Day Trip to Suzhou

On Saturday, October 19, Kennedy had a cross-country meet, the last of the season, in Suzhou, so Peter and Nickle invited us along to make a day of it.  Suzhou is about 1 1/2 hours from Shanghai (depending on traffic) and is one of the cities that Chris visits often for work, but I had not yet been there.

As we drove through the streets of the city, on our way to the Suzhou Singapore International School for the meet, Nickle and I commented on how "quiet" Suzhou seemed, with few people out and about on the streets.  Funny to think that we've been in Shanghai (pop. 24 million) long enough to think that Suzhou seemed like a "small town;" population 10 million.

Kennedy is one of the youngest runners at these meets because she and her classmates are the only 5th graders competing in the 6th grade group.  Still she came in 2nd place among the girls and 9th overall, running a great race.

Cameron and Colin have very little interest in watching their sister run, so they played some basketball and eventually ended up at the playground with Uncle Chris.  Before the meet began, Colin tried the monkey bars and couldn't do it.  By the end of the meet, he was a pro!

After the meet and awards ceremony, we drove to a Pizza Hut for lunch.  The boys were very excited because there was a Dairy Queen next door, for dessert.  Pizza Hut is a bigger deal in China, with a very broad menu.  While the pasta was not a hit, the pizzas tasted pretty much like they do in the U.S.  Chris was not able to communicate "diet" Pepsi, although it's usually not a problem, but I was happy that I have learned enough Mandarin to ask for "Bing Shui" which means ice water.  There was no problem at Dairy Queen in communicating the idea of a Oreo Blizzard.  They even flip over the Blizzard, before they hand it to you, to prove that it is so thick it doesn't run out of the over-turned cup. 

After lunch, we headed to the canals to take a boat ride.  Suzhou's canals, stone bridges, pagodas, and gardens have contributed to its status as one of the top tourist attractions in China. The classical gardens in Suzhou were added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1997. Suzhou is often dubbed the "Venice of the East" or "Venice of China."   While there are many canal towns, Suzhou is one of the best known.  When we visited Peter & Nickle in Shanghai in 2005, we went to Zhouzhuang, which was also very beautiful, but a much smaller, older-looking town.  Suzhou seems more like a big city that has a small canal area to me, but that may be because we drove quite a way from the cross-country meet to the area where we picked up the boat for the canal ride.

On our walk towards the boat, we went through a large, lovely park.  There was a statue of something, although I'm not sure what.  He looks mostly, to me, like the Winter Warlock from the Christmas movie of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, so I started singing "One Foot In Front of the Other."  Kennedy pretended not to know me. 

One of the really interesting things in the park was the large bushes, taller than us, by far, that had two different colored flowers growing on them.  The flowers looked a little like roses, but there were both pink and white growing on the same branch - from the same blossom in some cases.  It was pretty but very different.

Peter negotiated what we think was a pretty good price for the 7 of us to take a boat ride on the canals.  It was just us on the boat, with the two "drivers," so we had it all to ourselves and were able to move around to see the sights and take the best pictures.  The boats sit so low in the water, we were basically sitting in the water, as the windows are just about water level.  I think this is part of the reason the boats go so slowly - you really don't want much of a wake.  The canals get very narrow, so it was an accomplishment that our boat could get through in some areas, never mind passing other boats.  The little man helping our driver made sure to tell us to keep our hands in the windows when we were going through a particularly narrow passage.  One boater wasn't as good as ours and ran into us - twice.  We could see that our driver was pretty agitated about it.

While they let us sit on the front of the boat at times, there were other times they made us scoot back inside - I'm not exactly sure why.   As always, the two guys handling our boat were fascinated by the kids, and let them sit up front as often as possible.
 
