![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Left home at 6:30am, got home 9pm.
Suzhou is a city about 100km west of Shanghai; it used to be bigger than Shanghai, back before the colonial powers started taking an interest in China, being situated on the river, with major luxury industries in silk and pearls. Now, it's more of a tourist town - temples and gardens and suchlike.
But such pretty temples and gardens and suchlike!
This is the part of the trip where I really got into taking photos. But I'll keep the travelogue brief so as not to bore the pants off y'all.
First stop: Lion Gardens in Suzhou.
No actual lions were involved in the creation of these gardens, though - just rocks that look vaguely like lion statues. Such is the power of the Chinese imagination - or, perhaps, of the Chinese Emperor, who named them such...
I have this thing about Chinese houses built on the water with picturesque rock gardens nearby. Xian 2008, anyone?
I can't imagine how people used to live in houses like these - the weather isn't even freezing, but everything's open, the ceilings are crazy high, and the wind blows through them like a knife! I'm shivering just thinking about it.
But the architecture is amazing. Maybe it's the Chinese heritage in me, but I love the balance of building and garden, rock, water, bridge, trees, and sky - it calls to something in me, perhaps nothing more than my own artistic/design-oriented nature. I just love the old Chinese houses and their gardens.
One of the parentals and the SIL's mother on one of the bridges.
And just two more - I promise!
Whew. Okay, sorry about that. I just get carried away by beautiful Chinese gardenscapes. I think we're kind of safe from here on in...
It was an "interesting" tour because the entire thing was conducted in Mandarin, which - as I may have mentioned - neither myself, nor my stepdad, nor my stepbrother, nor my mum speaks. (Although the stepbro is learning.) The SIL's mother speaks Mandarin, but not very good English, so the SIL was the only one who spoke both Mandarin and sufficient English to translate for what was going on.
So why did we pick this tour instead of finding one in English? Because it was about 1/5 the price of the English one! Frankly, a lot of these tours are ripoffs for English-speaking tourists - if you want a guide who can translate to English, it costs a whole heap more.
But we managed. It wasn't too bad, although the history buff in me would have liked a whole lot more detail about the places we were seeing and their history. But, hey, one can't have everything, and maybe I should start learning Mandarin so I don't have to rely on translations?
The gates into the temple compound - this was the larger of the two temples we went saw.
Pagoda - We climbed up this really steep set of stairs to look out at the world below.
Incense burner. Note the dragons winding up and down the four columns?
Worshippers buy sticks of incense, light them, and stick them in the sand and ash of the burner, offering prayers to their ancestors for luck and good fortune. The temples see extra activity come Lunar New Year
I have this thing about looking through doorways into other scenes. It may be why I love AUs and the Stargate concept so much. Or sciencefiction. Or fantasy...
The focus on this may not be the best - I blame the phone photography. It's The Journey To The West (better known to Westerners as 'Monkey Magic') - Pigsy, Tripitaka, the horse, Monkey, and Sandy - on the ridgepole of the primary temple.
We weren't allowed to take photos inside the temple.
People throw money onto the roofs. Those that fall off...are collected by the people keeping the yards and the toilets. The temples are primarily administered by monks, but there are 'lay workers' I guess, who work the bookstores, temple shops, and keep the courtyards and toilets clean.
I just like the angle of this picture, even if the winter tree is obscuring the clean lines of the wall. I think it's the diagonals and the way the eye keeps moving to the back of the picture.
Anyway, through the day, we saw The Lion Garden, two temples (one big with gardens, one small with a 8-story pagoda), and one poet's house (we were told it was just a 'small house' but the place was at least a couple of acres and had a half-dozen buildings on it), as well as a silk quilt factory, and a pearl factory.
The first temple was much bigger - apparently it was built by some really big guy for his milk-mother - the woman who breastfed him...and this one was built by the same guy for his birth mother? Or something? (SIL was a bit vague on this point, or possibly I wasn't listening...take your pick!)
Anyway, this temple was much smaller...although you could go further up the pagoda than you could the first one...
...as in seven more stories!
And yes, we climbed them ALL. (CLIMB THE STORIES. CLIMB ALL THE STORIES. ZOMG.) C/o my duplicitous and deceitful stepbro who said we'd only go a few stories up...and then just kept climbing. ARGH MY LEGS TALK TO ME MY LEGS!
