10.20.08 Suzhou

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So I have two weekends to catch up on. The first not so exciting, but the second involves a trip to Suzhou and Shanghai. Two weekends ago I hung out with Dave and had pizza and watched the Office. My first typical laid back Friday I think since being in China. The pizza hut here is actually pretty good, although expensive and the restaurants are all super fancy. I got to see Dave’s apartment which is in the center of the main, central district, Jei Fang bei. His apartment building is significantly larger than mine. He was on the thirty sixth floor! I must say the elevator was efficient/fast…my ears popped on the way up! It was like a huge hotel.
Another night I went out with a Russian student here that I met at a video store a couple weeks back. He invited me to go to a German restaurant. Who knew they had German food in Chongqing?! Trying to meet him turned out to be more difficult than I would have though. First I was just going to meet him at the gate of his university, but then I guess the taxi driver let me off at the wrong gate because we were definitely not in the same place. So then we ended up meeting back at our original meeting place, the video shop to go to the German restaurant. It is so hard to go to new places here because even though the German restaurant has an English name, it also has a very different Chinese name, which is the name all the taxi drivers know, but not the name I know! The German restaurant was interesting. The waitresses all wore floor-length checkered maiden gowns and the waiters all wore lederhosen. The restaurant is basically a buffet. In addition to the buffet, they have waiters come around with all different kinds of meat and they just cut some off onto your plate. Most of the meat looked inedible to me so at the end I had a plate full of uneaten meat. All I could think was Ava would be disgusted! Meanwhile, halfway through out meal, a group of about six college students came over and asked if they could take pictures with us. Twenty shots later my face was about ready to crack from smiling! Victor reminds me a lot of my friend Toan back home because he is so optimistic and energetic in every situation. We ended up being the last ones to leave the restaurant because we waited for his friend who worked there. In our conversation, I realized how oblivious I am to most of the world.
Sunday, I had my weekly brunch with the Woodruffs. It was my turn to cook so I tried to make biscuits and gravy. They were terrible! The gravy turned out ok, but the biscuits were barely edible-they were burnt and crumbled at the slightest touch. Advice on biscuit making from scratch would be helpful!

