Day 11

 For today, we spent time in Suzhou and Tongli. We completely skipped breakfast in the hotel in Hangzhou because I hadn't been feeling well the previous night after our dinner with Alex, and we just weren't hungry right away. We did, however, get take-away food: scrambled eggs, pork sausages, watermelon, and brie cheese. We ate this on the train to Suzhou.

In Suzhou, we met Tracy, who was our guide for the day. (It is notable that we also had a female cab driver, which we almost never see in China.) Tracy took us to the Lingering Garden, which reminded me a lot of Yu Gardens. Lots of stone sculptures, water, trees, and ancient halls. Very much in the presence of nature; we even saw bonsai trees, which Tracy told us originated in China, not Japan. After this, we did one of my favorite activities yet: a rickshaw ride! Each of us climbed into a rickshaw and our respective drivers drove us around. I felt sorry for the driver, dealing with my weight! But still I had a lot of fun. I waved to everyone I saw, saying "Hello" and "Ni hao." And they waved back! It was so great. During the ride, we got to see a lot of the canals and beauty of Suzhou. They kept encouraging us to take pictures, so we did. I absolutely loved this experience, but Kerry was less keen on it. "I felt like too much of a spectacle," he said.

Then it was lunchtime. We had watermelon, green tea, beef with pepper, cauliflower and mushroom, noodles, fried rice. Everything was great except the rice. The bathroom, interestingly enough, was very Japanese-style with a warm toilet seat! And, even more odd, just as I was finishing up, another guy just walked in my stall (there was only one toilet and one urinal per men's stall) and started using the urinal, even though I had *just gotten up* from sitting on the toilet!!!  Ah, China and its lack of personal space.....  Tracy said this was unusual, but I'm not so sure.

Next we went to Tongli, the "water town" we had visited before. We took a boat cruise under "four bridges" (each which had to do with luck in some way...a lot of things in China have to do with luck or riches) and saw many cormorant birds. Many girls here like to pose in ancient dresses for photos; there are shops for them to purchase or rent such dresses. I asked Tracy to ask these girls if I could take their picture, and they agreed, even though they apparently told Tracy, "Why? We are not pretty." But I thought they looked quite lovely. We also saw some dogs (liang zi gou), and a group of guys who asked me where I was from. Tracy said they not only wanted to know my country, but the specific state. When I told them, "Minnesota," they just said "Oh" and nodded their heads. They probably had no idea what I was talking about. I liked this visit to Tongli better than my last one; I feel I got more of a sense of a Chinese town and Chinese people here....it's not an area that's so "citified," like Shanghai or Hangzhou. As we were walking out, I bought two wood lions. At first I was told 480 RMB but I said "Tai gui le," and the lady went down to 280 RMB...so I took them. The pleasant surprise is that I thought I was getting only one lion, but I got two! 

Next we went to our hotel the Pan Pacific Suzhou, which we were not thrilled about. The layout was insane. The lobby was on the third floor, and it literally took 10-15 minutes to get from the lobby to our room. We got a free dinner from China Highlights (our tour company) due to the snafu in Hangzhou missing the Tea Plantation, but because we'd had so much for lunch we weren't that hungry. I just had some fruit and sashimi.

That was pretty much it for the day. Tomorrow, back to Shanghai.

  

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