China Tourism » Suzhou Travel

THE VENICE OF CHINA: SUZHOU
110 km from Shangai, You can drove to paradise or to the one on earth, at least. There is an old Chinese saying: “ Up in heaven there is a paradise; don below there is Suzhou and Hangzhou”

Suzhou, the ancient water city like the better known Venice is threaded by 35 km of waterways, spanned by 168 briges and its old quarter was both a painter’s delight and photographer’s dream. Mirror-still canals reflected some of the quaint, surviving houses lining them, many with landings for their own family skiffs. The great heritage of China flowed, quite literally, through the heart of the modern town. Its main thoroughfare was a dual-lane highway, separated by the ancient Grand Canal: a 1,400-ft long engineering marvel comparable to the building of the Great Wall. On both sides of this canal-divided thoroughfare, modern buildings thrust aggressively into the sky in China’s quest to catapult itself into the future.

Through the canal
Happily, the People’s Republic still realises the stabilising ballast of its ancient culture. We drove out 35 km to Tiger Hill, sequestered by a high, mustard-coloured wall. A granite bridge framed a bobbing line of traditional waterbuses. We crossed the bridge, bought tickets at the gate in the mustard yellow wall and stepped into another world.

We were in a forecourt, on which a red sedan chair waited. Around us, cicadas sang in a wooded garden at the base of a hill. A stone path wound up the hill past little kiosks, beautiful bonsai on ceramic stands and a Use-Me shaped like a yellow lion (or was it a stylized frog?), with aphorisms like ‘The man who knows how to keep surroundings tidy knows how to appreciate the landscape’ and ‘Don’t pluck flowers and show you are a gentleman’.

We walked up the path and appreciated the pragmatism of the communist authorities in building a shrine to a new gilded Buddha, with a popular donations box in front. We listened to the many tales of warriors, monks and virtuous women associated with the shrines, rocks and wells and trudged up the steps to the seven-storey, octagonal Yunyan Temple Pagoda. Built entirely of brick, this one thousand-year-old tower is also wreathed in legend, one associated with a nearby royal tomb and a mysterious white tiger. It was fairly crowded with tourists and many Chinese families. Children have traditionally been cosseted in China, more so with the enforcement of the one-child rule. That could be one reason why living standards are rising and the penetration of cellular phones is very high.

The silk factory
We stepped out of Old China. some enormous, succulent and very sweet peaches from a vegetable vendor and drove into Modern China and The Silk Factory.

As our car drew up, smiling girls ran out and handed us discount cards that said ‘Consume with the card you will get special gifts’. We noticed that Chinese visitors were not given these cards: clearly, foreign exchange is the lure. On our conducted tour with a guide who spoke carefully enunciated, American accented English, we were met with an intresting sight. Women were rearing silk worms tickling some to spin the unique double cocoons, boiling them in enormous vats suffused with steam drawing the tough thread into bobbins, even teasing out and fluffing together layer after layer of those twin cocoons to form an incredibly light and superbly; insulated silk quilt warm in winter in cool summer. Eighty cocoons are need to make one layer and there are one hundred layers in a silk quilt! When we questioned her on this unique process our guide smiled confidently. “We have 3,000 years of expertise in sericulture,’ she said, as she handed out special gifts of scarves and ties.

It was a little past high noon; we visited our last destination on this stopover between Shanghai and our overnight hat at Hangzhou a three and a half-hour-drive away.

The Net Master’s Garden
A scholar created the curiously named, but exquisite Net Master’s Garden, which is surrounded by a privacy ensuring wall. After he retired, the scholar wanted to do nothing more than to fish and live in tranquillity. And so he built himself a house with many rooms and pavilions and courtyards for contemplation, meeting friends and unwinding. He also built balconies and verandahs, from which he could fish in the stream and meandering lake that embraced much of the house.

Strolling around, we absorbed many of the traditions and lifestyle of ancient China. The scholar, for instance, had a beautifully carved, high, wooden sedan chair. The number of sedan-chair-men employed depended on the status of the family: this scholar had 4; the Emperor had 16. The Master’s room had a chaise longue for the Master’s siesta: the Chinese equivalent of the Raj-era’s Club Chair, with foldout leg rests. A post lunch nap was an essential part of the cultivated art of living in those unhurried days. The Women’s Meeting Room had low, broad-bottomed, chairs because the ladies liked tucking their legs up and under.

They were not, however, encouraged to socialise in public. A passage in a cobbled path in the garden split into two: a broad one for men and a narrow one for women because they were not expected to walk two abreast. Then there was, reputedly, the smallest bridge in all China: a little hump-backed one spanning just three paces. Chinese landscapers perfected the art of creating the illusion of space in their tiny gardens. They did this by breaking up the straight fines loved by the Mughals and some French gardeners. In the Net Master’s Garden, streams meandered, eroded, rocks captured the eye; the curve of a tree diverted the view and a small pond glistened in the seeming distance... It was enchanting.

Getting there
Jet Airways has regular flights to Shanghai. Buses ply regularly from Shanghai airport to Suzhou. There are trains to Suzhou from the Shanghai train station almost every half hour.

Accommodation
There is a host of stay options in Suzhou, to suit all budgets and requirements.