Tuesday, October 18 – Beijing-Shanghai-Suzhou

At this point, I come to the end of the journal I started while we were in China. So much for self-disci-pline. Luckily, Karen persevered with hers, although she says there may be mistakes in it (there were), as she was usually writing when tired, and often a couple of days after events described. I’ll use her diary and my picture log as memory jogs.

We were on the bus and gone from the Beijing hotel by 5:30 a.m., zombies again. Leo had arranged boxed breakfasts from the hotel. They were okay, with two buns, a croissant, bottle of water and a very nice tangerine. Karen supplemented hers with a hard boiled egg smuggled out of the breakfast room the day before. The traffic at this time of day wasn’t too bad, which was the point of leaving so early. We made good time, but you could tell it was building toward a chaotic rush hour. 

As Leo had warned, there were two stages to security at the Beijing airport: an initial electronic scan of both carry-on and checked bags as we entered the terminal building, then the traditional take-everything-out-of-your-bag rumba line once we’d checked in. One of our group was cut from the herd on the first security scan. His was a large bag, which Leo seemed to think might have made it a target for special attention. Stony-faced security guards opened and rifled through it, re-scanned it, then checked it by hand all over again. Its owner stood by, looking alternately embarrassed and irritated.

The rest of the process went smoothly. Leo had somehow checked us all in himself. When we arrived at the gate, we found we had to get on a bus, go for a long ride to the plane, then climb stairs from the tarmac. It was another Hainan flight, but not as new or luxurious an aircraft. It had a two-four-two seat configuration, with two-three-two nearer the back. Which is of course where we were seated, in the middle again. It didn’t matter as the flight was less than two hours. Despite that, they served drinks and a hot lunch.

Given that Pudong International Airport where we landed serves a huge city, it didn’t take us that long after landing to get out of it and onto our new coach. From the bus windows, we could see in the distance some of the Shanghai skyline with its shiny modern skyscrapers, but we were heading away from the city first. We would come back to it to stay for two nights, but only after a three-day coach tour of some smaller cities in the Shanghai orbit: Suzhou, Wuxi and Hangzhou. They’re smaller than Shanghai (24 million) and Beijing (21.5 million), but still big by Canadian standards. The smallest, Suzhou, is home to over four million. Hangzhou has almost 10 million.

The route to our first stop, Suzhou, took us through mostly flat countryside, with rice paddies, market gardens, orchards. The motorway, a good one, had been attractively landscaped. We'd seen the same thing around Beijing, where some highway medians even had rose trellises. Here, we noticed in particular a couple of unfamiliar varieties of very attractive trees. One had dramatic red-bronze leaves, but only at the top. We still don’t know what it’s called. The other is the Osmanthus, which is celebrated here as a beauty tree. We saw it everywhere. At this time of year, it has sweetly-scented clusters of hanging yellow flowers.

Suzhou, where we arrived an hour and a half later, is known, according to the Nexus itinerary, as “the garden city,” and also as “Venice of the East,” because of its network of canals, of which about 40 remain. In ancient times – it’s one of the oldest cities in China – it was regarded by the emperor’s court as “heaven on earth.” I couldn’t dispute the “garden city” tag. There are apparently still many classical gardens, including the wonderful Lingering Garden  – “among the finest in China” – which would be our first stop. But the “Venice of the East” label is risible. Suzhou, from what we saw, has little of the charm or beauty of the Italian original, just the canals. Heaven on earth? Maybe long, long ago.

I can’t remember where we picked up Yvonne, our local guide in Suzhou. It might have been on a downtown street corner. A cheerful woman with very good English, we took her to be in her mid-thirties or, at most, early forties. She was stylishly dressed, in a more mature style than Mary’s, and had a lovely clear complexion and great smile. We were surprised later when she started talking about her adult daughter who was soon getting married. She went on to tell us she herself was now semi-retired, and had only been called back for the Spring and Fall tourist seasons because English-speaking guides are in short supply. Women in China, she explained, retire at 50. It later came out that she herself was 53. I think she knows perfectly well she looks very youthful and pretty for her age – certainly to western eyes – and she may be a teensy bit vain about it. A nice woman, though; we enjoyed her.   

The weather in southeast China was even milder than in Beijing – low twenties, muggy, overcast. There was significant rain in the forecast. Two typhoons – Sarika and Haima – had tracked across the west Pacific and into the South China Sea, days apart. They caused real destruction in the Philippines and Taiwan, and threatened Hong Kong, but were also causing unpleasant weather here. It would get steadily worse as the trip went on.

Suzhou, Lingering Garden

When we got to the Lingering Garden, it was spitting rain from low cloud. Suzhou in general might lack charm and beauty to eyes spoiled by Venice, but the Lingering Garden is a delightful place, even at this relatively dull time of the garden year. It’s very compact – and unfortunately also very crowded – with a main pond full of koi, canals with stone bridges, small island pavilions, a few buildings in the classical Chinese style, and a network of narrow flag-stoned pathways winding through it. Each of the buildings offers different views, highlighting plantings for a particular season.

Suzhou, Lingering Garden

Little was in bloom at this time of year: a rose bush and some water lilies in a small separate walled section where they keep bonsai trees. The main waterways were heavily planted with lotus, but they of course were not in bloom. The greenery is lush – lots of Osthmanthus, Gingko, pine. It must be a great place to take refuge from the summer heat. Art students were out with their easels, painting – in a very traditional Chinese style by the look of it: monochrome black, impressionistic. 

