Pages

China - Venice in the East Edition




Today's the day we leave Shanghai (sadface) and traverse to other, less NYC-looking places. Which is sad, but obviously not everywhere in China looks like Shanghai, and I definitely wanted to see how the other half lived.

Turns out, it can be quite lovely.




Say bye, Shanghai! (ugh don't let me do that again)




Shanghai kept up the garden theme I noticed in Beijing; again, not many parks, the only one so far is where we saw the dancing couples, but China's fame and love of gardens is certainly imbued into their new urbanised lifestyle, with these little pot plants lining every step of highways and ivy dripping from the complex LA-style maze of ramps. 





Pensive bus moments with Rebecca. 








Welcome to Suzhou, a few hours from Shanghai, famous for gardens, silk and its manmade canals, giving it a distinct Venetian feel. But more, y'know, Chinese.

Hotel!









Let's go find some lunch! We'll go out! Explore! Mingle with the locals! Hurrah!




Great bus stop shelters. 




Little kinda service lanes just for scooters. Kindly not there's none of those pesky "give way to pedestrian" rule here. China adopts a definite natural selection leaning towards things such road safety.  



Except 10 minutes later, after discovering that Suzhou is most definitely not Shanghai, we scurried, defeated, back to the hotel restaurant.



Almost #Engrish


Our afternoon was taken up by a guided bus - and boat! -  tour of all things Suzhou. 













Suzhou is a tier 2 city (or tier 6, depending on your life perspective), with, and I quote our guide, "a population of only 12 million people". 

Besides the obvious staggering implications of that statement, my first question was actually, "but where??"  Because all we were passing were 1 or 2 storey white-washed, relatively poor-looking buildings, a mediocre main street and some very old historical landmarks, but nothing that seemed to indicate a populace of half of Australia.

But there were things to do and people to see so I tucked that question aside for later.



And watch people fall over instead. Always a good distraction.


Ehehehehehe.

Walking time. A Chinese lady is never without her umbrella.




Already seeing some canal action.










Surprise! 600 year old archway. 








Here we go.


Yi being the gentleman. 


Bec having bit of a....recovering from last night problem.

So Suzhou's canals are, again, ridiculous amounts of centuries old, and dug out by thousands of minions when the top bloke said, "I want this." Basically how everything has worked since the dawn of civilisation. But they are incredible - the Grand Canal we went down is over 6 feet deep, with bridges ranging in age from 40 to 700 years, and providing an incredible glimpse into the back door lives of the residents who live on it.


-tips hat-




Sometimes the Grand Canal was very wide. 


Other times it was not. 































Look at this - worse than in the West, I swear. 


This badass's job was to poke the stick at the wall if the boat got too close. 













Felt like I was on a period movie set or something - being dropped so suddenly in an environment so, so vastly different, but so quaint and picturesque, like it's almost not real. Why else would you travel if not to get that feeling? Similar experience to thinking how the Grand Canyon just looked like a back drop. Stupid vast, silent wonder of the world. 
This is at about the time I balanced on the front end of the boat in what had to be 40 degrees heat by that stage.
Balancing things.


I can see your knickers.









Weary travellers, and also Jo. 

Off the boat.







Another successful evasion of death!

In an interesting/alarming twist, Suzhou is also famous for it's, uhh, second hand wedding dress market.






Waste not!

Here we now visit the Suzhou Silk Museum, and oh what a lovely place it is.




Don't eat George's foot, Mr Dragon. 

Suzhou shows of their gardening skills everywhere they can.






So we were kind of quickly ushered into this place and I wasn't 100% sure what was happening or where we were going or what was expected of us (read: my default mode) so I quickly appreciated these lovely things, before the realisation of what I was about to see set in:


Ooh.


Ooooh.

So - yeah. It's a silk museum. What does this mean? Well, it doesn't mean glass cases full of scarves and fans, if that's what you expected, oh no. This place exemplifies the seemingly innate ability of the Chinese people to take any seemingly mediocre or everyday work and elevate it to the mindblowingly exquisite territory.


I'm talking silk - art.


Silk.


Silk.


SILK.


Quick tangent to adorable elderly gentleman. 

Anyway, look at this place -



They have the masters at work in the next room. Our guide led us through what they're doing - 





So silk is spun into superfine threats and they kinda take those superfine threads and super split them into super super super super find silk threads then they stick it through a needle and stitch each microscopic thread into a masterpiece. The thinner the thread, the better it looks, and the more masterful you are. 


