China Trip, Day 6 - July 30

Day 6 begin with breakfast at the Holiday Inn in Souzhou, which unfortunately wasn't as good as the breakfast at the Loong Palace. We then got on the bus to go to Tiger Hill. Jenny seemed to continue with her marriage obsession, explaining to us that in North China, the husband tends to have more control in the marriage and makes all the decisions, and that they call this the "Big Husband". That's not so true in South China. She also told us that Souzhou was once part of the Pacific Ocean, and that Tiger Hill was an island in the Pacific Ocean. An emperor came from North China to this area, and ultimately was buried at Tiger Hill. 10,000 workers built his tomb, and they were later killed so that nobody could locate the tomb. Apparently, this same emperor saw a white tiger on the hill, which is why the hill is called Tiger Hill. Centuries later, a pagoda was built on the hill. The pagoda is now leaning, and the theory is that it's leaning because it was built on the tomb, which impacted the foundation. The pagoda is 48 meters tall, and is leaning 2.34m. Jenny pointed out that this is a more extreme lean than the leaning "pagoda" in Pisa. The visit to Tiger Hill was fabulous. The grounds are beautiful. In addition, it was much less crowded that anywhere we had been in Beijing and that was a nice change. It was, however, hotter than Beijing, at least 110 fahrenheit and very humid. We climbed the hill to get to the leaning Pagoda, a much less strenuous climb than the Great Wall. Even Aisling was able to manage it.

We left Tiger Hill after a couple of hours and headed back into Souzhou. There are lots of canals in Souzhou, and also in Hangzhou. An emperor many centuries ago built the grand canal all the way from Beijing to Shanghai for transportation. This, the other canals, the lakes and natural features in this area do make beautiful scenery. The Chinese refer to Souzhou and Hangzhou as Heaven on earth. Jenny also mentioned that I.M. Pei had spent part of his childhood in Souzhou and has designed two buildings there, including the new museum, which contains artifacts that were discovered in the leaning Pagoda.

We then headed over to an embroidery factory. True to her pattern, Jenny told the men that Souzhou women are considered to be the most beautiful women in China. She said there are five different Souzhou girls, and I can't remember all of them, but one of them was embroidery girl. I wasn't looking forward to the embroidery factory visit, but I must admit that it far exceeded my expectations. We saw the most beautiful embroidery and watched the embroidery girls at worked. They could produce one-sided or two-sided embroidery. In the case of the two-sided, they could even produce a piece that was a puppy on one side and a kitty on the other! The embroidery pieces created by masters were just incredible. There was a really amazing portrait-size piece of Chairman Mao. In the garden, we saw three little kittens, and that was the high spot of the embroidery factory for Aisling.

We went for lunch to the number 1 Silk factory in China. They decided we should have western food that day, and it wasn't very good. We then had a lecture about silk, and went into the silk factory. Like the embroidery, this was fabulous. The lecture explained how the whole process works. Apparently the worms eat and eat for 25 days. Then they actually spit the silk thread out of their mouth and make a cocoon. The cocoon is put in the oven, basically to kill the moth, and the workers find the start of the thread in the cocoon and pull it off. We walked through the factory and saw the worms eat, and watched the women pull the thread of the cocoon. It was fascinating. Also, there are some double cocoons, where two silkworms get together and make a cocoon with their two threads. Of course, Jenny referred to this as a love cocoon. Because there are two threads intertwined, they can't really pull the silk threads off, so instead they pull the cocoon apart and use the fibers use them to make these fabulous silk comforters, filled with this fiber. We had heard about this from Lauren, number 1 shopper on bus B3, and we were mostly already pretty much sold on the whole silk comforter concept, so let's just say the number 1 silk factory in China got lots of sales from our bus. I bought three myself, as well as the silk covers to go on them. When we got back to the bus, Jenny greeted us by saying "on behalf of the governor of the province, I thank you for your contributions to the local economy". We also had a fashion show - Souzhou's next top model, I believe. We went into the room, and before the models came out, Gordon and Aisling both took a turn on the runway. They were considerably more animated than the models, who really looked bored. I have a theory that they were girls who worked in the factory (Silk girls, as Jenny called them) who were required to do the modeling as a condition of employment and were all bored by it. They modeled some of the silk clothes for sale in the store.

Our final visit of the day was the Humble Administrators garden. Jenny indicated that the gardens we had visited in Beijing at the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven are Imperial Gardens, built on a grand scale, but that the Humble Administrator's Garden is built by a private citizen, and is on a much smaller scale. But it was beautiful, and I am not sure why it's humble. He must have been a pretty high ranking administrator to be able to afford to build a garden like that. Apparently, it became divided into three later when a descendant of the Humble Administrator lost it while gambling with three other people. There was a lovely lake filled with beautiful lotus plants, and an old lady in a boat harvesting the lotus root. Also, there was an entertainment pavilion where performances could be presented to visitors. The picture of Gordon and me on my blog was taken at the Humble Administrators garden. Jenny also noted that the garden is designed to bloom year round, so there are flowers that bloom in each season. We just happened to be there in the time for lotus to bloom, the summer.

We returned to the bus and headed to Hangzhou. From the bus as we drove through Souzhou, we got to see more of Souzhou and what a lovely city it is with all the canals and beautiful bridges. Jenny noted that Souzhou is known as the honeymoon capital in China. We got to our hotel in Hangzhou, the Honglou, and spent a little time in our room before we went to dinner in the hotel. It was a very high rise hotel, and we were pretty high up there, and we were lucky to see fireworks from our room! Not sure what the fireworks show was about. The hotel was in downtown Hangzhou, near the train station, so after dinner we went for a short walk. We went into a couple of small local shops, where we bought a couple of souvenirs, and also a bottle of cheap white wine, brand name Great Wall. Over in a park near the train station, there were tons of people, including, inexplicably, a guy hanging his laundry in a tree. After that, we went to meet Aisling and Kim who had already gone to the pool. For some reason, the route to the pool was through the karaoke room and the game room, where several men were sitting around playing cards. We then went back to our room and had some of our cheap white wine, which wasn't bad.

On the way back from the pool, we ran into Denise and Erika, who had gone to the spa to get a massage. They were told that massages were only for men, and were shooed out of there. Gordon and I decided to try our luck. The story we got was that I could get a foot massage, but not a body massage. The reason for this, we were told, was because the only had male masseurs working, and that they wouldn't massage women. However, we heard the story the next day from Mike who actually got a massage. It turns out that it was all attractive, scantily-clad female masseuses who were seeming to want to sell additional services! A little different to what I had been told!