This weekend we originally intended to head out to Wuzhen, a scenic, 7,000-year-old canal town (known as the "Venice of China"). Despite its beauty, it is a town of only 6,000 people, where which we intended to spend a quiet few days around the Mid-Autumn festival. Fate had other ideas.
Upon arriving at the Nanjing train station, we booked a train to Suzhou, a regional hub from which we would then take a bus to Wuzhen. Upon arriving in Suzhou we booked our bus ticket and rode a bit over an hour to Wuzhen. Looking around and seeing no scenic canals or thousand-year-old bridges (rather, strip malls and highways), we figured this wasn't our intended destination and soon found out it was a different, but similarly-pronounced Wuzhen. The bus driver encouraged us to try out Tongli, another canal town that happened to be nearby. We boarded another bus, rode another hour or so, and then arrived in Tongli. Much larger than Wuzhen, Tongli was not the quiet getaway we were hoping for, and matters became worse when we discovered that we had to pay 80 kuai to even get into the city center (though from the gate we could see it was intensely touristy). We opted to cut our losses and boarded another bus alllll the way back to Suzhou.
We spent the night visiting Suzhou's own canals nestled among a rather large and bustling city before crashing at an unusually nice local hostel. The next morning we went through some shops in a surprisingly old and beautiful part of town before going on to visit Hushan (Tiger Mountain), scoping out its gardens and 1,100-year-old leaning pagoda. We FINALLY found a nice little tea shop in the Hushan mountain to sit down and read for a while sampling the regional tea that had been picked literally not more than 50 feet from the teahouse. We then made our way home to Nanjing, having salvaged a pretty darn good weekend from a pretty big travel mishap. Thankfully, all of our wanderings cost us around $10; even the largest of mistakes in China are pretty darn cheap.
Pictured below: 1) Nighttime canal viewing in Suzhou, 2) morning canal touring and shopping (primarily antiquing, very cool stuff), 3) a rather threatening piece of tourist signage and 4) me in front of the 1,100-year-old Yuyun leaning Buddhist pagoda.
Upon arriving at the Nanjing train station, we booked a train to Suzhou, a regional hub from which we would then take a bus to Wuzhen. Upon arriving in Suzhou we booked our bus ticket and rode a bit over an hour to Wuzhen. Looking around and seeing no scenic canals or thousand-year-old bridges (rather, strip malls and highways), we figured this wasn't our intended destination and soon found out it was a different, but similarly-pronounced Wuzhen. The bus driver encouraged us to try out Tongli, another canal town that happened to be nearby. We boarded another bus, rode another hour or so, and then arrived in Tongli. Much larger than Wuzhen, Tongli was not the quiet getaway we were hoping for, and matters became worse when we discovered that we had to pay 80 kuai to even get into the city center (though from the gate we could see it was intensely touristy). We opted to cut our losses and boarded another bus alllll the way back to Suzhou.
We spent the night visiting Suzhou's own canals nestled among a rather large and bustling city before crashing at an unusually nice local hostel. The next morning we went through some shops in a surprisingly old and beautiful part of town before going on to visit Hushan (Tiger Mountain), scoping out its gardens and 1,100-year-old leaning pagoda. We FINALLY found a nice little tea shop in the Hushan mountain to sit down and read for a while sampling the regional tea that had been picked literally not more than 50 feet from the teahouse. We then made our way home to Nanjing, having salvaged a pretty darn good weekend from a pretty big travel mishap. Thankfully, all of our wanderings cost us around $10; even the largest of mistakes in China are pretty darn cheap.
Pictured below: 1) Nighttime canal viewing in Suzhou, 2) morning canal touring and shopping (primarily antiquing, very cool stuff), 3) a rather threatening piece of tourist signage and 4) me in front of the 1,100-year-old Yuyun leaning Buddhist pagoda.
2 comments:
How was the food in Suzhou? If I recall correctly, they have a pretty long-standing culinary tradition there.
One might want to give the sign 'Your health rests with your civilized behavior' to the presidential campaign, don't you think! Josh's mom
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