China, day 6!

Today, Tim and I got ready, and headed outside to catch the bus to the 2 line. Three or four busses passed us going the other way, and there was a large crowd waiting for our bus. It was very, very late, and when it came everyone crammed onto it. It seemed like they would hustle around to make enough room for everyone but us. When we tried to get on, they stared at us angrily, so we didn't bother. Fortunately, that one bus was just backed up, and another emptier bus soon came along. We hopped onto that, and then transferred to the metro. We realized a little too late that there were two train stations in shanghai and we weren't perfectly sure which one we wanted, but we took an educated guess and went to the train station!

When we got off the metro, there was a swarm of Chinese people with luggage outside of the train station. It was a crazy mess, but we figured it out and got inside. We waited for our train, and when it came we boarded and rode the train to Suzhou! When we arrived and exited the train station, we were mobbed by people thrusting papers with photographs of all the landmarks trying to shove us into a taxi. We had been warned about this happening, but it was still a shock. We managed to get through the mob and started walking around. We had a little trouble at first, but we eventually managed to find the first place we wanted to see, the humble administrator's garden. It was a very zen area, and my only problem with it was that there were so many people. They had carted all of the rocks in from the ocean side, which makes you wonder how they did it. They either had horse or oxen drawn carts that they levered the rocks onto but...wow. They had all sorts of cool rocks that had caves and little tunnels you could walk through. We went through one, and it was so dark inside that I smashed my head and saw stars for a while after. People laughed when we exited because we were so much bigger that we had a harder time getting through. We spent a few hours wandering through the garden, which was very nice and zen.






When we left the garden, we walked through a maze of vendor carts, and finally emerged onto the street again. They really make it so that you have to walk through an entire shopping plaza before you can leave the garden. We figured out where we were on the map and headed towards the center of Suzhou, which was supposed to be the old city. It didn't look very old when we got there, and it was really just a lot of shopping. We were completely uninterested in shopping, especially since all shopping in Shanghai seems to be identical, so we found a restaurant and sat down to eat lunch. I ordered a steak curry and a matza coffee. I didn't know what matza was and I figured I'd be adventurous and try it. The Matza coffee came out of the kitchen and it was green. It wasn't very good. Tim was convinced it was seaweed, and I was convinced I'd never again order anything with the word matza in it. I tried to Google it to figure out what it was, but I keep getting results with the unleavened bread so whatever was in that coffee will always be a mystery.

After lunch and relaxing, we decided to walk to the other corner of the city to see the old city gates. We wandered down the streets and were amazed at the things you can buy right off the streets. They also have an astonishing lack of concern for the dangers of working with organic solvents and don't follow any safety protocols. Eventually we got to the general region of the city gate, but we couldn't figure out how to get in! We walked across a bridge to the other side of the moat, and walked through a park on the other side, figuring that we could see the gate and figure out how to get in! The idea was successful with a nice peaceful walk through the park. After a while we got to a little bridge that we could walk back over the moat into the city gate. We paid more than we thought it was worth to get into the gate area, and explored for a while! It was cute to see, and we took a few photos. There was a land gate and a water gate, with a few ways to defend each gate.




We realized that time was running out before our train left, so we wandered back through the city to the train station. The train ride back to the center of Shanghai was pretty uneventful, and when we got home, dinner was ready! It was chicken, asparagus, and mashed potatoes. I was pretty worn out, so I went to bed after reading for a while.