Yesterday was quite a long day. We had a car pick us up early to take us to Suzhou, a city almost two hours away. The area between Shanghai and Suzhou used to be all farmland – now it’s pretty much industrial, with small patches of farms scattered here and there.

You see buildings going up everywhere. They joke in China that the national bird is the crane – they mean the building crane, not the bird. Our guide told us that one quarter of the cranes in the world are in the Shanghai/Suzhou area.

There are sparkling modern new highways connecting the cities. In spite of the fact that these seem to have been built yesterday, one still encounters many traffic jams. Specifically, the tunnel connecting the old town of Shanghai from Pudong, the new area where we are staying, is packed all the time.

Suzhou was known as the retirement center for China in ancient times. Apparently government officials who had made a lot of money (don’t ask how) retired here because of the temperate climate. As a result there are dozens of beautiful gardens scattered throughout the city, which these wealthy men built for themselves.

Suzhou also is famous for its silk. Much of the world’s silk is made here. And finally, it’s known for its Grand Canal, built in 600 CE, running for over 1000 miles, to bring grains from Suzhou to Beijing.

We first visited the garden of the Master of the Nets – the owner built it around a fishing theme in admiration of their calm life style. Chinese gardens are quite different from ours. They have rocks, water, plants and pavilions, but few flowers. Everything has symbolism, such as carvings of bats, or the shape of the window …. it seems like half of the things mean longevity and the other half prosperity.

We then visited a silk factory. We saw the little worms that spin the cocoons, which are then unthreaded and woven into silk. It is amazing that this material is made by millions of little worms. The weaving machines were Jacquard looms, which of course had Lenny swooning. They were running very large punch card patterns to weave in the designs. Good silk has woven designs whereas cheaper silk just has the pattern printed on afterwards. Of course, the factory also had an enormous store for purchasing silk objects – it was hard to tear ourselves away from the shopping to continue our tour!

We continued on to the old town part of Suzhou for another excellent Chinese lunch. Here, among other delicacies, we tasted lotus roots with sticky rice.

After lunch we went to the Garden of the Humble Administrator. This garden’s creator apparently had a sense of humor because there was nothing humble about his garden. It was enormous – with many pavilions, islands, manmade mountains, carvings, and plants. It also had an impressive bonsai collection.

Then we took a ride on a gondola on a part of the canal system. Suzhou is called the “Venice of China” for its interconnected waterways. They decided that the canals made more sense than roads because it is a low area, with a lot of water, so the water was put to good use.

Private boats now are banned on the waterways, and only tourist gondolas are allowed. Apparently the canals used to be full of trash, which they aren’t now. In fact, I keep forgetting to mention how clean China is. Everything seems to be spotless. Garbage collectors are everywhere, picking up after people. We passed a garbage collecting gondola on the canal, for example, gathering up stray pieces of paper and flotsam. We see people sweeping the streets in the morning by hand as well.

Back to Suzhou. The canal ride was fun in that it gave us a chance to see houses and a life style that is a good bit older than all the modern high-rises we see everywhere. I particularly got a kick out of seeing the mops hanging from windows. You just lower them to dip them into the water, mop your floor, then rinse them out in the canal.

After a long ride back to Shanghai, we met my friend Len Baker’s son, Griff, and his girlfriend, Sissy, for a lovely dinner. Griff has lived in Shanghai for five years. We had a delicious dinner with a spectacular view of the Bund, the European designed area across the river from Pudong. We enjoyed hearing about life in Shanghai from Griff and Sissy.

-- Donna