Oh, and Buddha says 'hi'.
Like I said, there was a silk quilt factory in there somewhere, where I bought a silk quilt for my bed (just the quilt itself - I've already got the silk for the quilt-cover in my luggage!), and a pearl factory where I didn't buy anything at all. (No, really! The pearls weren't good enough for my $25K AUD tastes...not that I own any $25K AUD pearls...but I will...someday. Maybe.)
And there was a river cruise in there somewhere, which I didn't take pictures during. Because I didn't want to see the entire trip on my phone camera.
We went to see the garden house of a famous poet in China.
Now, the concept of poets in China doesn't quite fit the starving Bohemian image that it traditionally does in the west; poets in China tended to be more like philosophers or great teachers, putting philosophical ideas into artistic form - often with clever wordplay that is totally lost when you translate it to English.
It's like the "seafood diet" joke:
Which basically meant that I didn't get any of the poetry at all, although it sounded pretty awesome in Mandarin. I just didn't have the faintest idea what the guide was explaining.
And the gardens were nice, although, again, not too many photos.
A big frieze that was placed directly in front of the entrance in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui - to not let the good energies go straight through the property. Apparently the poet is the third guy from the left, holding the fan, which was an affectation of his.
I just liked the perspective of this.
More doorways. Because I like them.
And that was pretty much it for Suzhou. Except for the bit where my just-married stepbro got married again. In street theatre. Which we all thought was hilarious (including his wife) most particularly because he didn't know what they were doing with him when they called him up on stage and told him (in Mandarin) to pick one of the three girls they had lined up as potential wives for him.
For the enlightenment of B1 and B2, think 'Perfect Match' without the questions. And more unintentionally hilarious than tacky.
But, yeah, that was Suzhou. Nice day trip; I'm glad it wasn't more than one day, because it was gruelling.
Suzhou is a city about 100km west of Shanghai; it used to be bigger than Shanghai, back before the colonial powers started taking an interest in China, being situated on the river, with major luxury industries in silk and pearls. Now, it's more of a tourist town - temples and gardens and suchlike.
But such pretty temples and gardens and suchlike!
This is the part of the trip where I really got into taking photos. But I'll keep the travelogue brief so as not to bore the pants off y'all.
First stop: Lion Gardens in Suzhou.
No actual lions were involved in the creation of these gardens, though - just rocks that look vaguely like lion statues. Such is the power of the Chinese imagination - or, perhaps, of the Chinese Emperor, who named them such...
I have this thing about Chinese houses built on the water with picturesque rock gardens nearby. Xian 2008, anyone?
I can't imagine how people used to live in houses like these - the weather isn't even freezing, but everything's open, the ceilings are crazy high, and the wind blows through them like a knife! I'm shivering just thinking about it.
But the architecture is amazing. Maybe it's the Chinese heritage in me, but I love the balance of building and garden, rock, water, bridge, trees, and sky - it calls to something in me, perhaps nothing more than my own artistic/design-oriented nature. I just love the old Chinese houses and their gardens.
One of the parentals and the SIL's mother on one of the bridges.
And just two more - I promise!
Whew. Okay, sorry about that. I just get carried away by beautiful Chinese gardenscapes. I think we're kind of safe from here on in...
It was an "interesting" tour because the entire thing was conducted in Mandarin, which - as I may have mentioned - neither myself, nor my stepdad, nor my stepbrother, nor my mum speaks. (Although the stepbro is learning.) The SIL's mother speaks Mandarin, but not very good English, so the SIL was the only one who spoke both Mandarin and sufficient English to translate for what was going on.
So why did we pick this tour instead of finding one in English? Because it was about 1/5 the price of the English one! Frankly, a lot of these tours are ripoffs for English-speaking tourists - if you want a guide who can translate to English, it costs a whole heap more.
But we managed. It wasn't too bad, although the history buff in me would have liked a whole lot more detail about the places we were seeing and their history. But, hey, one can't have everything, and maybe I should start learning Mandarin so I don't have to rely on translations?
The gates into the temple compound - this was the larger of the two temples we went saw.
