After Shanghai, I figured nearly anything would be an improvement -- well maybe that's not fair to Shangahi, which wasn't ALL bad -- so hopping on a bus for an hour and a half ride to Tongli was OK by me. It was also an opportunity for a little down time.
To think that China is all dragons and pagodas or is now only the burgeoning and/or already established industry and bustle of its cities is to miss alot of it. A great deal of China is visible as you drive from one place to another. On the ride from Shanghai to Tongli, for example, you could see the skyscrapers of the city give way to new homes, give way to bricked older communities, give way to places that surely no one lived in as they looked bombed out and had no windows -- but people do live there -- to shallow rivers and canals where people poled wooden boats as they had for centuries. I know some of the kids looked out the windows from the bus while some just talked and looked at each other. I am sure some did a little of both. I hope they took some of this in. In the Shanghai area, there in the vicinity of the Yangtze's delta, is where you saw rice paddies. We passed people fishing from banks and with nets and a great deal of agricultural land tilled by bent backed farmers with straw hats. I was also rewarded with a view of the marsh birds -- cranes and others, Chinese versions.
Tongli was an interesting mix of a real fishing village and a resort town. I thought of Monhegan Island, Maine, which it resembled visibly not at all, but because of this mix of commercial fishing and boating with tourism and the likely uneasy balance each needed to play out in the area's economy. We rode from the bus parking area to the tourist area on a tram, which saved time and walking on cement through a construction site. Our lunch was again a tad disappointing, but better than much of what we ate in Shanghai. Some of the difference was just the style -- more yin I would say that Xi'an, and the yang of the northern food was what most of us in the group seemed to favor, interestingly. Well, we live in a northern climate ourselves, right? Who knows. we were near the ocean, but the feel was more river, there up the Yangtze a bit.
After lunch, we all took a gondola ride through the canals. Some tourist book somewhere made the analogy to Venice, which Y verified, but I had no idea. There were a lot of narrow streets and narrow canals, certainly. It was a very photogenic place, and of course I took a lot of pictures. I also walked around on my own a bit and got a look at the real people who lived in the town, some of whom used the river for everything, washing, their own fishing, transporting goods by boat. On one of the bridges, I offered to take the picture of a Chinese group all together -- they had been rotating who held the camera while they posed in different combinations. This sparked a small queue of other people wanting me to take their pictures, and one group wanted me in one of their group pictures since I had taken their photo earlier. So somewhere in China, there is a picture of a group who went to Tongli and a mysterious anonymous white woman. The presence of my camera means that I likely know something about taking pictures and also that I am probably not going to steal someone else's camera.
It took about an hour to get to Suzhou from Tongli, meaning more looks at the country side and sitting quietly on the bus. The kids generally would settle down and listen their iPods and/or sleep on bus rides of any length the entire trip, so it was quiet.
Our hotel was very nice -- large, beautifully appointed, attractive crisply uniformed staff, polished marble, plus a bathroom in the room with many amenities including a tub and a toilet with all the accessories. The kids found the toilet fascinating, and some just had to share which of the fancy cleansing options they had tried. I guess we all got just a bit closer on the trip. At any rate, our lodgings reminded me of the hotels I stayed in in Japan. The TV also had stations with English speaking channels on them due to a satellite, so I saw the financial news and CNN while I was there. Top that off with a real Western breakfast if you wanted it, and the option to relax and transition out of the scrabble of China was easily attained. Both nights we were there, some kids came into my room to use my laptop for email or what have you.
Our Suzhou day started out rainy, so some of us borrowed umbrellas from the bell captain (very fancy for me -- the hotels Ruthie and I stay in do not have bell hops or umbrellas for loan). WE also had a slight mishap on te way to the garden we were to visit.. Just as we were stopping for a light, we were rear-ended by a smaller truck. The truck was damaged a bit, but drivable, and thankfully no one was hurt. Our big bus was not the least bit damaged, although the incident delayed us a little. The kids all climbed on the back seats and peered out the back windows to get a look.
The garden we went to was actually a home of a businessman in the 18th century and it had covered walkways. This meant we could see everything and not get wet. Nothing in the garden was real, including the large Koi pond and rock formations, but it was beautiful. The materials were real, but they weren't there originally. One room was given a title that meant roughly "The Room of Doing Nothing" It had bookshelves and a large space in which you could meditate, I think. Y thought I would like to have room like that in my house, which I would. I wouldn't mind an Asian style garden or pond either, come to think of it.
In the afternoon, we took another boat ride, this time on the Grand Canal, in a power boat. While we were waiting on the wharf, some the kids practiced squatting flat footed like we had seen people do all over China. It is not easy to do. But some Chinese people, usually men, will wait for a bus or play checkers or smoke a cigarette while squatting on the road or sidewalk. (Not to be confused with what you need to do in Asian toilets, by the way.) It happened that all of the Asian kids in our group tried this at this particular time, and they were all squatting in a circle. It was kind of a joke, though not really disrespectful -- our group members, Y and I included, had all tried squatting at one point or another during the trip. Well, someone got off of one of these boats and came over and took a picture of all the Asian kids squatting. Then another white woman decided to try it, so she joined the circle, then I squatted down. It was actually funny, because the woman who joined us knew what we were doing while the doofus with the camera I think thought he got a picture of local Asian kids squatting. But it was really a few American High School students.
The boat ride was interesting as it took you past real people's homes, and they weren't all beautiful waterfront properties either. The lifestyle on the Grand Canal was more about shipping than fishing, but people were still using the river for their household chores, to be sure. We got dumped up the Canal from where we embarked and had a chance to wander through another tourist area. I just watched a music performance on traditional Chinese instruments at a sort of bandstand after briefly looking around. One store had swords for sale, and when I was looking at one, a man offered me a discount price off the tagged price by typing a number on a calculator-- typical Chinese sale tactics. I laughed and said "Bu yao, xie xie ni" to him and he said "Hey eBay!" EBay. It wasn't a bad idea, but no. We got our last photos and set off for dinner.
Our last night in China was pretty low key and pleasant, and the dinner was better food than we'd had since Xi'an. We were all going to see each other in school anyway, we all knew that. I wondered which of the kids would stay friends or how that was going to play out. All of us I think really had done a great job in China, and there could have been much more of getting on each other's nerves or actual fights or something. We were lucky, but I think all 10 of us tried really hard in a way too.
Back at the hotel, kids packed, used the computer, hung out, and some went out for a little while for a walk. It was a nice base and a very easy place to be as we let go of China bit by bit.
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