Garden Towns

Hangzhou or the city best known for its west lake (one of 36 in China) is a large city with an equally large park built around its lake. Here we hired some bicycles with great suspensions, something like being on a see-saw, if they make these in a tandem cycling would be real fun. Around the lake you stumble across various gardens which are free entry but we had to lock the bicycles outside since the guards are very strict. Leaving here was quite difficult, not because we loved it so much but due to lack of information and incorrect advice. There is apparantly a boat to Suzhou but good luck finding it, instead we hunted down a bus from one of the 4 bus stations, of course we went to all of them before arriving exhausted at the right one.

Suzhou Bridge

Suzhou once known as Venice of the East due to it being built around a series of canals, narrow streets and odours which waft up from the sewers. Maybe that's not fair on Venice since we've been there and it never smelt this bad and fortunately even here it's only in a few places. Walking up and down the alleyways along the canal avoids some of the traffic if not quite all of it. People are living by the waters edge and pass their early evenings sitting on their "porches", drinking beer and chatting. The town itself contains something like 15 gardens which can be visited for a price, apparantly there used to be 300!! They are all very pretty but quite similar, it seems that originally they were built by retirees from the government fed up with corruption, rich merchants and poets.

West Lake Pagoda

Since Suzhou is close to Shanghai it's no surprise that there is a largish expat community with quite a number of events organised. In effect there are a number of expensive bars and restaurants where they seem to congregate. It's all a bit separatist but at least the new students we met in the hostel were planning on flat sharing with Chinese people. Perhaps this will eventually reduce the Chinese people's bewilderment and utter surprise when they see westerners because having people stop and point at you on every trip is quite monotonous.

West Lake Cyclist

West Lake Lotus

Monet at West Lake

Suzhou Canal

Suzhou Garden

Suzhou Precious Belt Bridge