On Sunday, November 8th, we went to the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai. Overall, I was impressed by the size of this museum. It had an extremely large variety of exhibits which were mostly marked well in English. The building itself was what impressed me the most. The central area is a large geodesic dome. There are also 4 different types of movie theatres - Imax Dome, 3-D Imax, 4-D and Space Theatre, unfortunately, the movies were only in Chinese, so we didn't go to any. There were many areas that we didn't have [View Full Entry]

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The Super Brand Mall is definitely bigger than any mall I've ever been to! Now for those of you who know me well, I'm not really much of a shopper, so that doesn't say a lot, but, it is 10 stories high and even has an ice skating rink on the 8th floor! The Chinese call it Zhengda Guangchang. After almost 2 hrs traveling time - a taxi to the metro station nearest our apt, then 3 different metro lines, and a walk across a huge street - with everything we needed for the weekend in our backpacks, we arrived at [View Full Entry]

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We went with some friends to the Shanghai Zoo on Halloween, Saturday, October 31st. I told Leah that since she couldn't go trick or treating this year that maybe the animals would do some tricks for her ; -) - which some did! and she got a couple treats - a stuffed panda and an ice cream bar! We rode what they call the "subway" (not like our subways) for the first time - it's actually elevated, not below ground! We had to take 2 taxis to the train station because they are pretty strict about only 4 passengers in a [View Full Entry]

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Finally, after having spent about 9 weeks total time in China, we got to go to the ocean! It really was close like Jim said! We left after lunch on Saturday and took a taxi. I timed it and we got there in 22 minutes! It cost us 57RMB, or a little over $7USD to get there. We had reservations at the Howard Johnson's Palm Beach Resort, where Jim stayed on his first trip here. After checking in, we headed out to explore! We started out at the Long Teng Pavilion, which is a newer temple, but we figured we could [View Full Entry]

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Jim has had to work 8 days straight after the Chinese Holiday, so we have just done some local things. The last day of his vacation time, we went out with a couple of new friends, Julie and Tina. We went to Guhua Park, which I have written about a couple of times before. Leah wanted to go back and rent a boat. This time, Julie and Tina sat in the front with Leah while Jim and I "relaxed" in the back - actually, we didn relax a lot! It was quite crowded being a holiday, and Leah kept running into [View Full Entry]

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This will be the last entry for our stay in Suzhou. After our visit to The Lingering Garden, we had planned to go to the Suzhou Museum, but upon arrival found an extremely long line, which wasn't even moving, and we decided to just go back to Jin Ji Lake. We went back to Zapata's and this time got to sit on the outdoor balcony since it wasn't crowded. While looking around from the balcony, I saw another wading type area around the side where we hadn't gone before, so we went to check that out after lunch. I think the [View Full Entry]

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There were a few directions we hadn't walked from the hotel, we took one on our way to the Lingering Garden. We found there was a very nice pedestrian shopping area, with nice fountains and displays. At one end of it was a children's amusement area, which Leah will eventually post about. It supposedly wasn't very far to the garden, but we weren't exactly sure which street to turn down, so we decided to catch a pedicab. These are the bicycles with the seats in the back. Actually, the one we took was a scooter and I think they are called [View Full Entry]

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We were ready for a simpler day, so after having lunch at TGIFriday's, we walked behind it towards Guan Qian Jie, which I wrote about last time we were in Suzhou and called it "Walking Street." We found a fun little store which Leah liked and found some treasures to buy. At the end of the little street with this store was a Christian Church. We knew that there were some around, but didn't know where. Maybe next time we're here we'll check it out better. We spent quite a bit of time in a DVD store. It's amazing all of [View Full Entry]

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Jin Ji Lake is a fairly modern area in Suzhou. Ten years ago, the lake was surrounded by farmland and fishermen. The area around the lake has now been developed with business areas, beautiful parks, residence areas, and a 9 mile walkway around the entire lake. The Lake is inside of the Suzhou Industrial Park or SIP, which was developed with the help of Singapore. "There are eight neighborhoods with diverse water and landscape expressions encircling Jinji Lake. Each neighborhood has its own identity. Neighborhoods on the western and northern shores, closer to the city of Suzhou, feature broa [View Full Entry]

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There are many gardens in Suzhou and The Master of the Nets is one of the smaller ones, but we decided to visit it because of their special night party. We saw eight different performances of various types of ancient Chinese arts, including Chinese opera, singing, instrumental solos and dancing. Each performance was introduced in both Chinese and English, and lasted about 10 minutes. It was kind of odd, even the ones that were entirely in Chinese were enjoyable - even Jim enjoyed them! Chinese opera is not what we think of opera as - it is a from of drama [View Full Entry]

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