No Fixed Address

I do not recommend this place on a hot day. Today it was 88F but it felt like Dante's inferno in the "slow city" of Gaochun, my new home, until hopefully August, if these people hire me back for another semester. So far, it's not looking good. Anywho, I imagined a beautiful breezy, leafy lake area, but what I got was an asphalt driveway and no shade all day. I brought my umbrella, so that was good, but there was no reprieve from the blistering sun and the heat radiating off of the road. I felt like I almost had heat stroke. Luckily some gardeners cooled me down with their hoses, as the lake was unswimmable. (Could it be any other way in China?) Later, I took off my whole dress and doused it in water in the washroom, I was that desperate to be cooled down. It was just awful and I tried my best to appreciate this lovely lake and small zoo, but it was very hard.
As always, photos of flowers for my mom.

Sad monkeys in the small zoo.


Lotuses, not blooming.


The lemurs were happy though.

Very hot crocodile

The parrot pavilion was beautiful, but the parrots were cooped up in cages

"Swan lake", more like mud puddle

Cheery boardwalk

A pink beach but don't you dare try to swim!

This whole town is built on one road and there is one bus going up and down this road. It reminded me a lot of Niagara on the Lake, except this town has a lot of tearooms instead of wineries. The bus only came once every 30 minutes, so of course, there was was no room on the bus so I just sat on the floor:

First stop in the morning was the glass plank floor in the bamboo forest:

They put hammocks in the bamboo forest:

OK, then the second stop was this weird place called "Purple Sea Valley Paradise" or some such crazy name. It seemed to be some sort of amusement park that was half closed down. Anyways, I got a free ride on a little car that drove underneath a waterfall. I took a video, and it's on Facebook. I guess Travellerspoint doesn't host videos.

I took lots of photos of this place, which was quite depressing while at the same time strangely captivating. But it was hot, so I couldn't stay too long.
'

"Bujie" Cafe, I see what you did there...

After all that, I was too hot, so I went down underground for the natural air conditioning of Linggu Cave.

This is the "1,000 Buddha Mountain". The little rocks look like little Buddhas.

The cave was enormous, with three separate parts to the cave complex:

This waterfall wasn't running when I went down, so I decided something was wrong and ran out, terrified:

A little rock bridge through a little cave-pond:

When I got back, this lady made me a delicious crepe with all kinds of random stuff in it:

After spending the morning at the hospital, I went to book my train ticket and decided to just take the cheapest train to Yixing at around 9 p.m. That meant I had a bunch of time to kill in Nanjing. The first stop was the Nanjing Folk Museum.
There was a nice garden in the back and then...

A paper cutting display

Lots of dioramas all about Chinese festivals

A big silk loom:

A mask display:

A lantern display:

Info about the museum:

Afterwards I went to the "Treasure Shipyard".

An ancient boat rudder:

Zhong He, the great explorer on the deck of his massive ship:

An enormous mural about all the places Zhong He visited:

There were three ponds which used to hold all the ships that were being built:

And a giant replica boat in the middle of the city!

A giant iron anchor that they found while excavating the site:

After wandering around that place, it was relaxing and a really nice place to stroll, but I got really tired. I found a Diangping deal for $10 and had a big Japanese dinner. The owner was really friendly and let me borrow his charger. He gave me some free sushi, free dessert and an extra drink!

This was a cute sign on the Nanjing subway:

Then I went to the south train station, which looks like an airport:

Then when I got to Yixing, I took the last bus into town towards the cheapo hotels and randomly walked up to one. So, I got this little cute room with a couch and fridge (!!!) for 118 yuan.

I believe today that I saw Nanjing man's skull, finally. I went to the Nanjing Municipal Museum and there it was. Two pieces of two different skulls of two people that could've been the missing link. I think the jury's still out on that.

Behind the museum there is a wonderful garden. A perfect retreat from the city.

Singlehandedly spoiled by this crazy woman dancing and taking Tiktok videos to loud traditional Chinese music under this fragrantly blooming tree.

Lots of interesting old stuff in the museum, like this rickshaw:

This big guy can be found at the entrance of many rich guys' tombs, scaring away evil spirits.

An old sculpture. Google tells me this is an armillary sphere.

Sun Yat Sen's watch

Rickshaw licence plates

An old roof tile kiln

Then I went to my favourite Chinese store, Da Run Fa. There is always a motorized sidewalk like this and everyone always does this. Why? It's not The Jetsons, you can use your legs!

