Suzhou

 Hi all

 I forgot that the people who didn’t have a Sunnynet address weren’t told why I hadn’t been sending emails before. So in a nutshell, the Chinese government blocks a lot of American sights including Google, hence no Gmail and they also restrict attachments to Hotmail. So I was writing stories as word documents while I was going along and am sending them now from Hong Kong. So  the below story was wrote over a week ago.

 One city, too many stories!

 After our Shanghai experience which lasted two days, we rose on our third morning, had breakfast and boarded a bus bound for Suzhou. Traveling through the Chinese countryside was fascinating. Although it is such a large country it doesn’t seem to have large expanses of undeveloped land like Canada. You never go too far without coming across towns or cities. When I say that please try to keep in mind that their towns seem as populous as our cities and their cities are sprawling metropolises, several of which host almost the entire population of Canada. Although there might be areas we are not seeing that go undeveloped as either living or farming space, I’m guessing that with an estimated population of 1.3 billion people, those areas are few and far between. It takes a lot of food and clothing to support that many people.

 Getting back to our travels, when we got to Suzhou, we were first shown The Lingering Garden.

It seems in each city we go to, a visit to a garden is compulsory. The Chinese people are very proud of their communal gardens and each city seems fairly certain that their gardens are the most beautiful. Joani and I surmised that they have so many of these gardens because no one person owns land or a back yard. These community gardens are their places for outdoor family get-togethers.

(Picnics, BBQs, etc.) Or even as the only place to go for some quiet solo meditation. (It is almost compulsory to be quiet in these parks which is a blessing because everywhere else we go is incredibly noisy!)

 After this Garden we were taken to “The Chinese Embroidery Institute”. As pompous as that sounds, our visit there was terrific! The embroidery done at this place was absolutely incredible. Pieces made here by the Embroidery masters, can take years to complete and are sometimes used by the Chinese government as cultural gifts to visiting government dignitaries. Joani and I bought one of the most expensive souvenirs we have ever purchased to take home and hang on our wall.

 Then it was on to a cruise on the Suzhou “Grand Canal”

(I think I forgot to mention that Suzhou is known as the “Venice of the East”. We took a boat ride along this waterway, cruising through people’s backyards (ponds, rivers?) under bridges and around scenic corners.

Occasionally bumping into other river crafts. It was probably my highlight of the trip so far.

 We had an incredibly full day and were very tired heading back to our hotel, which was too bad because our hotel was amazing. (Another extreme here!!!) This might have been one of the most memorable places we’ve ever stayed. The city of Suzhou has laws that don’t allow buildings over 6 stories high so this hotel was only 4 stories high. But picture a maze spread out over 35 acres. It was built in a horseshoe pattern and the center of the horseshoe was a semi-private garden, free for hotel patrons but the public has to pay to enter. I know what you’re thinking, (another garden). But this garden was incredibly large and beautiful with groups of people practicing Tai-chai, oriental choirs singing in strange voices, other groups doing intricate dances that we could only guess the meanings of.

All in all, it was surreal to be walking around this enormous garden after breakfast. We didn’t want to leave.

 I’ll stop here as I’ve already probably put some of you to sleep but I’ll end by saying,

 “We are really busy over here.”

 Garry