Here we are trudging through the rain with our instruments. I just noticed this now, but I'm pretty sure our friend Cameroon has a checkers set in hand. So cultural.
Our first activity in Suzhou began soon after entering the city (and no, I'm not counting our fast food "breakfast" as an activity - what was it, KFC?). Suzhou is located by the Yangtze River and is right on the shores of the Taihu Lake, so she's (hope you don't mind me personifying Suzhou) lined with a multitude of canals from her medieval (I'm using what is commonly listed as the second and more colloquial definition of that word, in case ya wanna get all technical on me) days. The moats are so extensive that you can see a good portion of the city via boat, so we boarded water taxis and got our first impressions of the city via the Grand Canal. Sitting in the boat with David's sign is our new friend Bamboo.
A street view from the boat.
You'll notice throughout this post that Suzhou is a lot greener than Beijing. This is partially due to a wetter climate, but I think also can be attributed to the fact that it's not the sprawling metal-and-concrete metropolis that Beijing is (though it's still a big city).
That's the driver (pilot?) of our boat on the bottom right.
“这是第七单元三角洲。请求权限启动对接程序。超过。” *
*not intended for native speakers
We stepped off of the boats at what I believe was some sort of temple...
You can see it in the upper right of the above image and verify for yourselves whether you think it's a temple or not. On second thought, maybe it was a guard tower for the city. By now you can probably deduce how good my memory is...ok, just checked the itinerary: it was the Panmen City Gate. Whoops. At least I'm honest! Now that I think about it more, the cannon probably should have tipped me off. You don't typically see cannons at temples...
Josiah has a staring contest with a Chinese snail.
Plants everywhere. I like this place.
That afternoon we had a performance at the Suzhou Art and Design Technology Institute. These pictures are from our rehearsal beforehand (I finally brought my camera to a rehearsal).
After the performance, we had free time for the evening. I can't seem to remember what that chunk of time entailed, but I do remember lounging in bathrobes being part of the equation. Now that I think of it, I think this was the evening we went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Before you start having associations with the concept of cheap pizza in your head, I should tell you that Pizza Hut in China is swanky. It's a sit-down restaurant, and the interior was decorated accordingly to the level of swank that I attributed to it in the previous sentence. After finishing our food, we proved to the wait staff our American-ness by playing the Whose Line Is It Anyway Props game with the irregularly-shaped pizza platter. On the way back to our hotel, we made a stop at McDonalds (still swanky) for some helado. I also stole Rebecca's rain jacket so I could look trendy, but unfortunately I don't have pictures of it (if you doubt me, Danielsan can verify exactly how trendy I looked).
The next day we were scheduled to leave Suzhou by bus for Shanghai, but before we hit the road we made a stop at the Master of the Nets Garden. To steal from Wikipedia once again, "The garden demonstrates Chinese garden designers' adept skills for synthesizing art, nature, and architecture to create unique metaphysical masterpieces. The Master of the Nets is particularly regarded among garden connoisseurs for its mastering the techniques of relative dimension, contrast, foil, sequence and depth, and borrowed scenery." ← Yeah, what he said.
Here are some of my friends enjoying the garden!
More amigos.
Dr. Shasberger and Madison (she's turning over a new leaf with her full name, in case you hadn't heard :) are happy, trinkets abound, and Chinese ladies are texting.
After the garden, we made a stop at Pingjiang Road; it's more than 800 years old! It's a really popular location for portraits. The people on the upper left were one couple of two or three having a shoot in the short time that we were there.
This is the canal right next to the road.
One of our stops before heading to Shanghai was a silk factory. Before we were shepherded through the silk store at the end (ok, I'm being too cynical - I did after all buy gifts there :), we got to see all of the steps of the silk-making process, and were even allowed to feel live silk worms! On the bottom right, Bri is helping stretch out a tiny piece of unfinished silk fabric into a huge thin sheet; it was crazy how large a small piece of fabric could become.
And I must conclude this post by lauding Jerome's skills as a jello sculptor. Here you see an immaculate 1:325 scale model (assuming an average height of 6.5 meters for the Great Wall and a jello height of 2 centimeters) of the 4780th segment of the Great Wall.
Later that afternoon, we had a small casual performance at the Suzhou Center for Disability (our musicians with bigger instruments didn't have their rental instruments for this one, the stage was rather small, and there were no music stands available, so improvisation was key :), and then we started the long bus ride to our last destination, Shanghai. But that's for my last China blog post, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for that! Until then, adios!
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