Two months before leaving China, it just so happened that my students' monthly exam coincided with the national Labor Day holiday, 五一节 Wu Yi Jie, and I had a spontaneous week off of school. I took my last solo vacation in China and returned to 苏州 Suzhou, where I had visited during the first Spring Festival I was in-country, under much worse weather. This go-round, the sun shone on Suzhou, making the canals glitter. I wandered cobblestone alleys past silk shops and art galleries, stopping into cafes, coffee shops, and tea houses for spurts of blog writing and language study. Suzhou was once the haunt of China's most distinguished writers, artists, and scholars, so why not capitalize on the vibe?
I found a few particularly lovely little tea houses made of creaking wooden planks, with decks overlooking the canals, where I perched for a few hours in each. I tried the local green tea, ginsing-infused oolong, 龙井 longjing (an old favorite from nearby Hangzhou), and a unique concoction of an owner's doing called something like "picking morning herbs at dusk," a collection of mint, dates, lavender, and other unknown things. There were windows open to the fresh breeze, round pomegranate pillows, and gnarled wooden tables and chairs. The trees stretched over the water, their dappled leaves lending a greenish hue to it (or was that the pollution?). Old fashioned boats glided past, locals collecting fish and clams, and women actually drew well water fed by the canals to wash their laundry outdoors.
Of course, if you venture past the old town, Suzhou, too, has been infected by the inglorious age of Chinese architecture - the white-tiled bloc. Among these, however, survive several ancient residences built around lovely gardens, and giving Suzhou a bit of its fame. (On a holiday weekend, of course, the gardens are filled with camera-toting tourists and hyper children, but they are beautiful nonetheless.). I visited a selection of those within walking distance, such as the Canglang Pavillion (aka the "Blue Wave Pavillion"), the Garden of the Master of the Nets, the Pan Gate and Ruiguang Pagoda, the Lion Forest Garden, and the Temple of Mystery. The names of the places are just fantastic, and if you turn away from the tour groups, you can find hidden corners where poetry just may speak to you from the stones.
Anything else you'd like to know? The food in Suzhou wasn't as remarkable as the stuff I ate daily in Hengyang, though I did have some dim sum in a place called Pingvon by the river, some tasty wraps of various sorts from little holes-in-the-wall, and some spare ribs and squid on a stick from street food vendors. I found a lovely bookstore/cafe that I would frequent if I were to live in Suzhou. I got a bit lost on city busses, which was frustrating, because I could read what I needed on the sign just fine, but the busses didn't go where they said the would (perhaps due to construction). I avoided pedicabs. Hotels in Suzhou are notoriously overpriced, but I found one that was walkable from the center, comfortable if a bit bland. I took sleeper trains to and from, soft-sleeper bottom berth and hard-sleeper middle berth, which I miss terribly as my time in China is up - oh, the nostalgia already!
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