Suzhou to Hangzhou

Second day of the trip were mostly spent on a bus ride from Suzhou to Hangzhou. We were also stuck in the infamous Hangzhou traffic for a while. Between that, we did squeezed a little bit of time to visit a temple and a cave. Let's take a look.

Oh and how could I forget, we also "cruised down the canal" in Suzhou, kind of a tourist trap, nevertheless, it had to be done, by this time, I think even you guys are tired of water towns :).

got a nice symmetry going on here

cruising down the "living quarter"

Before we leave Suzhou for good, we stopped by Hanshan Temple, it is a well known temple if you speak Chinese. Why? well there's a famous poem that everyone can recite that talks about it...it's one of those Kim Kardashian thing - famous for being famous

If you really wanna drill it down, I guess it is very old after all.

obligatory scenic photo at the temple

oh, and since the bell of the temple was specifically mentioned in the poem, everyone's here to ring the bell, for a lovely price of 5 RMB...

this is how a BFD looks like

the line to sound the bell, ill pass

This is the third temple that I have visited in China. There is something very odd about visiting temples in China, it's not that feeling you get when you enter the wrong house of worship, in fact there isn't even anything that makes you feel like you've entered a house of worship. I guess it's probably because of the sticky situation with religions in China (maybe I should visit a church or a mosque!).

Usually for me, visiting a temple should be a quiet, humble experience. There are boxes up for donation or payment boxes for incenses.  Here though, prices are marked clearly everywhere and no body really seem to respect the place: people who needs wants to spit still spits, the howlers on the phones are still howling...

And For those who are here to pay their respect, they seem to just be here so they can say they've done it: tossing a coin at the red ribbon filled pot is suppose to be good luck, but when you have every single visitors doing it and INSISTING on getting a coin into the pot, then it becaomes a nuisance. Perhaps you may say this place is popular, I guess I am trying to say some order is needed.

  if you're lucky, u might get hit by a coin

We then got on the bus and drove down south towards Hangzhou, before we hit the city though, we made a short pit stop to Jinxiu Fenshui Cave. The story behind this is that it's the oldest cave in China during war time, local people used to hide here in the naturally formed cave with nice stalactites and stalagmites and someone supposedly spotted a dragon (yeah, that sounds legit). The real catch though is after the walk to the end of the cave, you may ride a roller coaster back up to the surface! Never a bad idea after a 3 hour bus ride.

tourism 101, lights make a big difference

with flash, everything looks dirty

there's the head of the dragon with a man stadning infront, or whatever else you make of it

i spy....ugh....you tell me

a roller coaster out of an underground cave, only in china

our babysitter guide telling us not to stick our heads up

When we finally settled down in Hangzhou though, it was already late, and even though we had some free time, there wasn't much with the rainy weather, but hey, the weather has never cooperated since we landed in Asia.

We got some nice exploring done though, got a little wet but there were some nice photos

Hangzhou after dark

Hangzhou after dark

walking down the "toursit street"...

food places are never closed

Let's hope day 3's better

Touring Suzhou Chinese Style

The Internationals Student office here at SJTU organized a class trip for us to go on a 3 day trip to Suzhou and Hangzhou during the midst of Chinese New Year. It was a nice gesture, we can avoid having to organize trips during the busiest time of the year, but cramming a minute to minute scheduled tour with 40 students is never fun for anyone.

In a way, I almost want to say this trip wasn't about what we did or where we've been, but how tour groups for Chinese tourism works. To start the day, we were introduced to guide, David or as he puts it "I'm guide, you can call me David", he seems like a knowledgeable guy, the only problem was whatever he said was just a direct translation from Chinese to English, and the cliche of everything being the oldest in China doesn't make him too believable.

He tried, we listened, and the results were quite amusing, pay good attention to everyone's faces while "listening to our tour guide"

"is this picture worthy?" "i dunno anymore, the chinese are taking photos too!" (it was an ink table, probably the oldest ink table in the area)

"so what's this place called again? no i dont care how old it is"

"2000 years old?", "oh, just let me take this picture"

blown away by the riveting topic of murals

Beside the guided tours, we did see quite a lot in a short time though. Within the first 6 hours of the trip, we conqurered a leaning pagoda on a hill, a garden so filled it might as well be called a human preserve, and shortly after lunch, a silk factory.

Our first stop, Tiger Hill, was pretty hazy, not knowing what we were doing at all, the guide stepped out of the boss and yelled "we go" and we're off...

im not so good a math, so forgive me if it doesn't look like it's leaning

lions at tiger hill? (fun fact: rubbing its face is suppose to be good luck)

What's that? Significance of Tiger Hill? aside from David calling it "Tigrehall", all I could remember was there's people everywhere, oh and somewhere in China you could get a dish called "dragon fighting lions" (its a dish with snake and cat cooked together, delicious eh?)

it was New Year's day after all, so everyone has the day off

Aside from the "photo spots" and lining up for photos, we also visited this bridge with wells right in the middle supposedly used to execute captured soldiers during war time (that's all I know, just reciting what I heard).

we were advised to take a photo here, 2 minutes after we were told we had to leave...

so this is the spot? i hope there's no capacity for the bridge

After the Tiger Hill, we headed out to see Suzhou's other famous attractions: silk & garden, and finally got some context to what we wuld be seeing. Suzhou has always been prosperous since the ancient time due to its location by the Grand Canal. Merchants, scholars, and artists gathered here and a wealth of both financial and cultural abundance grew. Elaborate Chinese Gardens were built, we visited the most elaborate one of them all which was ironically called the Humble Administrator's Garden.

