Suzhou and Zhou Jian

I had a great time this past weekend at Suzhou with six other teachers - kind of a last long weekend with the group. Mark, Barbara, Janet, Fitz & Liz and I were from Changzhou and we met up with Celia from Wuxi on Friday. The whole weekend started off with a bang when Mark (another teacher from the States) and I got almost to the train station and realized that we both had left our passports at home. That is definitely a NO-NO since you can't get into your hotel without it. So we had to tell the others to go on and we went in and bought new tickets on the D train for an hour later. I think the poor little taxi driver was in a state when we finally got across to him that we only had one hour to get to Mark's place, get his passport (he lives on the fifth floor and can't walk very fast due to an accident), go to my apt., me go to the 4th floor, snatch my passport, then speed back to the train station. Now the new D-trains do not wait until everyone is on before they take off. If you aren't on board when the automatic doors close, tough luck...and the train is only stopped at the dock for 3 minutes!

Anyway, on the way back to the station there had been an accident and our taxi was forced to sit and wait and by the time we got to the station we only had seven minutes to get upstairs, through the terminal, down two flights of stairs and out to the dock before the train pulled in. I was mentally saying "Come on Mark, you can do this!" We actually managed to get to the right place as the trained pulled in. (Thank goodness that train only had 8 cars) We got on and walked about 10 feet to our seat and the train took off! Ifwe had been 3 or 4 seconds later we would have been out 50 RMB and still having to go buy another ticket! That was too close a call for comfort! In the end, we arrived at Suzhou only 35 minutes behind the other teachers since they had to take a T train.

We stayed at the Bamboo Grove Hotel which is very nice. We did the rounds of Shi Qian street (otherwise called "silk street"), the Suzhou Museum, the little Sa Ca cafe for a snack lunch, the Master of the Nets garden, and up to the tall pagoda to check on water color paintings. All in all it was a very profitable afternoon even if we did get caught in a downpour. :)Three of us decided to go the Zhou Jian (a watertown about an hour's drive out) the next morning. So after a delicious "Western" breakfast the hotel hired us a private car and driver who took us to Zhou Jian and waited on us for two hours while we tramped around looking at the sites (and wishing we had told him at least 3 hours), and then drove us back to the hotel. We even met up with a group of teachers from Beijing and shared a boat with them. The little man is trying to get his 3-wheeled cart up the steps that cross over the canal. Also, one of the things that Zhou Jian is known for is its ham hocks. Janet and I bought two that were vacuum packed to bring back with us. (yum yum!) We even saw some of the famous "cement" boats. It is hard for me to imagine them floating, but you can see these men are working on one of them. We watched these two ladies weaving with silk. It looked like back-breaking work!

Later that afternoon we went to the "Old Streets" of Suzhou where they have canal boats, shops, old homes, etc. It was really interesting too. Finally by 5:00 it was time to head for the station and catch the train back to Changzhou. I think everybody had a great time and enjoyed the break from school before coming back to finish up preparations for final exams.

More later, Zai Jian!