Suzhou to Zhouzhuang to Shanghai
We awoke early and had breakfast at the Lidu Hotel. The hotel's
breakfast bar had both Chinese and Western style food available...
from eggs with tomatoes, hash browns, toast, and cereal, to fried
noodles, steamed buns, fried rice, and fruit. The food was very good.
We left the hotel by 7:30 am to head to Zhouzhuang, which is often
called the Venice of the East due to its preserved ancient residential
houses which are nestled along water ways. The drive to Zhouzhuang is
about 1 hour from Suzhou by car. As usual, there was a fee to get
into the ancient part of the town, which was 100 RMB each (about 12
dollars). As we've grown accustomed to finding, the scenic parts of
the ancient town have been converted to restaurants and shops selling
the typical Chinese trinkets. Many of the restaurants had tanks
filled with various types of live aquatic animals that could be chosen
for lunch, including puffer fish, catfish, prawns (ranging in size
from knuckle length to palm length), crabs, and turtles (poor little
turtles...). One restaurant would pull its puffer fish out of the
tank as tourists walked buy and demonstrate them puffing up. The
assortment of aquatic life interested me, and I often stopped to look
at what each restaurant had to offer. The restaurant employees took
this as a sign that I was interested in eating the poor fellows (I
like fish... but I don't like to experiment with fish in strange
dishes.. and I certainly don't want to eat turtle) and would beckon me
in with "have lunchie lunchie." Needless to say, I didn't bite.
Many Chinese gondolas plowed the river carrying tourists on
prearranged routes. As they rowed the tourists down the canals, many
of the gondoliers would sing. The old city is very small and takes
only about 1.5 hours to see... 2.5 if you stop for lunch. In our
case, we ate at the Shenting Restaurant, which is suppose to be
famous. It definitely appeared to be a higher class restaurant than
the others we saw. It was located on the second floor of a building,
and had a more modern and clean (i.e. not dirty) look. The bathrooms
were exceptionally clean, with Western toilets and had hand soap. For
lunch we had duck covered in a sweat sauce (we thought it was chicken
until we tried it)... it was similar to charsiu duck (68 RMB) and
dumplings (4 RMB for each dumpling), and fun (rice).
Around 1:30 pm we left Zhouzhuang via car and headed for Shanghai
(about 1.5 to 2 hours) to catch the train to Guilin (23 hour train
ride). When in Shanghai we passed by the Jinjiang Park Ferris Wheel,
which is 108 meters tall (and while supposedly smaller than the London
Eye, it looked larger). We also learned during our trip to the train
station, that for Chinese citizens to leave the country they have to
give the government a 50,000 yuan deposit (8000 or so dollars)...
crazy.
Scott