Shuzhou

Tuesday morning we were up early and left the hotel around 7 am to catch a morning flight to Shanghai. The semantics of moving a large group, there are approx 80 or two bus loads, must be a nightmare. To get them all checked in and checked out, luggage and all is quite some effort. From the Shanghai airport we had a 3-3.5 hour bus trip to a city called Shuzhou (sue jo) which has been describe as paradise on earth. It is only a small village of around 2 million people and very green with lots of mature trees in the street and gardens. It is referred to by two other names, one is the garden city and the other as Venice of the East due to its canals and a large area of the city being covered in water. 

The traditional architecture is low rise housing all painted in black and white. The walls are whitewashed and the roofs are black. It was very pretty with the water, trees and black & white housing and relatively easy traffic. Our first stop was at the Lingering gardens which is considered as one of the finest gardens in China. It was constructed by a retired official, Xu tai, in 1593 who lived there and wanted to create a peaceful environment from the busy life outside the walls. There were many different parts of this garden which is over 23,000 sq metres and it was like walking through a labyrinth of buildings and gardens so I lost all sense of direction. Everything was planted for a reason and it took our guide a couple of hours to lead us through to explain all the different parts. By the time we had finished they had locked the gates! We had to wait to be let out again. They also had a large bonsai garden and it was peaceful once everyone had left. One guy said he loved bonsai and I thought unkindly to myself no wonder because you married one (he has a very short, fat wife).

The last visit for the day was to a silk embroidery art gallery. Here they embroidered the finest strands of silk approx 1/5 size of human hair and created these amazing pictures. The needles were so fine I have no idea how they could even see the eye to thread the damn things. They created double sided pictures where either there would be the same picture on both sides or even a different picture on the other side or same picture but different colours. Some of these pictures are worth thousands of dollars as it can take the artist up to a year - 18 months, depending on the picture. Of course out the back was the obligatory shop where you got the chance to buy a picture for yourself or maybe something cheaper as they have many different products, something for everyone.

The next morning we took a trip on a long narrow boat down the Grand Canal to see the houses from the water. The silks and goods use to travel down these waterways all the way to Xian on their way to the Silk Road to Europe. Just like Venice, the canals are also their main road of transport as the road is so narrow, only wide enough for a bicycle so they literally walk out their back door and hop in a boat. We understood why our boat was narrow when we got to the canals and at some points we weren't far away from the walls of the houses. So close in fact that we could see in their windows and doorways and could tell how big the people were who lived inside by the size of their knickers hanging on bamboo clothes Lines! I would have loved to have strolled down the streets of this place, it looked very interesting with a few shops and cafes beside the canals and narrow winding streets. Unfortunately it wasn't in the itinerary, instead we got to spend 3 hours free time that afternoon in a very uninteresting part of the next town we visited an hour and a half away. 

Before we drove there we visited a silk spinning mill to learn how silk is spun from the silk worm cocoons. They are very proud of their silk worms, not only do they put the fat little suckers on a stick and eat them, they take their silk from them first. If you unravel one cocoon it reveals approx 1600-1700 meters of silk thread. According to the people from this mill, a Thai silk worm only produces around 200 metres of thread. This means more joins in the fabric I guess. Apparently the silk worm was discovered around 4000 years ago when a woman was having a cup of tea in the garden and one fell into her cup. Maybe take that story with a grain of salt.  Anyway, they had this machine that had like a gutter running underneath some spindles. The cocoons were in this gutter which was full of water. The water served to soften the thread as it was hardened by the bugs saliva then it was threaded up the machine and the spindles spun around, unwinding the cocoon. From there it went to another section to be stretched then I wasn't really paying attention as my eye caught the shop! The silk here was such a beautiful quality and so soft and light as air. They sold gorgeous bedding, silk sheets, duvets covers etc. I was so tempted to buy but as Jon reminded me, think what the cat would do to that and at $900 I wasn't going to risk it. We had lunch here, or at least some of us did as Jon wandered away followed by Malcolm and Roger who managed to find their own place which didn't serve boiled cabbage and soap broth, a common dish we have had every day.

Silk Cocoons

Threads coming from the silk cocoon

I can't say I'm fond of the food, the most I could say of any dish is its not bad but nowhere near as delicious as Thai food. Only another week of it to go.