Saturday, August 18, 2018
Shanghai-Suzhou
We awoke today feeling remarkably rested after a night in a very comfy bed. Since we loved the hotel so much, we savored our time in it and lingered in bed with TV that had English channels (CNN and CGTV) that offered us global news. Included in our room tariff was Breakfast which was offered in a grand dining hall in the adjoining building. And it was magnificent. Indeed there was everything you could think of and more: Western items with full Chinese lunch items as well—it appears that the Chinese eat what we would call ‘brunch’ every day —they eat rice and noodles and meat and vegetables in the morning.
As for me, I ate muesli with dried fruits and nuts, after which I had a custom-made omelette with ham and cheese, before helping myself to grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach, sausage, bacon, hash browns, followed by fruit and a Caesar Salad. With this kind of a breakfast offered for three days, we would not eat again until 4.00 pm. (This was exactly what we had done in the UK on our travels in B&Bs where humongous English breakfasts are included).
By the time we took the subway to get to Shanghai Railway Station, it was past 10.00 am and the city went about its business in a brisk and bustling manner. It took us ages to find out where the Ticket Window was—this was one of those times when I really wished we were on a conducted tour and did not need to figure out how to communicate our needs to people. After standing in three different wrong queues (fortunately short ones), we found ourselves at the right counter to buy tickets for Suzhou. Having found out what a challenge it was, we also purchased our tickets for Hangzou (pronounced Haang-jo) for tomorrow. It was a relief to find an English-speaking young female clerk at the counter. The first train to Suzhou was at 11.10 am—this left us nearly an hour to find our platform—but by then we knew the drill and did not need to feel concerned about finding the right train or the right car.
Arrival in. Suzhou:
On the train, I promptly fell asleep. The fatigue of the last few days is definitely getting to me and I curl up and nap at the slightest opportunity. Llew got into conversation with a business man who spoke fairly good English and who offered very interesting insights and information on modern-day China, its outlook and vision for the future.
About 90 minutes later, we were pulling into Suzhou when the rest of the world seemed to be disembarking with us. Honestly, everywhere we went, the crowds were huge. Once we arrived at the main hall of the station, we found an information counter from where we picked up a map. Suzhou, it turned out, was larger than we had imagined and we would only get a small flavor of it on a day trip.
So why Suzhou? Why had I placed it on our itinerary? First of all, since this was our second visit to Shanghai, we did not feel the need to take in the usual sights such as the Bund, the Yuyuan Gardens, the Poeple’s Park, etc. as we had visited these sites on our previous visit. We decided to reach out beyond the city this time and take in the provincial towns that had garnered fame over the centuries—places like Suzhou and Hangzou. Suzhou was known, since medieval times, as the Garden City of China. It was the one to which dignitaries of the court retired when their service to Chinese royalty ended. They created canals in the city that were as extensive and pretty as those in Venice—giving it the title of ‘The Venice of the East’. Wealthy people built houses and designed gardens for relaxation in this city. Marco Polo writes glowingly about it in his travelogues (as he does about Hangzou).
For me, personally, Suzhou held particular interest because for over two decades, when taking international visitors to the Ming Scholar’s Garden in the Astor Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I have referred to one of the gardens in Suzhou called the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets on which it is modeled. Hence, visiting this garden was my main priority in getting to Suzhou.
We were told that the best, easiest and fastest way to get to the garden was by cab. But again, having purchased two sets of train tickets, Llew began to run short of local money and needed a bank so that we would have enough for the taxi fare, the entry fees for the garden, etc. This proved to be a huge challenge again but, in the end, in the basement of the railway station, we did find an ATM that gave us cash. The reason for this mad dash to find cash is because Visa and MasterCard are rarely accepted in China. They have their own alternate money system based on something called Alibaba that offers Alicash at counters called Alipay!