You can kinda see the threads in this one - split those into about 10 each, because the Chinese are ridiculous. 






SHE HAS A NEEDLE AND A THREAD THERE. YEAH. YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE IT. SHE THREADED THE NEEDLE IN HALF A SECOND. IT TAKES ME 1O MINUTES, A PAIR OF SCISSORS, A BUCKET OF WATER, DEATH THREATS AND MANY TEARS TO THREAD A PIECE OF WOOL. 


Then there was a huge gallery of mindblowingly pretty things -




CAN YOU EVEN SEE THE INDIVIDUAL THREADS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN NOW. 


Up close...


The full frame. HOW. 




HOOOOOOW. 


When you level up to uber master (may not be official title), you can basically use magic on silk to thin that it appears as a different colour on each side of the fabric. WHAT, HOW. 


My thoughts exactly.


Look how thick that background is. LOOK HOW IT CREATES MOVEMENT. HOOOOW. 




EVEN ABSTRACT EUROPEAN ART. 

More pretty garden things.















To an even more giant room of beautiful things. I should probably mention now that the biggest pieces, these screens, are worth about AUD$1.5 million. 

WHY



AM I



SUCH



A TALENTLESS



SACK 



OF

SNOT. 






WHAT EVEN, CHINA. STOP. 


















image



But this guy though, he's so goofy, I love him.






Also tangent to more goofiness. Whitney, quit stalking me. 



In Phase 2 of exploring Suzhou, we take a quick squiz of the Suzhou museum (native French and Chinese speakers, you should totally learn the word "squiz")







Designed by Chinese architect I.M Pei (at the age of 85!) this place is a lovely, airy, open and light-filled place to store Chinese treasures.






Clearly it's the kind of place that holds rooms and rooms full of millennia-old things, after a few rooms of which, as a tiny Australian, you kinda go, yes okay China, we get it. Thank you. 


Cyclops inspects some ancient things. 






















From here on out photos are courtesy of George's camera (I took them, but mine died). 

A group of us decided we wanted to see some of Suzhou's famous gardens instead of some of its ancient relics, before our exploring time was up.

Step one would be to exit the museum.

Turned out this was a bit of a challenge. 


First back to the main lobby, with a beautiful outside rock artwork cleverly depicting a mountain range - 



As well as seeing more of the architecture of the place.
Then back and around...




And then we got really lost. We followed the exit signs, I swear, but there was no way out. 




Wai Sin wandering around the palace gardens basically like a Disney princess.



Lost.







Oh so very lost. We were running out of time to see the actual gardens, but this was still nice (as well as free) - it had a nice peaceful atmosphere, plus there were still gardens. 



A breakthrough! Maybe not so lost now.








It's an opera theatre! One of the best preserved in China. 






Chinese Mirror of Erised?




A Wisteria over 600 years old. CHINA, STOP. 
Cool and peaceful nooks and crannies. 


Follow George. Always follow George. 


Why were the doors round, you may ask? (we did, anyway). Decided ancient Chinese may have been Hobbits. 


Unless this is brand new, I find it to be extraordinarily random. 

A VIB - Very Important Bloke. (I can't remember what the plaque said, but trust me, it was pretty interesting). 

 We headed back outside where the people are lovely, the souvenirs cheap and the air thick and heavy. 



I really enjoyed it around here - it's clearly a touristy marketplace, but it's not shove-y or tacky, and a place you could just wander around, grab an ice cream and watch how the locals doing their thing here is so much different to where other locals of other places do their thing. People watching at its best.










As well as some more canal viewing.






Jenny!


Plus George.


And Wai Sin.




My favourite.












What a bamf.




Watchoo lookin' at.




George telling stories.






Moose hat! Cue for every local to come get a photo of me in said ridiculous hat.




Too hot for movement.


Some Very Questionable Meat.



















Met up with everyone else for a quick dinner - 



Ended up walking back to the hotel (another reminder that we're no longer in Shanghai), armed only with a rough memory of what our guide told us and information from various confused but ever-friendly locals.

Go to the bus, or the bus won't come to you.





Until next time, Suzhou. It was extremely lovely to meet you. Stay classy.

image




No comments:

Post a Comment