As we drove through the canals, we enjoyed the pretty red paper lanterns hanging off the bridges and buildings in some areas, but also found the houses along the canals very intriguing.  It was similar to Venice, where there are another set of stairs down the canal side of the house to allow family members to climb into a boat.  Many of the stairs looked like they were in disrepair, as did the houses, but the occasional satellite dish and air conditioning units seemed to be working okay.   Peter and I remarked on a set of stairs sticking off the side of one of the houses that didn't attach to a door at all and laughed when we realized it led up to the A/C unit - for when your A/C repair guy comes by boat!

The curved bridges are very distinctive in these canal towns and very pretty.  It was fun to see other tourists walking above us as we drove under the bridge, as well as waving to us from passing boats and restaurants along the edge of the canals.  Even though we'd read that these canal towns are overrun with tourists on the weekend, it was not very busy in Suzhou.  Perhaps it was the weather, given that it was an overcast day with a (very) few raindrops at the start of Kennedy's cross-country race that morning.  Although the forecast hadn't included any rain, it did look like it was possible at any time.  Whatever the reason, it wasn't very crowded, which is saying something in China.

We saw a lot of fishermen along the edges of the canals, especially in places where there was some shoreline more than just the concrete sides of the canals.  While we saw a group actually reeling in what would probably be their dinner, (not that I can imagine eating a fish that came out of that dirty water), most of the men seemed to be relaxing.  Again, they enjoyed seeing the kids and smiled and waved as we passed.  We also saw a group of men who were doing some construction, hanging on bamboo scaffolding on the side of the canal - and welding - on the edge of the water.  My pictures of them didn't come out too sharp, mostly because I was so nervous watching them balancing precariously and welding over the water!


I enjoyed the fact that, in the places where there was more of a shoreline, it reminded me of Seneca Lake because the shoreline was planted with so many willow trees.  At least, they looked like the weeping willows that hold the shoreline on Seneca, although I wouldn't know enough about trees to be sure they were the same type.  There were also some fascinating rock formations, both along the shorelines and placed in front of houses along the canals.


All along the canal, we could see "cross-street," either where canals intersected or where concrete steps led to up actual side streets with shops and markets.  Some of the shops looked cute and some of the smells were terrible, but we didn't have time to really walk around and explore.  We drove into what seemed to be a bit of an intersection, where several canals converged on each other, and there was a plaza with this lovely pagoda.

The canal trip wasn't that long, but was really fascinating and I, obviously, just couldn't take enough pictures.  I'm feeling a little challenged with the photography at the moment because my regular lens developed problems when we were in Bangkok and the auto-focus feature isn't working.  While the manual focus still works on that lens, I'm not that good with manual focus - partly because it doesn't give me the range of options I want and partly because my eyes aren't as sharp as they used to be.  So, I was trying to take all my pictures in Suzhou with my zoom lens, which made things challenging, especially when we decided to take some shots of our group, in the boat.  But, I think they came out okay, although it would have been better with the right lens.  I have to try to figure out what's going on with it before I head to Vienna in November.

After the boat ride, we found Gao, Peter & Nickle's driver, and piled back into the car.  We talked about walking the streets to see the little shops, visiting the silk museum, or even stopping at what appeared to be an American-style outlet mall.  But, it had started raining again and everyone was tired and we opted to just head home.

The drive back to Shanghai was long, as the traffic was heavy.  After a brief bathroom stop at a McDonald's somewhere in Puxi, we made it back to JinQiao at about 6:30 and went to Pistolera, the boys' favorite Mexican restaurant that is around the corner from our new apartment.  We had planned to come to our place for pizza, but since we had pizza for lunch, we went to Pistolera instead.  Peter & Nickle saw at least 3-4 groups of people they know there - it is a favorite expat hangout - and we had a nice dinner.  Afterwards, they all came to our apartment to see it, and our complex, for the first time.  After a tour of the health club, pool and tennis courts, we came up to our place for some homemade chocolate chip cookies.  Peter, Nickle & the kids headed home around 9 p.m., with some very tired boys - and maybe Kennedy, too.  All-in-all, it was a great day, from Kennedy's fantastic finish at the cross-country meet, to the beautiful sights of the boat ride, to the Mexican food and chocolate chip cookies.