Thursday, June 14th - Suzhou is pretty cool

• Almost got my first seat belt experience in China
• Every car or bus I’ve been in while in China has either had no seatbelt or its seatbelts are broken
• This morning in the cab to get from my hostel to Hangzhou train station I finally thought I found my first one in almost 3 weeks of being here
• I grabbed the seatbelt, pulled it across my chest…and there was no place to hook it to in the back seat
• The guy had taken out the seat belt clipper because he said it annoyed the customers (from what I could gather from my poor Chinese skills)
• Well if the customer wants convenience over safety then by all means do it
• Second day in a row I’ve been told I’m not an American
• When I checked into the Suzhou hotel after about a 5 minute English conversation, they asked me where I came from and I said “I’m an American”

How awesome looking is my hostel?

• • That shocked them because they said that I was too nice to be an American 
  • They said that they’ve never met someone from the middle part of America (I’m from Illinois) and they always get people from the coasts
  • Way to go New York for ruining how foreigners view America 
  • White people in China aren’t friendly in general though
  • I’ve noticed that when I say “Howdy” to a Chinese person (and I make sure to split how many times I say “Howdy” and “Hi” about 50/50) I usually get a smile back but when I do that to white people they just give me a look that says, “Who the hell are you?”
  • I’m also glad no cop asked for my passport today
  • I didn’t realize that when I checked in I forgot to ask for my passport back so when I tried to go to the bank to exchange money (which you need a passport for in China because Chinese banks trust no one) I couldn’t do it
  • At that moment (about 2 PM) I realized that if a cop came up to me and asked to see my passport I could have been thrown in jail
  • I still walked around Suzhou sightseeing for another 2 hours but it was a cautious sightseeing where I tried to join the mob of people (which is really easy to do in China) and blend in
  • If I went back I wouldn't have seen this cool puzzle set

• • Or this foot massage place with bad English

 

• Suzhou is really cool
• I liked Hangzhou more but Suzhou is kind of/sort of worth a day here (maybe 75% where 100% is a “you definitely have to go there”)
• I just say kind of because all they’re famous for is gardens and if you take that away, it’s basically the same as every other Chinese city whereas Hangzhou as a whole was far different from a regular Chinese city
• Humble Administrator’s Garden
• This place is what made it worth going to Suzhou for a day, I LOVE THIS GARDEN!

• • It’s the kind of garden that makes you think, “No wonder that China has had so many peasant revolutions in its history if this was a ‘private’ garden for a rich guy. I’d be pretty mad too”
  • I think this place had my favorite named pavilion too
  • It was called the “Whom shall I sit with?” pavilion
• Lion’s Garden
• I liked this garden before I even walked in because the street leading up to it is dedicated to small portions of food
• But the actual garden was really cool because it was almost like rock climbing with all of the rocks
• You were bobbing and weaving through rocks for maybe ¾ of the time in the park

• • My favorite part of this garden was the street dedicated to small bites leading up to the garden

• Learned an important lesson in making your way through a market
• If it’s not busy and you make noise with your feet, they’ll find you and come out to you saying, “You want postcards!” and the like, but if you tread softly you won’t interrupt their watching of some Chinese movie or Korean soap opera and you can make your way through their pretty quickly
• Garden of the Master of Nets
• If there was no school full of chattering kids and construction next door this park would have been quite serene but alas, you get to look at the nice central pond in the place thinking of youth and traffic delays

• More lessons in ordering food
• I’ve learned it’s hard to sit there and translate each menu item, so now I just go into a restaurant and say, “I want that” in Chinese and point at whatever plate looks the best
• That way I get to try new things like chicken claw

• • And what I was told was sweet and sour pork

• Of course, based on the fact that they let a stray cat play in the restaurant, I doubt their authenticity (this is what I get for trusting Chinese restaurant owners)