While I was waiting for the moving sidewalk, I took this selfie because I realized how Handmaid's Tale I look in my auntie hat.

The last day of my holiday, I spent at Jingsi Garden, south of Suzhou. The distance from the city made it a lot less crowded. I could probably count on two hands all the people that were there that day. It was actually relaxing as gardens are supposed to be. Who wants to go look at ponds and plants while shuffling around in a big mass of humanity? Not me. This however, was fine.

It had rained a bit and I liked the way the water sparkled on this leaf.

There were large stones everywhere around this garden, and even one that was 9 metres high with an impressive backstory. A rich businessman went looking for it because there were stories about it in the ancient texts, but no one had ever found it. He found it and brought it back to Suzhou in 2001. It took a whole year and he had to build a road with two bridges to get it to the city.
Here is the big rock:

I don't know about you, but if I was that rich, I could think of a lot better things to do with my money than drag an old weird looking rock around. I mean, I get that it creates jobs and attracts people to the area, but, come on, we still don't know the cure for cancer, man.

I had this rice, soup and orangeade combo from Chinese Groupon, it was amazing. Sour and spicy with soft white fish, so good. I love Dianping!

In the morning, Claire invited me out to have some breakfast. She bought me some rice balls stuffed with very young bamboo. She said that they only made them in Suzhou and that this was the only time of year you could get them, so who am I to turn an invitation like that down?

She had mentioned that she wanted to go to this "Eco" park with her dog so I told her I would check it out and it was definitely not "eco-friendly" to anything or anyone. First thing weird I saw was this "activity" for kids. You could pay to chase chickens around. If you zoom in on that photo the chicken is wearing a leather jacket with brass knuckles that say "FREE RANGE". Alright.... lost in translation I think... There were no children participating at the moment, so I don't have any evidence of this happening.

There was also a military course to try. I saw some college students chanting and marching around, preparing to battle it out on this course, but I didn't stick around to see whose side won.

Then the most amazing sight at this place, was this gigantic former swimming pool, complete with slides and dance party lights that haven't been taken down yet. I suppose the price of the maintenance of the pool was too much for the owners, so they went with a re-branding. They stopped pouring chlorine in and stocked the place up with fish. They gave kids waders and charged them to wade around and try and catch fish. Brilliant.

Then there was a climbing area that seemed fun enough, but I mean, I was still feeling it in my knee so I didn't chance climbing up on any of these things.

I didn't spend much time there, and so I went a few kilometres down the road to Suzhou Dreamland, a really rundown amusement park, which reminded me of Fantasy Island.
I waited an hour in line to ride this strange contraption, that included a water gun. The only goal for riders was to shoot at the statues in the middle. What happened if you shot at the statues? Absolutely nothing, you just shot water at statues.

I rode on this carousel, which was very loud and vibrated a lot more than seemed normal.

This ferris wheel was tall, but not as tall as the one in Wuxi.

On top of those rides, there were bumper cars which I waited for more than an hour because so many people were cutting in line. Finally I had enough and I started blocking people. One guy even called me a "big bitch" and told me to go "back to my country". I said yeah no problem i'm lucky, I'm on vacation and I can, unlike you who are stuck here on these crappy bumper cars in Jiangsu province, drinking up Shanghai's backwater.

That night, I went back to the hostel and met Peter and Lara an English couple who were on a six month adventure all around Asia. Peter was a business journalist and Lara was a treasury department policy wonk. They were fun and I always get a little too excited to speak English to people, so I probably dominated the conversation all night, but oh well.

There wasn't a lot to say about this park, other than it had a TON of roses. If that's your thing, you know where to go, next time you're in China. It was just the right time of year, so the whole garden was bursting with bright colours. My knee wasn't doing so well, so I tried to take it easy that day. It never goes that way though. There's always way more walking than you think you will do. I didn't get a very good sleep the night before, and I tried to find a nice place to take a nap, but there was blaring techno music and families setting up tents and running around with kites everywhere. It wasn't easy to find a spot. I ended up finding one unoccupied bench in the whole park and just laying down on it for a while, but it was a little too cool for that, so I left before I managed to take a nap.

The whole garden is built on the remains of a brick factory. They kept some of the original kiln.

For dinner, I went to a nice Japanese place across the street. All this curry, foie gras, and sushi for 82 yuan (15.62 CAD). Lots of restaurants have these notebooks that they leave on the table with markers, so people can draw in them and leave little messages for the next customers.

