Suzhou

Only an hour or so from Shanghai by G train is the old city of Suzhou, often called the Venice of China.

We had two nights here, enough time to visit the temple and pagoda in town the day we arrived then a day trip the next day out to Tongli. Another visit to Suzhou in the near future to explore some of it treasures is planned before too long.



Beisi Ta Pagoda

The view from the top was a little disappointing, mainly because of the pollaze (more pollution than haze) which cut visibily drastically. The photo here shows the sky burnt out yet again. The city itself from the top level of the pagoda didn't warrant a photo, not even on a clear day.




Budda welcoming visitors to Beisi Temple

These are the only 2 photos I took in Suzhou worthy of publishing here. Perhaps there will be more on another visit.

Entrance to Tongli.

About an hour's drive from Suzhou is the canal town of Tongli near the shores of one of China's larger lakes. This town is a popular tourist destination and is absolutely packed with Chinses tourists at the weekend. (A visit to Tongli for expats from Nanjing at a weekend reported back that it was unbearable with the numbers of people there.)

We arranged our visit on a Monday; there was hardly any other visitors there so we had a good look around and met some of the locals going about their daily business.

One of the first bridges were saw in Tongli.

The best way of seeing Tongli is at water level. There are hundreds of boats like this whose operators were having a rather quiet day when we were there. weekends they are real busy! A 30 minute trip cost very little, about 80RMB for four.

Our cheerful boat lady

Passing by

One gets this message!



Tongli canal



Canal side cafes



Comorants

Being near such a large lake, these comorants were resting before going out and being sent fishing. More about comorant fishing when I blog about our visit to Guilin.

Back on dry land again it was time for our guide to show us some of the more interesting houses, museums and other buildings.

The following few photos show some of the hidden gardens in Tongli.



One had to be patient to avoid the posers dashing out on the stage
for silly photos.



Ready for action

This man is working on these large seeds pods which are gathered from the lake. He is opening the pods and extracting the seeds ready for then next stage of operations.



Stage 2

Several ladies then took the seeds and extracted the inner seed by splitting the seed coat with their finger nails. The seeds inside are quite small but worth around 100RMB ($20) per kilogram. We didn't find out what they were used for but a good guess that they are ingredient in the restaurants.



Washing the seeds

It would not be uncommon to see several ladies washing these seeds, then later some one else washing the vegies for the nearby restaurant in the canal, then some clothes washing whilst the odd chamber pot is emptied nearby!

Further along one of the canals we stopped outside this house and eventually communicated with the occupants



Grandma on duty.

With the one child policy in China, one child like this boy here is the only grandchild of his four grandparents. One sees hundreds of grandparents looking after their one and only whilst his parents are out working. Even on the metro in Nanjing at 0630hrs, the grandchildren are away with one of the grandparents for the day. No pre-schools needed here with ready made sitters.

Another museum, which our guide didn't take us to, but we allowed to look in the gate at to take a photo.


Chinese man statue

It is not to hard to guess what this building was formerly used for. Same use as one we visited in Pompeii with the menu still above the doors.



Tongli notice

Being an ancient town, a lot of the buildings are made of timber. The fire safety notice is quite important, if you can translate it.

We did enjoy our day out in Tongli, especially since there were not too many people around seeing the place. Next day it was back on the train and home to Nanjing again.