Pagoda - We climbed up this really steep set of stairs to look out at the world below.
Incense burner. Note the dragons winding up and down the four columns?
Worshippers buy sticks of incense, light them, and stick them in the sand and ash of the burner, offering prayers to their ancestors for luck and good fortune. The temples see extra activity come Lunar New Year
I have this thing about looking through doorways into other scenes. It may be why I love AUs and the Stargate concept so much. Or sciencefiction. Or fantasy...
The focus on this may not be the best - I blame the phone photography. It's The Journey To The West (better known to Westerners as 'Monkey Magic') - Pigsy, Tripitaka, the horse, Monkey, and Sandy - on the ridgepole of the primary temple.
We weren't allowed to take photos inside the temple.
People throw money onto the roofs. Those that fall off...are collected by the people keeping the yards and the toilets. The temples are primarily administered by monks, but there are 'lay workers' I guess, who work the bookstores, temple shops, and keep the courtyards and toilets clean.
I just like the angle of this picture, even if the winter tree is obscuring the clean lines of the wall. I think it's the diagonals and the way the eye keeps moving to the back of the picture.
Anyway, through the day, we saw The Lion Garden, two temples (one big with gardens, one small with a 8-story pagoda), and one poet's house (we were told it was just a 'small house' but the place was at least a couple of acres and had a half-dozen buildings on it), as well as a silk quilt factory, and a pearl factory.
The first temple was much bigger - apparently it was built by some really big guy for his milk-mother - the woman who breastfed him...and this one was built by the same guy for his birth mother? Or something? (SIL was a bit vague on this point, or possibly I wasn't listening...take your pick!)
Anyway, this temple was much smaller...although you could go further up the pagoda than you could the first one...
...as in seven more stories!
And yes, we climbed them ALL. (CLIMB THE STORIES. CLIMB ALL THE STORIES. ZOMG.) C/o my duplicitous and deceitful stepbro who said we'd only go a few stories up...and then just kept climbing. ARGH MY LEGS TALK TO ME MY LEGS!
Oh, and Buddha says 'hi'.
Like I said, there was a silk quilt factory in there somewhere, where I bought a silk quilt for my bed (just the quilt itself - I've already got the silk for the quilt-cover in my luggage!), and a pearl factory where I didn't buy anything at all. (No, really! The pearls weren't good enough for my $25K AUD tastes...not that I own any $25K AUD pearls...but I will...someday. Maybe.)
And there was a river cruise in there somewhere, which I didn't take pictures during. Because I didn't want to see the entire trip on my phone camera.
We went to see the garden house of a famous poet in China.
Now, the concept of poets in China doesn't quite fit the starving Bohemian image that it traditionally does in the west; poets in China tended to be more like philosophers or great teachers, putting philosophical ideas into artistic form - often with clever wordplay that is totally lost when you translate it to English.
It's like the "seafood diet" joke:
"I should warn you, I'm on a seafood diet."The joke requires understanding of the nuances of the English language to fully appreciate - and that's often the way Chinese poetry works, too. It's not just about imagery but wordplay - the 'sounds like' concept often taken into metaphor.
"A seafood diet?"
"Yep. I see the food, and I eat it."
*ba-dum-tish!*
Which basically meant that I didn't get any of the poetry at all, although it sounded pretty awesome in Mandarin. I just didn't have the faintest idea what the guide was explaining.
And the gardens were nice, although, again, not too many photos.
A big frieze that was placed directly in front of the entrance in accordance with the principles of Feng Shui - to not let the good energies go straight through the property. Apparently the poet is the third guy from the left, holding the fan, which was an affectation of his.
I just liked the perspective of this.
More doorways. Because I like them.
And that was pretty much it for Suzhou. Except for the bit where my just-married stepbro got married again. In street theatre. Which we all thought was hilarious (including his wife) most particularly because he didn't know what they were doing with him when they called him up on stage and told him (in Mandarin) to pick one of the three girls they had lined up as potential wives for him.
For the enlightenment of B1 and B2, think 'Perfect Match' without the questions. And more unintentionally hilarious than tacky.
But, yeah, that was Suzhou. Nice day trip; I'm glad it wasn't more than one day, because it was gruelling.
Tags:
no subject