Thursday, I left on a trip with four of my students to Suzhou for a conference for all middle school QSI kids in China. There were about sixty students total. The kids had a wonderful time. I also had a nice time. The first day we arrived, we had an opening ceremony. Kids from all the schools performed some sort of Chinese art. Our students did short funny skits in Chinese. Other schools did dances, songs, drums and other skits. That night we were supposed to go to an amusement park, but it turned out that it closed early so we went bowling. The kids all loved this! Me-not such a big fan, but it was fun to see them get excited.
Everyone stayed in the same hotel. It was a nice four star hotel about five minutes from the school. Breakfast once again was not what you might expect! But there were enough recognizable things to fill me up. The next day we met back at the school for workshops. I chose to go to one on Chinese Tea Culture. This was far less informative than I had hoped. The presenter couldn’t speak English so we had a Chinese teacher translator. The problem is that the translator forgets to translate half the time because half the kids speak Chinese and can understand. In the afternoon, I went to a workshop on Chinese embroidery. This was lots of fun. It turns out all of my cross stitching has made me a natural embroiderer. I embroidered a pink flower and some greenery. Other workshops included: Chinese painting, Chinese drama, Chinese paper cutting and Chinese piano. The painting looked like lots of fun from the finished products I saw. I wish I had done that instead!
That evening we went to a silk factory. Apparently these must be common in China because I think ninety percent of the kids had already been to one before. I had never been to one though so I enjoyed it. The tour guide we had was hilarious! She explained the life cycle of the silk worm. It is amazing how much thread a little worm can make in its lifetime. We got to feel some silk worms outside of their cocoons. They were very smooth. We also got to feel the silk worms inside their cocoons. The cocoons feel like cotton. Some cocoons have two silk worms inside. These cocoons are used to make bullet proof vests because they are so strong. The factory worked basically by having women put eight threads from eight different cocoons on a machine wheel and then letting the machine turn those eight threads into one silk thread that will then be used to make clothing or quilts. I have decided I must have a silk quilt one day!
We ate dinner Chinese style at the restaurant at the silk factory. The food in Suzhou is much more familiar than in Chongqing. People from Chongqing and Chendu were complaining the food was too sweet. I was very happy though! Mainly only spicy food is found in restaurants in my area of China.
After dinner, we were on a boat ride down the Grand Canal. This was lots of fun. There are houses right up next to the canal on both sides. We saw one women standing outside her house brushing her teeth in the canal. Suzhou is know for it’s beautiful gardens. The story is that a long time ago, an emperor (don’t remember which one) wanted to see the gardens in Suzhou, but it was so far away, that he decided to have his men build a canal so he could travel to the gardens by boat. (This was obviously before cars). The canal took twenty years to finish and then the emperor made his way by boat with eighty strong men rowing. However, the emperor was so impressed by the beauty surrounding the canal, that he order the men be replaced by beautiful young women to slow the pace and give him time to enjoy the scenery. After the boat ride, we went back to the hotel and the kids got to hang out with new friends for a while before bed.
Saturday, there were two field trip options. I chose to go to an embroidery village and others went to see Lion Gardens. The embroideries at the museum in the embroidery village were amazing. They literally looked like paintings unless you got really close. I can’t imagine the amount of work that goes into just one. We saw some women working on embroideries in the courtyard of the museum. It was a little disappointing because these women were simply embroidering over a printed picture on fabric. One of the other teachers said she went to an oil painting area and they did the same thing for oil painting. Like paint by numbers! I suppose this is even worse! After the museum, we went to an embroidery factory. This was very small. There were a bunch of women in tiny rooms on every floor just embroidering away. I would hate having this as my life! I would consider the factory to be more true embroidery because the women drew outlines on fabric with chalk rather than having the picture graphically printed. One cool thing they can do is that they can make an embroidery of a person in a photograph. I’m sure this is very expensive.
After the factory, we went to shop a little. All the stores had embroidery and only embroidery! It was rather expensive and not really my thing so I left empty handed.
We met up with the group who went to the gardens for lunch. We had our lunch served in wooden boxes divided into several sections called Bento boxes. This is common in Japanese culture. Every box had something different: beef and peppers, rice, peanuts, steamed baby cabbage, pickled cabbage and some other vegetable I’m not sure what it was. After lunch, we went shopping along the main street for shopping in Suzhou. This was fun because I went with my students and Angela (Chinese teacher at our school who also went on the trip). We all tried on qipaos (the traditional Chinese dresses). The slit went straight up to my hip! Two of my students bought dresses though that looked adorable and Angela bought a shirt.
Saturday night we had dinner at the hotel before going to a dance for the kids. I signed up to have a foot massage next door during the dance. I went to the beginning of the dance because they had dancers from a nearby university perform traditional dances from Thailand. My massage did not last the entire evening, so when I came back, I was recruited as a judge for some of the competitions such as Most Likely to be on High School Musical and Best Air Guitarist. Joanie (the teacher who I replaced and is now at another school in China) and I won best teacher dancers. I think mine must have been a pity award…because everyone knows I am far from being a good dancer!
Sunday, we took a van to Shanghai. All of my students have been there many times so they knew where to go. We went to supposedly the biggest, cheapest shopping center in Shanghai. I wanted to buy everything! I ended up leaving with only a necklace and a North Face ski jacket. I know it is probably not real, but it seems to be pretty high quality. We met one of my student’s mother’s close friend for lunch and went to her house for a little while after lunch. Then we drove by the Pudong so we could officially say we’d been to Shanghai. By this point it was time to get to the airport and go home.
Overall it was a fun and full trip!

Sorry for the lack of photos. My camera died half way through and most of the photos I do have have students in them and so I don't want to publicly post those. I wish Google Blog worked in China!

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Comments

[Doc]

Not sure what this is....
The item you are asking about is for men. You hang your suit coat on the hanger and your pants on the rod.

[Kathleen]

Hotel Room "Sculpture"
If you look at it closely, you can see it is a place to put your suit at night (if you are a man). The jacket hangs from the top part and the pants go over the wire part 1/2 down. The round part...for a hat, perhaps. Sounds like a great trip.

[Helen]

We really enjoyed Suzhou when we visited our daughter in Shanghai. We loved the silk factory getting to see how they make it from the little worms eating through to the beautiful silk pieces. I think the little round thing on the men's "valet" is for their keys and pocket change. Glad you are enjoying your life in China.