The Chinese have a saying: “above us, there is paradise. On earth, there is Suzhou and Hangzhou.” With the celebration of Labor Day on May 1st here, I decided to put that saying to the test and made a trip to Suzhou with my roommate, Paul. You may be wondering: “what did Sean do to end up behind bars in paradise?” Don’t worry- that’s just me in a taxi!
Suzhou is about an hour away from Nanjing on the bullet train. The two cities are similar in many ways: big, Chinese city with big buildings, and a development focus on including trees and a nature mix within the city.
Because of the big city feel, I never felt like I was really, “getting away from it all” to explore a wonderful, natural, and secluded paradise. Granted, I’m a bit spoiled coming from Colorado and having just visited home but three weeks prior to this trip.
Despite the Colorado-nature-snob in me, Suzhou did prove to be quite pleasant. We took a tour bus to four different spots and enjoyed a variety of different sights. The first stop was something of a palace or estate of old with nice flowers.
Another stop was a large rock garden, and I mean large. The paths were made of rocks and you climbed up some of the big ones to walk along rock bridges to other parts of the garden. In the center was a nice lake surrounded by some traditional pagodas. Some of the rocks formed together to make small caves that were big enough to walk inside.
We took a river boat along the canals of Suzhou and saw some traditional houses and traditional lifestyle living. Another stop took us up a twelve story (or taller) temple for a 360 view of the city, as well as a large Buddha statue.
After lunch consisting of some yummy Suzhou local food (every region in China has its own variety of Chinese food), we were taken to a silk store and pitched by many different sales agents to buy the silk.
The last stop featured another, larger part of the canal and some more pagodas. The canal was spanned by a large bridge where many of the tourists went to take pictures. By this time, I was pretty burned out from standing in front of canals, bridges, or pagodas, and didn’t really take any more photos.
The trip was fun and well-worth the time and money. Even though the city was similar to my big city, Nanjing, it was nice to go somewhere different and the various tour stops were a small relief from city life. Next stop: Hangzhou!
No comments:
Post a Comment