Suzhou and Village of Tongli

Some days everything goes wrong or everything seems a little off- plans don't work out, people don't seem to be very kind or patient with you, you can't find anything that looks appetizing, the language barrier seems too much or tiredness kicks in, etc. But some days there are a lot of little kindnesses that help you along and things tend to work in your favor.

The day we left Shanghai to go to the villages of Suzhou and Tongli was one of those days.



 Before arriving to China we had bought a train ticket to Suzhou from Shanghai and from Shanghai to Beijing.  We had planned to spend one night in Suzhou to enjoy the canals and gardens it is famous for and made a side trip to the village of Tongli, which is much smaller thatn Suzhou and also known for its canals.  We heard a few times that Marco Polo supposedly called Tongli "the Venice of China."

So the day comes to go to Suzhou. We leave our hotel at 6am on the dot in order to catch our 7am train. We wanted to get to Suhou early so that we would have time to sightsee a little in Suzhou and also in the nearby canal town Tongli in the Afternoon.

We had to take to metro trains to get to the train station. When we were buying our metro ticket we realize we don't have change to feed into the machine and the store isn't open to get change. Luckily, the only other person buying their ticket at that time had change for us.  Then around 6:15 after waiting for what seemed to us too long and after several announcements in Chinese on the loudspeaker, a Chinese woman also waiting for the metro train, says , in Spanish, "falta 15 minutos"- the train is delayed 15 minutes.  This seemed like quite the stroke of good luck because 1) in general, the Chinese people we've been around don't tend to offer up helpful advice 2) it's about a 50% chance the people around you speak any English... And in this case she knew Spanish- a much rarer language here!

We run out of the metro station, the attendant gives us our money back- which was also unexpected and helpful - and we run to the next metro station, the Peoples Square station which is where we were going to switch metro trains at. After lots of running and climbing stairs with our backpacks, cursing every Chinese metro station for having a suitcase airport-like security scanner, and debating whether whether we should take a taxi in between our short of breath-ness...We somehow make it to the train station and past the train station security by 6:42am. We are safe. We make the train and are on our way to Suzhou. All of that for just a half hour ride.

We drop our things off at our hostel in Suzhou and walk to one of the most famous gardens in Suzhou and in China: The Humble Administrators garden. It is recognized nationally as one of China's "most beautiful" gardens.  It was quite special- beautiful architecture, rock gardens, a HUGE bonsai collection, perfectly placed bridges and lakes.

We then make our way back to the train station where we arrived from Suzhou to take the bus to Tongli.  We get off in Tongli and two girls who were on the bus with us who also had their phone gps out looking for the way to the canals suggested we walk together.  They both spoke English and, long story short, we ended up spending the rest of the day with these girls whose names are Vivian and Shellu.  They treated us to lunch of local Tongli dishes, helped us navigate around Tongli, taught us some Chinese, helped us communicate with locals and answered  some burning questions we had since arriving to China.

We took the bus back to Suzhou together and we exchanged email addresses before we parted. It had a rough start, but it turned out to be one of our best days in China.

Shellu and Vivian, our new friends we met in Tongli, and the feast of duck, pork, beef, shrimp that they treated us to. Chinese hospitlaity at its most amazing….

Canals of Tongli

We were told these birds help this man fish- trained fishing birds- wow!!

Lots of tourists in Tongli dress up like the emperors and empresses that used to live here and then get there pictures taken. The same costume shop takes your pictures of you and you get 5 pictures- All for 50 RMB.

Many people take gondola rides in Tongli.