Suzhou

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February 15th 2009

Published: February 15th 2009

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MereM

Suzhou gardens

Saturday the fourteenth we had another field trip, this time to Suzhou, a little city about an hour and a half away from Shanghai. We hopped on the bus around 9 am and headed out. After a nice nap we get to the city which is well known for it's gardens. We went to the largest one and had about an hour there looking around and taking pics. The English translations of the names of buildings in the gardens were pretty funny. One was something like "temple of the strong smelling lotus", I'm sure it's actually a very poetic name in Chinese but it sounded pretty awkward in English.

There were a few buildings with nothing but chairs, so I'm guessing that sitting around was a big pastime back then. There were also little ponds and rocks to climb. At one point our friend Ryan was on top of a huge rock singing the Lion King which was actually pretty funny. After we leave the gardens, we drive to another part of the city to tour a silk factory! I was really excited because I would really like to invest in some silk sheets but for some strange reason China

020

Bagota!! not sure if i spelt that right

doesn't believe in fitted sheets, so all I could buy were pillow cases and a plain sheet, so I ended up holding out on the silk.

On the way to the silk factory once again Ryan was full of jokes and managed to get hold of the intercom on our bus. He pretended to be a tour guide. He pointed to a river next to us and told us that it was a lake, then corrected himself by saying that it was a canal in Suzhou called Suzhou canal. Then he was trying to rap. Finally, he started talking about where we were headed and said something along the lines of "we're headed to the silk factory now, so maybe I can pick up some slippers, and maybe some placemats." It wouldn't be as funny except for his strong Virginia accent which made the whole thing absolutely hysterical.

At the silk factory, we first saw how we can tell the difference between real silk and fake silk by burning it. Then we went into the actual factory room where the silk was being extracted from these tiny little bug cocoons. Pretty gross but it's amazing how many worms

O Mei Da

Amanda, apparently her name o mei da in chinese means big noodles

it takes to get just a little bit of silk. We then saw how the silk is knitted together, and then of course we had to walk through gift shops that were bigger than the actual factory to get out. Definitely worth seeing.

After the factory we had lunch and I fell in love with this amazing onion dish. Afterwards we went to Tiger Hill, which is a memorial to someone important who died, it's called Tiger Hill because apparently afer the tower was built, a tiger lived there and was said to protect it. This site is also home to the 2nd most leaning tower in the world. We hiked to the top of the hill where the tower was, had fun taking pics and then all boarded the bus and headed home. It was a cool little town, I wouldn't mind going back actually.

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