Tom booked a tour for me to go to a nearby city called Suzhou today. Suzhou is about 1.5 hours outside of Shanghai and it's absolutely beautiful!!! I think this is my favorite city so far!!! Suzhou has two of the most famous gardens in China (there are 4 total)...I love scenery and natural beauty (flowers, mountains, etc)...so this was great! Suzhou is known for 3 things...1) Gardens 2) Beautiful Girls and 3) Silk. The tour guide said that many people know that Suzhou has beautiful girls, but not many know that the girls are not local. The story is that emperors would go to Suzhou for the gardens and the girls would go there hoping that the emperor would like them and take the girls back to live with them. I didn't really notice alot of beautiful women...but maybe my tastes are different... :)
We visited the Lingering Garden (one of the two famous gardens in Suzhou) and I got a chance to practice my photography. I brought my Nikon, so I was able to get some really great shots of the flowers and landscaping. Finally, I can try to redeem myself since some of the pictures I've taken have been terrible with my little camera. This garden use to be a private garden and is well known for its "exquisite beauty of its magnificent halls, and the various sizes, shapes, and colors of the buildings."
We also went to the silk factory and learned how silk was made. It was fascinating to see the whole process...those poor silk worms...once they build their cocoons, 80% of them are heated and killed to make the silk with the 20% left to breed. The silk threads are sooooooo small...imagine how many silk worms are killed to make one item!!! I contributed to them getting killed...I bought a king sized bed set..but it was too beautiful to pass up!
My favorite part of the day was when we went to the Water Village. This place is known as the "Venice of the East". There is a canal that runs through the city and just like Venice...there are gondolas for the tourists to ride. We were able to ride on the gondola as part of the tour, so that was very nice!!! It's very romantic...I'll have to come back here with my significant other one day!
