Gardens, Worms & Gondolas

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Geo: 31.3, 120.62

Our breakfast at the Pan Pacific Hotel was as elaborate as all the previous mornings with the addition of ice cream. Yes, Brennan had mango and "yum" ice cream for breakfast.

The hotel had a 10-acre garden with ponds filled with koi, pagodas, foot bridges and flowers still in bloom. The downside was that we only had a few minutes to walk around the grounds and it was our first day with rain.

We were loaded onto the bus and headed to the Garden of the Master of Fishing Nets, dating back to 1140. While driving, Jo told us how the city of Suzhou was situated at the south end of the 1100 mile Grand Canal that begins north of Beijing. The canal provided transport of goods, connecting the Yangtze and Yellow rivers. Suzhou now has a population of over 8 million, about the same size (give or take a million!) as Xi'an and Hangzhou.

Garden to the ancient Chinese meant home or house and the Garden of the Master of Fishing Nets was just that. After entering the gate, it opened into several buildings with ponds connected with waterways and bridges. The whole complex might cover one acre.

Upon entering one of the rooms, Jo mentioned the high thresholds that you have to step over and told us never to step on it and that women stepped over with their right foot and men with their left foot (another superstition to bring good luck or prevent bad luck).

It was here that Jo told us about the binding of women's feet, which lasted over a 1000 years, not ending until the 1st of the 20th Century. This was done primarily to the girls of well-to-do families. With the feet bound from infancy, the foot would grow to no more than three inches and was terribly deformed. One of the motivations behind the binding was to keep the women within the house because they couldn't walk any distance or remain on their feet. It kept women in their place. Even the house showed the differences between where the men spent time (much more elaborate furniture, libraries and in the front of the house where there was more light) and where the women might knit or do handiwork (definitely no reading and in the interior where there was no natural light). The windows in these homes were covered with silk screen paintings that added color and still allowed light to pass through.

We had a great time feeding the koi with our left over popcorn. There was also an art class with children between 8 and 10 years old doing sketches of the garden. Some were talented artists!

Planted in the garden were mulberry trees, the food source of the silk worm, and pomegranate trees which were common because they symbolize fertility due to a pomegranate's many seeds.

Back on the bus, we headed for the government-run silk spinning mill and store. On this trip, we have toured the "government run" pearl store, jade store and now silk. The total per person cost of our trip was about equal to the round trip airfare from JFK to Beijing. That left almost an equal cost for hotels, entry fees, guide service, meals and in-country flights and transit. Who paid for it all?! Our guess is that it must be heavily subsidized by the government. Everyone on our tour bought things at some or all of these government stores. Additionally, this is a shoulder season and a subsidy would keep the hotels full and merchants busy -- just a theory!

Back to the Silk Spinning Mill -- in a word -- fascinating. Legend has it that the cocoon of a silk worm dropped into the tea cup of a woman sitting in her garden in Suzhou. In the tea, the cocoon began to unravel and, walla, a mile long (literally) strand of silk thread. The thread is so thin that at least eight are woven together to make one larger thread.

The demonstration took us from moth to egg, to caterpiller to cocoon, to soaking the cocoon, unraveling the cocoon to a series of looms that lead to a bolt of cloth. If the cocoons are not harvested at exactly the right time, the pupa begins to eat its way out and the cocoon is ruined for use as silk. To put this all in perspective, it takes thousands of cocoons to make a single scarf. Don't ask how many for a king-sized bedspread!

The double pupa cocoons were being used for the matting in silk comforters. We all got to help stretch these pieces of wet silk from a two-foot square onto a frame -- pretty cool! These comforters (the filling for a duvet) were only $100, but the silk duvet covers were around $500. So, no, we didn't buy one from the government store!

We were actually looking for a silk robe for Brennan, but they only had them in children's sizes that he has already outgrown or in adult sizes. He did try on a beautiful boy's silk traditional dress outfit that fit him perfectly, but where would he wear such a thing? Great picture, though!

For convenience, we had our typical lazy susan lunch at the Spinning Mill. It was disgusting! It was all bones -- chicken bones, fish bones, pork bones. No one ate anything! And, Sue keeps asking why do they call it a Lazy Susan?!!

It took us about an hour to get to our next stop, Tongli. Jo described Tongli as a small river town of about 30,000. To us it was an Asian Venice, more canals than streets. Jo explained that these small towns were becoming the homes of only the elderly and shopkeepers. All the young people migrate to the cities where there are better jobs and amenities like western toilets.

Most of the buildings were no more than two stories and almost all gray in color. The canal walls were made of stone with many foot bridges connecting the two sides. Jo walked us to our gondalas where our group of 25 split up on four boats. We had a woman gondolier and because Brennan was the kid, we had seven in ours. It was at least a 30 minute ride and the locals on the sidewalks were taking pictures of us Westerners and we were taking pictures of them! The canals were lined with shops, homes and restaurants. Our attached pictures are worth a 1000 words.

One of the most unusual things any of us have ever seen were the fishing cormorants. On a boat the size of our gondola, a man had about eight cormorants tethered to perches with a rope around one leg. He would whack them with an oar and they would dive in the canal and come up with a fish in their mouth/upper throat. Not a big deal except they had a string tied around their neck at mid-length, preventing the poor bird from swallowing the fish. The "fisherman" would then grab the bird and make it spit out the fish into the hold of the boat -- gross or ingenious, take your pick. We could not believe what we were seeing.

This was a very picturesque little town and we did a little shopping. We bought Brennan an ice cream cone, a 1/2 dozen tangerines for the road and a gourd flute. Brennan had at least a dozen people take his picture with them -- maybe the only Caucasian kid they would see in 2014!

It was now late afternoon and we had a 1-1/2 to 2 hour bus ride to Shanghai, our last destination.

It was after dark when we arrived in Shanghai and the lights of the city were impressive. It is a city of skycrapers and we had a lazer show dancing from the top of our 35-story hotel, the Renaissance, and a half dozen other buildings. We were on the 10th floor and, once again, Brennan had a roll-away bed. A feature here, as in all of our hotels, is that we have toothbrushes, combs, razors, slippers and robes in the rooms. Brennan has quite a collection of combs and Chinese toothpaste!

One of the people in our tour group asked Jo about getting a tailored suit. She made arrangements for a tailor to meet us at our hotel. The plan was to measure on Sunday night, first fitting on Monday night with the final product delivered on Tuesday. Dave was in need of a new sport jacket and the plan worked perfectly. For a few dollars more than off the rack in the U.S., he had a perfect fitting cashmere jacket.

After the fitting, we headed out for our first dinner on our own. We had talked for days that it would be pizza! The Concierge at the hotel pointed out two places in a shopping mall area about a 20-minute walk from our hotel. Along the way, we stopped in a huge mall and watched Brennan on a Jumbotron with various characters that were being manipulated to look like he was dancing and playing with them. One was a dinosaur!

We found the Pizza Hut with little difficulty, but after 20 minutes at the table with no service, we walked out. After a 30 minute search for the second, even with the help of a very nice local woman, we could not find another pizza place. We had three choices: Chinese food, a Chinese KFC (which looked really bad) or return to the Pizza Hut. You guessed it, Pizza Hut. We got good service and a good pizza. End to another great day. Happy Birthday to Dave's Mom!

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Comments

[dave-sue]

Notice the scale.