of China because of my location in my educational district of Ziasha, which consists of mostly affluent students. On the drive, the houses ranged from thatched roofed large farm houses to the new 3-5 story ones that government helps build. The farmland along with the water areas were partitioned off each family. So it appears that each family had their own specific area to fish as well as farm.
We came upon a small traffic accident involving an overturned bike/wagon and a motorcycle. There were police on the scene who were putting a driver into a back seat of their car. The strange thing was that the other driver was punching him as they were putting him and the police were letting him.
Both of the towns had lots of waterways, bridges, famous wealthy merchant’s houses and tourist shops. The streets were very narrow and crowded. Lunch today was NOT alone. I ate lunch with my guide Tracy at a local restaurant with local food. Remember those small silver fish I was mentioned? Well they put them WHOLE in a scrambled egg dish. I can now brag to Nathan that I ate fish eyes too. I assumed that there were pieces of fish meat in the eggs and that the little black dots were pepper. Wrong assumption, the black dots were attached to the heads of the tiny fish. I had no digestive repercussions, but I am glad I had eaten it before I knew what the black dots were. We also had a local pork dish cooked in a sweet brown sauce. I couldn’t figure out what part of the pork it was from Tracy’s description. She called it ‘pork knuckle’ but on the Internet they called it “Wansan’s Pig Upper Leg”. The meat underneath the thick layer of fat was really tender and good.
As we were leaving we went by a bunch of tourist shops. I saw one with a lot of old looking mahjong sets which I needed so I could learn how to play. I bargained the store clerk down from 480 yuan to around 200 yuan. She claimed that it was an antique with a mahogany box, bamboo and bone pieces. Yeah Right…I type sarcastically. It was really some sort of plastic with mahogany grain and a picture painted on the top part (bottom part was not even painted). As for the antique game pieces, the bottom part of the tile DOES look like bamboo but the top part, doesn’t look like bone and the tops of a couple of them keep falling off. The directions were printed on old looking paper in ENGLISH. I didn’t argue with her cause I was more worried about the weight of it because I knew I had to lug it home from the train and bus station along with my backpack and purse. Also I was pretty sure from the Chinese going on behind me that my guide was going to get a cut - which she deserved cause the tip from a ‘one person tour’ is pitiful to what she might have gotten from a whole group. After the purchase we walked down the street for a while and surprise, surprise - she says “oh I left the ticket in the store – sit here while I go back and get it” - Yeah right…..as I said she was a good tour guide & deserved the cut.
We got back to the crowded train station where Tracy got me settled in my soft seat waiting room and gave me instructions as to how to read the schedule board (wait for the English version to come up) and how to get to the correct platform (go under the tracks).
My train was late and it was raining when I arrived in Hangzhou. There was a long line for the night bus but I caught the second one and used my large size to push in line and get a seat for the hour long bus ride. Fortunately, it had stopped raining by the time we arrived on campus because I was not looking forward to walking the mile back to my apartment/hotel with all my stuff in the rain. I got in bed by 11pm. It was a good mimi-adventure.
