Day 3: Welcome to Suzhou!

We had to have our bags down in the lobby of the hotel by 8am. We were leaving that day to drive to Suzhou. Suzhou is about a two hour drive from Shanghai, the city has about 5.8 million people in it and it is famous for its beautiful gardens and canals that run through the streets. I thought the whole city looked like a dump.

No, really, as we’re driving in we were seeing all these abandoned and broken down buildings, and piles of rubble everywhere. Turns out the Chinese can build entire metropolis cities in less than 20 years but they can’t take care of anything older than that so it all just gets left to break down.

Our first stop was one of the smaller gardens in Suzhou, it was built in 1290 and named The Master Of Nets garden (basically it was a tribute to fishermen). Can you imagine walking through a garden that was designed more than 700 years ago? It was very unreal. The house is built around the garden so that you have to walk through it to get to other parts of the estate.

Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou

The life of a nobleman in ancient China: The people who lived in this home were very well off. When they would have guests, the guests would arrive on a palanquin carried by servants because it was impolite to walk. There was a reception room for the servants while they would have tea and wait for the master to finish his meeting. The rooms were all disconnected so we had to step outside before stepping back in to the next room. There was always a step you had to get over to go into a room, which was designed so people were forced to bow in respect as they entered each room. The first room was the men’s reception room. The men would sit, chat, drink tea and conduct whatever business had to be done. Beyond that was the women’s reception room where the female guests would amuse themselves. The next room was the entertainment room where there was a little stage musicians could perform on. There were 17 total rooms in the entire place (and this was the smallest one in the city) including the meditation room, library and multiple bedrooms. Girls of noble families back in that time were expected to learn four primary skills in order to marry well. They needed to learn how to play an instrument, play chess, do calligraphy and how to paint. The garden in between all of the rooms was a beautiful thing. Lots of trees and bushes and wonky rocks. They were really into the wonky rocks back in the day. There was a pond filled with goldfish and a little pavilion where the family could sit next to the pond and eat snacks or meditate.

After the garden we went to the silk factory. We learned all about the life cycle of a silk worm and how they actually get silk. Turns out the life cycle of a silk worm is only 60 days, when the worm makes a cocoon to become a moth, the cocoon they spin is made of silk. What the factory does is take cocoons, heat them in hot water to loosen the strands, find the edge of the silk and unravel the cocoon. It takes six cocoons to make one single thread of silk. I had been hoping for a good deal on some silk things but turned out the factory was way more expensive than I anticipated it to be. They said the factories are the only places you can get guaranteed quality, and that’s probably true because China is the land of knockoffs, but if I can get something that’s 50% silk for a fraction of the price, I don’t really care. I have a story about that later in the trip.

After the silk factory we had lunch and made a short visit to an embroidery shop. These were the things made by the master embroiderers like the women who could make two separate pictures on one single piece of cloth. It was gorgeous and extremely impressive, but again, the average price of a high quality picture was about 80,000yuan, approximately $13,000. Even the smaller ones were over $100. I couldn’t believe it. In the showroom there was one huge masterpiece that I swear was about fifteen feet long that was selling for  1,500,000yuan, or approximately $227,000. Let’s put that into perspective, that’s more than my Mom paid for her house.

Our next stop before we went to the hotel was a boat ride down the famous lovely canals of Suzhou. The canal was bordered by houses on both sides like one continuous wall. The balconies were covered in junk and trash, the walls of the buildings were cracked. To me, it seemed more like a picture of poverty than a beautiful canal ride.

When we got to the hotel, I was tired, cold, and crabby. It was the middle of February and most of the buildings didn’t have central heating. Not even our bus so there was very little chance to warm up once you got cold. The hotels always had heating thank god, but we very quickly learned to dress as if we were going to be outside in the cold all day.

Dinner was inside the hotel that day. We sat at the table with the Mother and Daughter who were craving some good western food. “We were so tempted just to go to McDonalds and just get a burger and chips!” They were already wondering how they were going to survive on Chinese food for the next 24 days. Well when the food started coming, the second dish they brought out was a big plate of chips! The girls were so excited and we let them have first pick. As dinner was finishing, three of our table were talking about going and checking out the night markets. Ryan and I asked if we could join them, we were curious but afraid to go out by ourselves.

Turns out, Suzhou is a lot more interesting at night than it is during the day. The city is lit up in these colorful lights, all the shops are open late and there are people everywhere! We found an embroidery shop, the quality wasn’t as good but the price was right! These were a fraction of the cost of the ones at the fancy place. I got one good sized picture for only 25yuan! Ryan got one that even came with a frame for only 40 (about $7.5). Everything was so cheap in the shops, they had silk scarfs for only 10yuan and little trinkets for not much more. And the people! We were wandering around on a Tuesday night, in the back markets of a not so big city and there were people everywhere. Ryan began to believe that China was really home to more than a billion people. We also stopped at a fancy cake shop and got some nice dessert, they’re not big into sugar in China and I was craving some chocolate. I felt so much better when we returned to the hotel that night. I felt like we had finally gotten to experience real China instead of just being exploited at tourist factories, and it was fantastic.

Suzhou at night