Jiangsu Cities: October Holiday Part 2

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I returned to Changzhou from Shanghai on Sunday because of the wedding on Monday. The wedding was nice and the food was great, though it was quite a bit calmer and more understated than what I'm told is the traditional Chinese wedding. Most of the international department was there, and I finally got to meet Neal's then-six-month-old daughter, Olivia.

That evening I embarked on my trip to nearby Suzhou and Wuxi with Nora, a senior who helped show me and the Finns around when we arrived, and who had plans to visit a friend in Wuxi that week. (It turned out to be absolutely essential to have a Chinese speaker lead me around, as these cities had very little support for English speakers.) So a day after arriving back from Shanghai I took the one-hour bus ride to the train station again just to travel 20 minutes to Wuxi.

Wuxi seemed to be a pretty bustling small city, more "urban" by my standards than Changzhou, which basically means highly walkable (it's a treat when there are actually sidewalks) and a prevalence of old and new buildings alike. But when we got to the hostel that Nora had booked, it turned out they didn't take foreigners! In China, hotels and hostels have to get separate certification to be allowed to take foreigners, and since it was a holiday week they were especially opposed to taking me since there was a greater chance they'd be audited by some sort of official. They let us use their computer to try to find another place, but the very few places that did take foreigners were either completely booked or were expensive hotels. After an hour, we decided just to go back to Changzhou and start over the next day. So it was back to the Wuxi train station, 20 minutes on the train, one hour on the bus back to the campus, and then the next morning another hour back to the train, which we took this time to Suzhou (30 minutes), followed immediately by a half-hour bus ride to beautiful Tongli.

Tongli is a tiny, postcard-perfect town with cobblestone streets and old buildings like in Toledo (Spain, not Ohio), and a handful of interurban canals like in Venice. There are a few notable sights, like the Sex Culture Museum, but I'm not sure there's much more than 24 hours worth of stuff to do there. Our next stop was Suzhou, a beautiful bigger city with great restaurants and not a bad night scene (we were there on a Thursday). Suzhou is most famous for its classical gardens, which are nice, but to the unrefined like me fit the "seen one, seen 'em all" bill. The highlight, for me, was running into not one but two groups of Spanish-speaking tourists, including two Argentines! We saw a few of them again later that night at a bar. It is such a thrill to get to speak Spanish here in China.

Suzhou also has lots of great shops, but one caught me completely off guard. New Yorkers will understand my utter shock and elation when, all of a sudden, I saw a Mister Softee. Yes, that Mister Softee, complete with cartoon ice cream cone head and "The Very Best" slogan. But this wasn't a truck, rather a storefront. And there were Chinese characters accompanying the logo, both on the walls, menu, and even on the otherwise authentic milk shake cups. I couldn't believe it! Mister Softee is a staple of New York City summers, the jingle ubiquitous in any neighborhood with a school. The employees explained that the boss was in fact from New York. The Times, incidentally, has had several articles about Mister Softee in recent years, but none mention China. I went back to Suzhou on a trip with the international department, and would you believe that on a different street I found another Mister Softee store. Incredible.



We decided to do Wuxi for a day trip on the way back from Suzhou, and there we went to a sort of historical site with lots of Buddhist-style temples and performers dressed in traditional clothing reenacting ancient times, most notably an important battle between rival kingdoms that was staged on horses and included some pretty cool stunts. I was exhausted from nine days of travel within a two-hour radius, but after a month in China it was great to see that there's much more to the country than the figurative and literal grays of Changzhou.

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Photos

Performance in Tongli
The big orange things are dragons

Sex Culture Museum in Tongli
Before I saw the "No Photo" sign (which I also took a photo of)

Comments

[James Conway]

Mister Softee
Got your post via Google alerts. Great that you found both stores. There are also trucks. A young American, Turner Sparks runs the business in China. He is partners with my son Alex and a Chinese national Jeffrey Cai. They have plans to expand the business to other cities and ultimately begin franchising. The Chinese website is www.mistersofteechina.com . For me the best part of my visit to China was Xian and the terra cota soldiers. Good luck, James Conway VP - Mister Softee Inc.