Around Suzhou

---

This entry is going to be about odds and ends of our life here. Since I don't seem to be able to upload photos to the site today, I'll try to post them on Picasa and hope you can follow along.

Jerone took us to see the Suzhou Science and Art Centre last Thursday. It's very impressive and in a lovely location on the shore of Jinji Lake along with the Expo Centre, Rainbowalk and the Suzhou Outlets. After we had walked through the Centre, we went to Time Square and saw the huge overhead movie screen and the overwhelming show being displayed there. Time Square is a very large, modern extravaganza of shopping, the video screen, canals, bridges and so on, most of it heavily underutilized. Henning and I biked out for breakfast on Sunday since he was wanting to see the large department store. The building was lovely in the evening lights and we were both curious about how the space was used and presented inside. I won't say it was disappointing; shops are shops everywhere and the architecture that was so interesting from the outside, doesn't really show up inside. All of the merchandise is very expensive brand name consumer stuff, purses, luggage, clothing, sports equipment, jewellery. I don't think any Chinese can afford it but I've said that about a lot of things here.

The bike ride out was fun. Suzhou is dead flat so biking isn't a chore.It took us about an hour to get there since we got lost a couple of times. On the way back, it was hot enough that we decided to stop and have a coffee at Starbucks then continue home. Caroline came over to practice her English that evening so we had a fairly full weekend.

I almost forgot dinner on Saturday with Annette and Rob at one of the restaurants out on Rainbowalk so we could watch the light show. It was very good and the higher view was great.

Yesterday I biked out to SIP to meet Annette and we biked around some of the lake. Hot when we stopped for a soft drink but very pleasant otherwise. Li Gong Di is a new area on one of the causeways with lots of space for high-end restaurants, pubs and shops but most of it is still empty. I'll take the camera along when Henning and I go out so I can post some photos of it.

---