Exploring the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets:
With little time to spare, we hailed a cab and made it to the garden which had a most nondescript entrance. We walked along a very narrow lane lined on both sides with makeshift shops selling souvenirs before we arrived at the entrance and the ticket office. For 40 yuan each, we gained entry into a tucked-away world of greenery and quietude which was exactly what Mrs. Brooke Astor had remembered of her growing years in Beijing (then called Peking). The garden is said to get its name from the gardener who created it in the mid-1600s—a well-heeled worthy who gave up his life of high level diplomacy to take up fishing as a hobby. The garden is simply exquisite and has all the requisite features that comprise a Chinese garden—architecture (there are Ming-era halls or rooms filled with original Ming rosewood furniture), Tai rocks (limestone rocks from the river Tai) that are chiseled and carved to resemble jade sculpture as well as the mountains (of which the Chinese are so fond), greenery (lots of plants), a vast pond in the center that had a greenish hue, several cute bridges that allowed visitors to span the various parts of the garden. It was another very hot day and the sun was strong, but at least there was no rain and we could enjoy the garden fully.
After we had taken a vast number of pictures, I ventured into a side garden, purely by chance, and had the most pleasant surprise: this was called the Peony Court but it was the exact same garden that is reproduced at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of the Asian galleries. I was so excited—seriously, I was beyond words. I had waited a long time to tick off this Bucket List item—22 years, to be exact. And finally, I was actually there, walking through the spot in the flesh. As Llew said, it was only a pity that I have stopped giving tours at the Met or else I could have stated that I have actually been to the original garden in Suzhou on which the Ming Scholar’s Garden is based. In fact, I was so excited to be there that Llew made a video of me in the garden—where, to our annoyance, a group of tourists were being given a tour by a guard who went on and on in Chinese. In the end, since we were running short of time, we simply went ahead with our video with his commentary in the background.
The Humble Administrator’s. Garden:
Since it was still only about 2.00 pm, we had time to consider visiting the other famous garden in Suzhou called the Humble Administrator’s Garden. But trying to find a taxi that would take us there was another huge pain in the behind. The sun was merciless and there is rarely a sheltering tree under whose shade one can find refuge in China. None of the taxis were empty and those that were, did not stop when we hailed them. It was most frustrating. Finally, to our good luck, one did stop and found a way to take us to our next destination—communicated to him by pointing it out on the map where it was named in English and in Chinese.
The cab ride was simply delightful as we drove right along one of the canals for which Suzhou is famed. There are small canal-side gardens with pagodas that offer shade, cherry trees that line the banks and that reminded us very much of the Cherry Tree Walk in Kyoto, Japan. All along the way, traffic was crazy and bumper to bumper. Eventually, when we got to the spot, we found the place simply mobbed—thankfully, the Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets was much less popular. It turned out this garden is right next door to the Suzhou Museum which is free to enter and where thousands of Chinese visitors had lined up to get in. Next door also is the Suzhou Silk Museum which is also one of the highlights of the city as silkworms were first bred in Suzhou and silk was first produced here. Hence, it was a common stop on the Silk Route—which also explains its medieval prosperity during the Ming era.
We discovered a long line of people waiting for tickets—that’s another thing: in China, because there are over a billion people, there are lines for everything. You cannot ever just walk up to a window and get service. Tickets cost 90 yuan each and since we basically had only 20 minutes to see the garden, we decided against it. By the time we got our tickets, we’d probably have less than ten minutes inside! Instead, we lingered outside the museum by the canal and took pictures.
We were very fortunate to find a taxi almost immediately after we got back to the main road that took us back to Suzhou station for our 3.58 pm train. The reason we had rushed through the day’s visit was because I was keen to visit the Shanghai Museum (which we did not have the time to see the last time we were in the city) and I had the impression that it stayed open till 8.00 pm on Saturdays. Turned out I was wrong. Once in Shanghai, we raced to the People’s Park subway stop to get to the Museum, but found that it was close to 5pm and people were pouring out of it. We were too late and there was no late-evening opening. Also we were really tired as the hectic nature of our travels were beginning to take their toll on us. Nothing seemed more temptying to us than to get back to our hotel to stretch out and relax. So we crossed Nanjing Road and went into Raffles. City mall hoping to find dinner in the basement Food Court. We ended up buying skewered kebabs and excellent sushi which we thoroughly enjoyed in our hotel over wine and beer. Then it was time to shower and go to bed for a well-deserved rest.
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