Suzhou, Lingering Garden

This is the kind of place where Karen and I would have loved to linger, where I would take gazillions of photographs. But it was not to be. We spent less than an hour in the garden, most of it shuffling along behind other tourists. Schedules must be followed when you’re travelling in a tour group.

Suzhou, Lingering Garden

The next activity was an optional boat cruise along the Grand Canal. I think everybody in the tour had signed up for this one. The boats were reminiscent of Amsterdam canal boats: wide and low to the water with the same wood-framed glass windows all round, and open viewing decks front and back. The little lagoon where we boarded was quite pretty, with overhanging willows. The “cruise” turned out to be a straight run down a section of the canal, past houses, under narrow arched bridges and through a lively-looking pedestrian shopping zone. Locals and tourists were out enjoying the sidewalk cafes, some leaning over the railings, waving to us. Twenty minutes or so later, we came to a lagoon-like widening in the canal, did a u-turn and cruised back the way we’d come.

  

Suzhou, Grand Canal cruise

The houses were interesting, built, we were told, in “the traditional” style. What we could see of them were their rear ends, which backed, Venice-style, right on the canal. They were not particularly attractive: in some cases decidedly slummy, in others, just blank and uninteresting. We saw residents out on their back patios or decks. There were clothes on lines drying – or getting wetter as it was still spitting rain off and on. We saw one old gentleman in his underwear, hanging laundry, apparently oblivious to the damp and the passing boats full of goggling tourists. Maybe his only pair of pants was in the laundry. 

Suzhou, Grand Canal cruise - the turning-around point with house boats

Yvonne told us that the residents here are mostly retirees, because only they can afford the expensive downtown real estate, and younger people prefer living in suburban high-rises. While the houses might look ramshackle from the outside, she assured us, many are modern and beautifully renovated inside. We could certainly see lots of air conditioning units, but we didn’t see much other sign of home improvement. Many of the houses we did see into looked – squalid. The people outside were mainly retirement age, but they didn’t look affluent, they looked poor. I wonder if Yvonne had overheard some snide remarks from our group and felt the need to defend her town.

Dilapidated canal houses

Suzhou, the not so beautiful: shops near cruise boat dock

Our next stop was a silk embroidery workshop, but we arrived late, just before closing, so the visit was shorter than intended. They showed us a gallery of fantastically fine silk embroidered pieces, including some with almost photo-realistic images. We had little time to see it properly before they ushered us into the inevitable sales room. Some of our group succumbed and purchased embroidered tchotchkes. They had told us we would be able to return to the gallery, which Karen very much wanted to do, but then it was too late, they had closed it.

Here is the problem with not keeping proper notes, as any self-respecting writer (or even, in my case, lazy writer) could tell you. According to Karen’s recollection, the embroidery workshop and the silk factory we would visit the next day were one and the same place. Maybe I just didn’t recognize it at the time, or maybe I forgot – I was in a fog of jet lag most of the trip. Or maybe Karen is wrong.

In any case, before leaving the place that I remember as just an embroidery workshop, we went upstairs to a restaurant, along with every other tour group there – which was many – and had our dinner at the usual giant-table-with-lazy-susan. It was a noisy room. Karen complains in her journal about too many fish dishes served at this meal. To me, our meals all ran together anyway: mediocre Chinese food served at big tables, and not enough beer.

We went from dinner to our hotel, the Pan Pacific. Leo had primed us to have high expectations, saying more than once how much he liked this hotel, that it was one of his favourites. We were not disappointed. It was by far the best place we stayed. Too bad it was only one night. The Pan Pacific is right in the centre, built in a vaguely traditional style, around gardens with streams, sculptures and attractive greenery. Inside, there were what looked to be really old artifacts in museum-style glass cases (which we were too tired/lazy to examine properly).  The hotel incorporates two pagodas, at least one of which, the one housing the main reception, has historical significance. Leo or Yvonne had told us the hotel hosted delegations at the 2016 G20 summit a few months before, although the summit was mainly held in Hangzhou, which is two hours away.

Our first floor room was smaller than some we had, but very nicely appointed, and with a long balcony overlooking the gardens. We couldn’t figure out how to get the balcony door open – it appeared to be locked, with no key, which seemed odd – but it didn’t matter as it was damp out anyway. The room was too near the elevator, which was a shoring-up place for guests who had lost their way in the warren-like hotel corridors. They stood outside it, laughing and loudly commiserating. The hotel is built in several sections, not always joined as expected – or not joined at all in some cases. We got lost more than once ourselves.

It was still quite early, so we went for a walk around the hotel precinct. We could see the beginnings of a lively shopping district across a busy street, but didn’t have energy or courage to brave the insane Chinese traffic. We tried to circumnavigate the hotel, but the lights petered out in the direction we were walking, so we turned and went back the way we’d come. We probably weren’t out 30 minutes. No, not very adventurous. Were we already growing too reliant on others to decide what we should see and do and guide us? Some of our group, including Ralph and Pat, did venture into a livelier area with attractive shops. And the hotel’s website, I later discovered, says it is only a six-minute walk from the “Panmen scenic area,” a quarter with important architectural relics, parks and busy pedestrian areas. Nobody told us about that.

On our return to the hotel, we got lost in the empty hallways. A passing staff member led us back to where we needed to be. We had a brief Skype call with Caitlin in the room, and retired a little before 10. It was to be a 7 a.m. call the next morning. (No wonder we were always tired!)