Dear All,
Greetings once again! It is Thursday night about 11:20 PM so I'll briefly touch base about our day. Today we were off to the city of Suzhou which is just over 1 1/2 hours away from Shanghai. En route we observed the vast expanse of industrial manufacturing along this stretch between these cities. Suzhou has a population of 10 million and covers 8,000 km2 which is a lot larger land area that Shanghai. It happens to be our guide, Ken's favorite places to go to in this southern region of the country.
We spent time today in two very beautiful garden/parks that have interesting stories and amazing designs. The first was built 600 years ago by a leader who fell out of favour with the leadership and so he was shunned. In dealing with his personal struggles of being let go he dedicated all his time, energy and financial gain that he had earned into developing this land. From a lake some distance from Suzhou he dug up the most amazing rock formations and had the rocks transported to his property. He built a labyrinth with these stones along with the most intricate rock designs in the pathways. The rocks have been mortared together to create 900 lions (but you have to be creative to see them), tunnels, bridges, walkways and as I mentioned in a labyrinth formation. You must continue to always turn right throughout the pathways in order not to get lost OR begin and constantly turn left. If you change directions you will get lost. The first rock formation as you enter supposedly had 9 lions that only the Emperor could see while all other people might see 3 -6 lions. (The Emperor at the time loved this area and came 6 times during his reign for a stretch of time visiting this location).Exploring the labyrinth (maze) created by these stones with Natasha we discussed just how amazing this place would be as a child growing up and what fun you would have with your siblings, cousins or friends. We also shared the fun one could have amongst the various caves and one cave even had a rock table in the middle and rock slab that could have been used for Chinese board games etc. Katelynn mentioned her father's abilities with landscaping and I wondered at the cost/time to even try to come close to this today. (We even compared this to the ancient pyramids!)
This was our first rainy day but our local guide Linda told us that it has been a long cold, wet winter here and it had rained every day for the past month SO we were very blessed to have nice weather when we arrived on Tuesday plus a warm, sunny day of 12 degrees on Wednesday. (Winters in Shanghai are damp, wet cold as they usually have rain throughout the season. They rarely have even a little bit of snow and if they do it turns wet very quickly. People in Shanghai don't have central heating only small individual a/c box units in the window which revert to heaters in the winter. This means there is no heat throughout the home just blowing in from the unit and she explained that many don't use those much due to cost so winters are long, damp cold and your bones always feel cold).
For our group, many of us reflected that the rain was okay today and added a different element to that first park. It also kept the crowds away so we could enjoy this tour.
From here we went for another Chinese lunch together and then drove back into old Suzhou to visit a second park which is close to the first. This park was much larger and had another man-made interconnecting waterway developed throughout the park. It is known for it's flowers but they weren't in season and yet it was still very beautiful. The park owned and built 500 years ago had so many very unique things within it. Pathways that led throughout and extensive walkways with different patterns everywhere. The owner opened up the view in different ways and created a mini-paradise. When the father died the entire 'estate' was divided between 2 brothers who did not get along and so they built a wall through the middle of the property. They never spoke but had one tree that grew along the fence sharing both sides of the land. A poet wrote a poem that became famous reflecting on the relationship of this tree being able to share but these two brothers NOT and how unnatural this situation was. This poem became very famous and the brothers considering this reunited and began to communicate after many years of being separated.
We then drove back to Shanghai for dinner which was a lot of fun at another Chinese restaurant. Our table was served a platter of chicken that had breaded nuggets similar to back home and the chop sticks FLEW so FAST that within seconds the platter was empty! (I can honestly admit that most students have some sort of Canadian fast food treat in mind when they arrive in Canada!)
Our group headed back to the really culturally interesting area of Shanghai that we all have enjoyed. It was a village area near the Yu Gardens and really neat to go back at night with everything lit up. We shopped for 1.5 hours and then bused back to our hotel. The students had a chance to connect together and I did have the chance to experience a Chinese massage! We met together at 10:30 PM tonight to talk about our day and consider the big picture once again.
At this point, we're now looking forward to coming home again. Tomorrow is another travel day to get back to Beijing where we will be staying near the airport. Saturday is our long travel day once again and so we'll re-send all the flight information for everyone tomorrow.
Blessings for now as it is time to wish you all a good night!
Mrs. VV
PS - As I got to bed by 12:30 AM last night I thought through the day/email and realized that the guide must have made a mistake. She specifically said 8,380 which I rounded down to 8,000 in case she wasn't quite right on the land area that Suzhou covers but that in square km seems much too large. So I'm assuming she must have meant 838 km 2 but because I can't google that to confirm from here could you please eliminate that statistic from the blog and just wanted everyone to know that it was a much larger tract of land that Shanghai. Perhaps that could be your challenge for the day to find out the real area of this city in China? (hee hee)