This garden was crafted with great designs in which natural scenes and artificial scenes were meant to blend together so well that the viewers were not meant to take notice, the space usage was also meant to be ingenious that it would take visitors a significant time to really navigate through the garden.

white people apparently were part of the scene

My opinion though, was to never come to Suzhou again during New Years, we had no place to stand to even look at anything; if I wasn't moving, I was getting pushed around.

in Chinese, we call this "people mountain people sea"

take a break?I guess we can rest in the lake

I'm pretty sure though, most of the other people were there with other tour groups, so I bet in reality, everyone was as miserable as I was. The real question here is if there will EVER be a time when places like this are not over crowded, and a visitor will be able to enjoy the garden's zen and admired the scenes as the designer intended.

Towards the end of our designated time in the garden, we did stumble upon a couryard full of Bonsais, and of course, the crown jewel of this place was the "oldest bonsai in the world" (I wont even bother fact checking it because it was basically a piece of bark supported by a beam of steel with maybe 2 or 3 leaves, hence the absence of photo). These miniature trees did serve as a reminder how old everything here is though.

bonsai land

this guy? he's probably seen more sun rises than all of us combined

After the garden comes my favorite time, you guessed it, food! along with a great feast! they served duck tongue which only adds to my amusement.

u know it's a good time when the table's not big enough for food

After the meal, we were taken to a silk factory. At the entrance of the factory, we were greeted by this young man, who pretends he can speak English and "gave us a tour" of the factory. We soon find out though, they really just wanted us to buy all the silks they had. Which couldn't have worked out in the first place because none of us could even afford the cocoons.

here's where the silk warms come to die

here's where we mutilate the cocoons to get the thread

After the threads were pulled out, the covering silk wwere used to make sheets and blankets

With the money I had, I could only afford to do this

That about concluded Suzhou for day 1, we then checked into a nice holiday Inn, complete with a real bathroom (I suppose the organizer cleverly put that in the itinerary so "the Americans tourists" don't get too mad. I'm pretty sure it worked too (this class trip was billed along with our tuition before we came. :[ )

We got some free time after that and visited a nearby canal, but it's nothing new, almost identical to what we saw in Wuzhen, with more New Year's decoration.

Stay tuned for Day 2 and Day 3 of the class trip, and to leave you in a good mood, here's me in 20 years if I still didn't get better at engineering!

obviously id be a better tour guide

Chinese New Year Festivities

Before we begin,  I must come clean with you guys with the photos in this entry, the ones I took the night of the New Year's Eve were all blurred or foggy. So for a better viewing experience, all the photos I used here were from our very own trip photographer, Brian.

Anyways,
It's probably been about 10 years since the last time I celebrated CNY with the traditional festivities around. So As the new year got closer and closer, I was getting more and more excited.The best part though, again, is spending New Year with all the other Purdue students that had no idea what's going on.

I had almost forgotten what it's like, apart from the obvious decorations that were up everywhere, fire works were also being set off every 20 minutes or so (and the frequency only got higher as we approached mid night). Basically noise everywhere you go, and almost no shops were open. Shanghai was particularly bad since it's a major hub for migrant workers and most people had went home.

The otherwise silent street is about to be bombarded with lights and noise for the next week

everyone setting off fireworks everywhere

The program had set up a New Year's Eve banquet for us. It was extravagant, the food just kept coming and coming, and just as the sweet food comes up and you think it's over, another dish would follow! (dessert after main course rule does not apply here!) So although I wasn't offered a Hongbao (red envelope) or gamble through the whole night to satisfy my wallet, at least the stomach was satisfied.

since we are eating with white people, nothing out of the ordinary served

here's us, the foreigners stranded in China during the festivities

After the banquet, some of us went out and bought fireworks at the "fireworks distributors", (the local hardware store who transformed magically over night) and attempted to find appropriate places to set them off. We later found out, it is apparently okay to just let them off on the side of the streets. As post-dinner time came around, walking outside on the streets of Shanghai pretty soon turned into a walk on the battlefield (minus all the blood I'd imagine, and hope)

"we're celebrating, not blowing off windows"

looks safe...

this is a bloc party, cars would just stop by and watch while they wait

When it finally came to our turn, the party quickly died down, since none of us had that kind of cash to blow on fancy fireworks...

follow the loud noises

playing with fire

Don't bother with these boxes, ours were too small to be seen

highlight of my very own firework show

It was still early after the fire works, and there was no way we were skipping count downs. But we couldn't have been more wrong... Not only will there be no count down, we also quickly found out that the bars had reduced hours during New Years (who wants to bar tend during new years right?). But hey, reduced hours are not going to stop our festivities, we eventually found a bar that was opening soon and we camped at the front door china style until they open!

another epic party we missed....

good luck cleaning this up...

Got the whole bar just for us

After some rejuvenation, the Bund was our next destination. When we got there, we realized why everywhere else was empty: It wasn't because it was freezing cold, it's because the best fire works were all gathered here!

When New Year finally came around,  the show was very unexpected. Instead of one giant organized light show, the show was many individually released, unsynced releases all over the city skyline. (Definitely another China disappointment moment, meh)

one of the many fire blossoms that bloomed that night along the Bund

walking home, all the vendors popped out to make some extra holiday bonus

Walking out of the Bund, we went by the Peace hotel and checked out their lobby once again (and to warm up). Then a couple of us bought some lanterns for making New Year wishes and finally called it a night.

let's hope 2013 will be just as good as 2012!

 What's next?