Danny's co-workers are all really nice. It sort of reminds me of hanging out with Drexel people at home except for the language barrier. The grad students spoke enough English to communicate most of the time. Chenxu's is pretty good and she is really chatty. Joe studied in the states so his English is also pretty good. Danny or Joe helped translate occasionally when I needed them so the communication went okay. On our way to Suzhou I practiced my Mandarin, I now know about a hundred words now. Some of them are even useful in casual conversation.
It was a grey drizzly day. We went during the national holidays so it was insanely crowded everywhere. At 9:30 we got on a train for Suzhou. We hadn't booked early enough which meant we had standing room tickets. At first we all had seats but at the stop more people got on so most of us had to stand for the last 20 minutes or so. It wasn't too bad since it was early in the day and we weren't that tired yet but it was still pretty crowded and uncomfortable. The tickets were very cheap, they only cost 15 RMB so about $2.50.Once we arrived we caught a bus to the Zuo Zhen Yuan (Humble Administrators Garden). It was the private garden of some wealthy government official. The garden was extremely crowded with tourists. It was similar to Yu Yuan Garden in Shanghai except that since Suzhou was a much more important city historically, the garden was much more impressive.
Chenxu told me that there is a Chinese saying that Suzhou is like heaven on earth. It was really pretty. It had the old style buildings with the pretty rooftops that I think are called flying rooftops. There were also a lot of really pretty rock formations.
The stones that you walked on were in the shape of the Chinese character that means person so it meant the garden's owner had a high status because he walked on top of all the people. We were lucky the weather cleared up and it was nice out for our trip around the garden. The garden also had a little museum area with some artwork.
Outside the garden was a little bazaar where you could buy snacks and lots of little souvenirs. We got homemade peanut brittle that the guy hammered with a mallet. One thing you notice as you travel around Asia is labor is really cheap, so most things that would be done with machines at home are done by hand here.
As we left the garden it started to rain so we thought it would be a good time to eat lunch. We didn't count on how bad the traffic would be. The city wasn't really built to handle that many people plus it was the holidays so it was really crowded. Joe planned for us to see four places in Suzhou and had picked restaurants for us. We tried to catch a cab to our next destination but none of the traffic was moving.
We ended up just walking into a random restaurant along the street to try to wait out the rain. It was one of those traditional Chinese meals served family style on a lazy Susan. I packed my leftover lasagna since I didn't expect many veggie options. (The lasagna came out perfectly in our new toaster oven when I made it a few days before. I'm really happy our kitchen is finally coming together. The lack of an oven was really worrying me at first.)On our way out I bought some candied fruit on the street.
It was still raining pretty hard so we tried to see if we could take a cycle rickshaw to our next destination since the driving traffic was really awful. The rickshaw drivers said it was too far and they wouldn't go there.Due to lack of transportation we ended up going to explore a Taoist temple we passed along the way called Xuan Miao Guan (Temple of Mystery) established in the 3rd century. It was made up of four temples representing different gods.
The temple closed at 5:00 and our train wasn't until 9:30. It was pouring and my feet were soaked. I think we all were pretty ready to head home. We did some shopping in the bazaar outside the temple. I bought a bunch of souvenirs including some pearls for really cheap. I'm not really sure how good the quality was though or what they were really worth. Pearls is supposed to be one of the things Suzhou is known for though.
We walked to a major shopping street and after looking around a bit we found a hotpot place for dinner. They didn't have many vegetarian options but I think Danny like the food a lot. I was just happy to be out of the rain.
After dinner it was finally time to head back to the train station. Traffic still looked pretty scary so we thought we'd try asking the cycle rickshaw drivers again. They said it would be 40 RMB so about $6.50 to go around a mile and a half. The graduate students all thought this was way too much and it was a rip off so they decided to take a bus which costs about 3 RMB or 50 cents. I have to point out they don't pay the grad students very well here. Anyway, since 40 RMB didn't sound like much to Danny and me, I said we should just take the rickshaw. We told the grad students we would meet them at the train station and told the numerous waiting drivers we wanted to go.
Taking this mode of transportation is a once in a lifetime experience for me. Danny thought the trip was sort of cool but I found it scary. The traffic is crazy and the cart jerked around a lot. I also felt awful because the driver looked really old and it was really hard physical labor. In addition, it was raining and only the passenger section had a top to keep off the rain. When we went uphill it got too hard for him to pedal so he got out and pulled us. Danny's view on it was this is how the driver makes his living and if people like us don't use them he won't be able to feed his family. I'm not sure if he is right or if it is just an industry that takes advantage of cheap labor and we shouldn't contribute to it.When we pulled up to the train station we noticed he kept checking around and looked nervous. When we got out a policeman came up to him and started yelling at him because he isn't supposed to ride up to there. We were planning to ask if we could take a picture with him and then give him a big tip, in spite of the fact that people don't actually tip here at all. Danny took a really blurry photo of him as the cop was telling him to leave. We paid him 50 RMB, so $8.00 which I think is a lot of money to him.
While we were in Suzhou, I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't find a place that had a real toilet. They just had the squat ones which I refuse to use. (It is still better than the kids bathrooms in the school where I work, which have a trough. In case you were wondering it always smells really, really awful when you pass the boys room and somewhat bad when you pass the girls room. There are some real toilets in the school too though.) We tried going in KFC because I figured a big western chain would have western toilets but no such luck. I eventually found one western toilet in the train station. They didn't have any toilet paper though. I know some of you are already aware of this but apparently in China most bathrooms don't provide toilet paper and you have to pack your own. Danny told me I should but I didn't have any in my purse so I had to borrow toilet paper from Joe. It sounds sort of silly in retrospect but I was really upset about the bathroom situation at the time. I flat out refuse to learn to use squat toilets. I don't care if it limits the places I can travel to.
The train station was still really crowded because of the holiday. People were loaded down with all sorts of bags. A lot of people shove enormous amounts of stuff into the fabric bags that rice is sold in.
On the train ride back we thought since we had reserved seats none of us would have to stand. When we got on the train a tiny, shriveled old man was sitting in Joe's seat. None of us had the heart to ask him to move so Danny ended up standing for most of the hour long ride back to Shanghai. I made him trade with me and sit for a few minutes in the middle though.
I think Joe felt bad that some of his planning for Suzhou hadn't gone quite as he had hoped but it was an adventure. I think fitting all of what he planned just wouldn't be possible in one day. Overall it was a fun trip and I'm excited for part two of my travels with the physicists. On Wednesday we are heading to Jiaxing.
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