Whoa dang. I thought South Carolina was muggy until I met Shanghai. Well…I have now realized that China still holds gloriously obnoxious weather surprises for me to discover. Suzhou wins the “Can I Actually Breathe Here?” Game, hands down.
Apart from questioning death every step of the way, my trip was entertaining to say the least. I’m kind of bummed that I experienced the most awesome place China has (in my opinion) within the first week of my trip. You all remember the water village with the beautiful photos of absolute awesomeness? Yeah…I miss that place. No other location has lived up to it. BUT- Suzhou is nice for its own nonsense, which I will now blab on and on about:
The day began with me stumbling out of bed (I feel like most days start this way…)- oh! PAUSE. I have to tell you all about this CRAZY dream I had…first of all, NEVER NAP IN CHINA. I swear- each time I awake thinking, OH HELL NO IM NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN…then, the next day I’m all like “eh…maybe it won’t happen again?”… Each time I have taken a nap during the day, I’ve dreamed of horrific things happening or being done to my teeth. I looked it up on some “Let Me Tell You All About What Your Psychotic Dreams Mean” website and dreams about teeth apparently mean that I am self- conscious about my appearance…eh? I’M IN CHINA. The last thing I’m thinking about is how I look. Goodness. BUT- apparently I am freakishly self-conscious given the dream I am about to retell: So…I am wandering around in the world of Alice in Wonderland meets post-apocalyptic construction site, trying to find books. Even when the world ends, I have priorities okay? I meet up with Dream Family (not Dream as in, ohhhh you are the bestest ever- dream as in…are you for real or are you going to morph into a gopher?) and they shove this contraption into my mouth. Awesome. Apparently I need my jaw stretched and this thing makes it so my mouth opens super wide, and I have no hopes of shutting it. Yay life. When they take the contraption out, my teeth begin trying to rearrange themselves- yet they do this by cracking, shattering, and popping out of my mouth. I am doubled over in dream-pain (a.k.a. lots of pressure and weird feelings), as little shards of teeth sprinkle down to the ground. Best part of the day-mare? I look up to see the crazy rabbit from Alice in Wonderland pointing and chuckling at me. Also, all the houses in the background keep sinking into the earth and resurfacing…Sometimes I wonder what drugs would be like if this is what my brain comes up with on a normal day…
Okay…Suzhou time!
First of all, how to pronounce Suzhou à “Sue- joe”. Tada!
Bumpy bumpy bus ride…oh look! An ungodly massive water tower. Who said China was running out of water? Lies.
The Humble Administrator’s Garden
Get this: I looked up this place in Wikipedia so that maybe I’d have some facts to tell you all…the first line states “it is the largest garden in Suzhou and generally considered the finest garden in southern China.” ...Quite humble if you ask me. So basically, the history of this garden is that it belonged to, you guessed it, an administrator in China. He was all like “I’m gonna retire now, and all I want is to chill in my massive garden.” So, that’s what he did. Eventually he keeled over and his son took control of the place, but acting how most rich, spoiled kids act today, he lost the garden due to gambling debts.
Jerk.
Eventually it got back into the hands of the Chinese government, and they turned it into a tourist spot (to squeeze all the money out of it that they could). So, let me tell you about my adventure through the humble wilderness…
First, an Asian child spots Romelle (a large black man)…Romelle and small Asian child have a stare-off, where the child simply stands and points with a facial expression a mix of sheer “WHAT IS THAT?!” and horror, while Romelle sits there and laughs. After the mother fears for her child’s life and whisks him away, we continue onward into the labyrinth over teeny-tiny bridges and around ponds, up through rocky passageways and down into the dark depths of- well…reverse rocky passageways?
As we are wandering, I see off in the distance a vague blue shape upon a high rock. I decide to investigate. Turns out some kid decided that the ideal study place is perched on top of a massive rock in the middle of a bustling tourist destination. But of course. This makes perfect sense.
There were so many people everywhere that it was near to impossible to get a picture without a person in it, so eventually I gave up and started taking pictures of the people and having my own picture taken. Generally I fight my way through the crowds to get a solid picture, but I guess I’ve grown more accepting and “Chinese” and now just sort of go with the flow and not question things. DEPRESSING. Honestly, this was the day after my fight home from work, and I was exhausted…CHINA WILL NOT WIN. Fear not, my mentality is as stubborn as always (some of you may sigh or say “well…shucks”, but shut up and deal. I’m an Odom, after all).
Oh yeah, I also saw this river thing:
Eventually we resurfaced from the humid-death-trap, and piled back onto the bus to wander on over (after making a detour for lunch) to a silk-making factory.
Suzhou Silk Factory
So…I learned how silk is made. Yup. It is actually kind of crazy how much work goes into it. I completely understand why silk is super expensive now- daaang that stuff takes forever to make. Short summary?
1. Find worm. Make worm eat mulberry bush.
2. Make worm want to not be worm anymore.
3. Worm makes cocoon because it is sad with life.
4. Boil cocoons. Worm subsequently dies due to evil human intervention.
5. weed out bad cocoons. Steam good cocoons.
6. Start to unravel super tiny silk thread from one cocoon, combine with five others. Insert into machine.
7. Machine twists the 6 silk threads together to get one “for-real” thread. Near to impossible to break- I tried.
8. I sort of got side-tracked by something shiny in the corner during this phase of the explanation…
Then he went on to show us how you make the stuffing to pillows or comforters:
1. Wet cocoon. Pull out sad, dead worm. Stretch cocoon to create “single-ply” cloth-thing.
2. Wet single-ply cloth-thing. Stretch single ply on arch-thingy. Do steps 1-2 6 times.
3. Take this 6-ply arch-thingy, and stretch over larger arch-thingy. Do this 6 times.
4. Take this, and stretch out once, to be the size of a comforter. Do this 400 times.
5. You now have a silk comforter’s inside-ness.
Yup…also apparently they put the silk worm’s poop inside the pillow because they think it is good aromatherapy. Surprise!
Upon leaving, I was admiring the silk clothing on the mannequins when I was accosted by this one:
Tiger Hill
So, Wikipedia claims that Tiger Hill got its name because it looks like a crouching tiger. What. Whoever wrote this article has apparently never seen the GIANT TOWER on the hill…so much for “crouching”…
In actuality, or, mythology, or ancient story-time, or whatever there’s a dude, Wu King Helu, buried on the hill, and apparently three days after his burial a white tiger showed up out of nowhere and decided to chill on the guy’s grave for awhile.
Okay, Wikipedia needs an overhaul on this one. It also goes off on a tangent to claim that some great Jin master “traded his calligraphy for lovable geese”…what this has to do with Tiger Hill, or dead buried guy, I have no idea. All I do know is that they cannot uncover the dead-dude’s tomb because the critical rock to open the tomb is also the rock holding up the giant tower- a tower that has been standing for over 1,000 years and is also known as the “second leaning tower” in the world (probably also the only other leaning tower…everyone else fixed theirs.)
So, basically, we have a lot of rocks. One famous rock called the “Sword-Testing Rock”…you test swords there. Another giant rock called “Thousand People’s Rock”…you put people there. There is also this pond, dubbed Sword Pond because it is claimed that 3000 swords are buried under the pond, but this legend cannot, once again, become known because of that darned leaning Pagoda being so finicky with its foundation. Honestly, I think we can blame all of this on the architect who decided to stick the pagoda on all of this cool and mysterious nonsense. For the second time in this post- Jerk.
But this place did have some awesome signs…Get ready for this!
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