Shanghai Larisons: Suzhou

This week we went to explore Suzhou. Suzhou is a city about 1-1/2 hours outside of Shanghai, just a "small" suburb of over 4 million people. Suzhou dates back to 500 BC. The center of the city is preserved with the gardens and many of the buildings preserved in original condition. The city has many canals, stone bridges, and Chinese designed gardens. We started our visit at the Humble Administrator's Garden, which is the largest garden in Suzhou and is generally considered to be the finest garden in all of southern China. The garden's site was initially the residence and garden a Tang Dynasty scholar in the 1500's.

Next we went to Tiger Hill Pagoda or Huqui Tower. Halfway up the climb of Tiger Hill, we passed King Helü's tomb, he was buried there in 496BC. At the top of Tiger hill if Huqui Tower, which is 7 stories tall (47 meters). The tower was built about 907 AD. In the past 1000 years, the tower has leaned to the north by about 3-degrees. They have recently reinforced the foundation to stop it from leaning any further.

We were sitting on top of tiger hill, reading about the pagoda, when a local woman sat next to us and greeted us in English. English-speaking Chinese very often see us from a mile away. They love to "practice" with us. This lady, quickly introduced her daughter "Nancy", who was a delightful sixth-grader, who spoke remarkably good English. Both parents are teachers at a Suzhou middle school. We enjoyed hearing about their lives.

Site-seeing in east China is certainly interesting. There is a very high value placed on preserving historical places, even if they have to re-construct it roughly where it was originally. The places seem sacred to the local visitors, even when there is no religious meaning.