Blogs from Tongli, Jiangsu, China, Asia
April 29th 2012
CHRIS In the morning a car came to pick us up. The guide's name was Kelly and she was very nice and she has been to Australia, she went to Sydney, Melbourne among other places. We drove out a long way to see the water town which is an old town built next to two rivers. We caught a boat to the other side of the water town and gave a toy koala to a little girl. (We have been giving out little toy koalas wherever we go) We saw a very old house where a rich Japanese family used to live. When we were going home we were caught in a very bad traffic jam but Kelly told us the traffic was quite normal. When we got back to the hotel, Mum let us order ... read more
January 22nd 2012
Arriving in Suzhou our impression was of another city of high rises in the dusty afternoon so we jumped on a bus to Tongli where the unlucky recipient of 'Do you speak English?' was Alice (Xu-jia) a university student studying design at Nanjing with little enthusiasm, home for the holidays. We were fortunate that she had listened to the repeated propaganda of a TV ad at the bus station exhorting the population to be kind to the elderly, don't push, be quiet in cinemas and libraries and most importantly to help tourists! Her reluctant English improved and she kindly arranged a small hotel for us and once ensconced showed us the gated water village. Was this old China, or a Disneyland version? We wandered along the canals and narrow lanes and were told most adamantly not ... read more
October 27th 2009
I arrived in Tongli about 4 pm and found quite easily the old town and in that part a hotel room. There is an entrance fee for the old town, but luckily I’d got a discount via the hostel in Suzhou. Tongli is one of the famous water towns and there are many tourists that do a daytrip from Suzhou or Shanghai to Tongli. This was the reason I went late in the afternoon to stay the night. Indeed I didn’t see many tourists that day. The street to the old town and the first four streets in the old town are very touristy, but the rest of the streets are not like that. The atmosphere in those parts is so relaxed, I cannot describe it. It felt a little like the villages on Greek Islands, ... read more
May 20th 2009
These shots from a day trip to a water village near Suzhou (about 1.5 hours west of Shanghai). Though thoroughly Chinese, the town also had a European feel to it -- a bit like Venice with its canals and bridges, and the narrow alleys and simple architecture reminded me of medieval towns in Europe. No wonder this place gets used a lot for movie sets. I heard MI:3 has some scenes from here.... read more
March 5th 2009
This walk around Tongli is a walk I would like to give as a gift to my dad who has told me how he has recently taken to getting on the local public buses in his home town of Matlock and tells the driver that he wants to go to 'Anywhere'. This is made possible as the bus ticket has a special straight UK pensioner fee of Free to any stop including 'Anywhere'. Dad then catches the bus towards a certain direction and, after a while, about 10 miles or so, he gets off the bus and walks home again... Something to do. He told me that the UK public buses are full of OAP's having a warm just riding around and then he laughs and laughs which makes me laugh, something new between me and ... read more
January 24th 2009
Tongli's Chongben Hall The Chongben Hall in Tongli was not too terribly interesting I felt. It is a Qing Dynasty mansion. A couple rooms have a few pieces of furniture, but far from enough to give an idea of what an ancient mansion was like inside. The architecture is beautiful and has beautiful woodwork, but it is not enough on its own to make it really interesting. Ticket Price: Free Time Needed: 15-20 minutes Hours of Operation: 10:00-6:00 Location: Located in the north of Tongli Village near Suzhou I was sent on an inspection tour with Access China Travel I am the Marketing Manager of Access China Travel. No one is told that I work for the company, and since I am a foreigner I can experience a tour the way our customers do. That wa ... read more
January 24th 2009
Tongli's Nanyuan Teahouse The Nanyuan Teahouse is an ancient teahouse built during the Qing Dynasty. It is located in a corner of Tongli and overlooks the shopping street. I always pick a window seat overlooking the shopping street so I can people watch. The teahouse is a two storey building. The first floor has the counters, a few chairs and an old Tiger Kiln. A Tiger Kiln is used to boil water to make it drinkable. It is heated with a wood fire. In the past it was cheaper to go to a Tiger Kiln to buy the day's drinking water than to burn wood to boil your own, so every morning everyone would head there to purchase water. They no longer use theirs, but they keep it clean and stocked so it looks like it ... read more
January 23rd 2009
Tongli Tongli is an amazing place. It is one of the Water Towns located near Suzhou. It has an many canals as it does streets and it is these canals that define the village. The village is thousands of years old and almost all of its buildings date from the Ming and Qing Dynasties and are in amazing condition. The area around Suzhou was famous for it's Hui Merchants. They were local people who traveled around China as businessmen and amassed huge fortunes. Some of them were actually richer than the emperor himself. They returned home and built magnificent gardens and mansions and utilized architectural designs from throughout China. Because of this, the tiny village of Tongli has some amazing surprises inside it. There are many mansions and private gardens. A ticket to Tongli costs 80rmb ... read more
Tongli's Garden of Seclusion and Meditation
Published: January 23rd 2009Asia » China » Jiangsu » Tongli
January 23rd 2009
Tongli's Garden of Seclusion and Meditation This is one of the many traditional Chinese gardens in Tongli. Although not built on the same scale as the ones in Suzhou, they are no less magnificent. They are free once you buy a ticket to the village. It is hard to imagine such beautiful gardens were once private property and part of someone's house. I like this garden very much. Visitors enter the garden at the living area of the house and can explore the ancient house. There are musicians there playing for visitors. Behind the living area is the garden which centers on a large lake. There are many pavilions and buildings around the lake and one pavilion is located on the top of a rockery. The garden is very peaceful and after 2:30 empty. There are ... read more
January 23rd 2009
Tongli's Pearl Pagoda Garden Tongli's Pearl Pagoda Garden is the largest of Tongli's gardens. It is an amazing place. I have been there twice and each time I find a new area I missed. This time I found the living area. I don't know how I missed it because it is large. The living area is gorgeous!It is a courtyard style home and each room is its own building and has a courtyard in between it and the next building. The living area is beautifully laid out. The garden is huge and the architecture is really beautiful! There are so many nooks and cranny's to explore and each area has a very different atmosphere than the next. The garden has a lake in it. It is the largest open area of the garden, but not the ... read more