I left pretty early in the morning, thinking I would go for a regular old hike up a small mountain in the outskirts of Suzhou. I took the bus for almost two hours and then started to slowly make my way up the mountain, amidst families and all kinds of kids enjoying their day off.

Once I got halfway up the mountain, I realized that this was no regular hike. A rich businessman erected these cottages to depict life back in the days when Sun Tzu wrote probably the oldest still surviving war strategy booklet. He came up to Qiaolong mountain to collect his thoughts and write this treatise advising future generals on how best to win a war. In fact, you could even wash your hands and face in the same spring Mr. Sun used.

A few paces past that, was the actual text carved in stone in three different languages. I had nothing to do that day, so I sat down and read the whole thing for the second time. I read it the first time I came to China because it was one of the shortest books in our little English language library for foreign teachers when I worked at NUDT. Quite a few Chinese people would stroll by and read a few lines in English out loud. A little child asked his mom to read some to him and the first paragraph contained the word "death". For whatever reason, this little boy latched onto that word and started skipping around the pavillion chanting "deathdeathdeath" and I almost died laughing.

In addition to the historical significance, there were also huge taoist and buddhist temples at the top. Here is the view from the Buddhist one:

I walked all the way down the other side of the mountain on "The Imperial Road" to catch the bus back to the subway station. This was the road the emperor took every time he visited the area, so they built this road for him.

I decided to see what was around near the subway station. I used Chinese Groupon to get a chicken sandwich combo at Pizza Hut, which I immediately regretted. But at least now I know I'm never going back to Pizza Hut in China. Nobody was even eating pizza there. There were a bunch of people all dressed up in cosplay, which was annoying too. I was going to take some photos of them, but when I went out on the plaza, they were all there dancing in front of cameras on tripods. I figured they had enough photos of themselves for all of us, so you can just imagine what these cosplayers looked like.

I didn't even get halfway home, and I had to poop like, an emergency. I jumped off the subway and luckily, China has bathrooms everywhere. But, when I got back to the train it was packed, maybe because of the cosplay convention, or just the holiday, I don't know. Long story short, I thought this guy's shirt was funny so I took a photo.

I had six days off for the labor day holiday, when most people had five, so I immediately took advantage of that and left for Suzhou on Monday afternoon. Most Chinese people wouldn't have any days off until Wednesday so I thought it would be easier that way. I sent a message to my hostel owner friend, Claire in Suzhou and she said she had a bottom bunk waiting for me. Excellent. So I took the teacher bus to the train station and set up camp.
I mistakenly booked a day at a spa without realizing it was too far away, so I spent the rest of the night and the best part of the morning compiling a list of all the free tourist spots on my card by distance from my hostel.
I decided to spend the week visiting places 20 km and closer. At first Claire told me that the hostel was fully booked on May 2nd, so I initially started to plan on going elsewhere. Luckily somebody cancelled and I was free to stay the whole week in Suzhou. However this was at holiday price, way higher than normal, but there wasn't much choice, as every other hotel was doing the same. It was basically a choice of staying in Suzhou or just going home, both of which were fine, but why should I do day trips when I have the week free? On top of this, I was relieved because I was able to pay in full for the whole week. When I sent money home last month, I miscalculated my income and I was running dangerously low. After I paid for my bed and the train ticket home, I only had about 2000 yuan left, so I felt good about making it to pay day on May 10 with about $400 for food and bus fare a few days after the holiday. Phew.
At about 11 am I headed out to the southwest corner of town, where there was a bird park and a small mountain retreat.
The mountain home was a place for a man that became a hermit there and planted thousands of pine trees. There were also carved rocks with calligraphy on them. I wandered around slipping on the rocks all the way up and down the hills.

When I was tired of that, I caught the bus to go down the road to the bird park. Tom told me that all the birds would be in cages but I didn't believe him. He was right again. Although it wasnt the tranquil natural spot I thought it would be, I had the place to myself the whole time as it was raining pretty steadily. It turned out to be a really good day to visit the bird park. All the birds were out getting a bath in the rain, and all the humans stayed home.

I was tired from all the running around the day before, so I just went one place. It was 1.75 hours away, and that was enough! The distance from town meant that it was not very crowded, so I liked that. But the boat ride felt a lot like "It's A Small World"...

Southeast of Wuxi there is a very Disneyfied water town (yeah, another one right?). Hopefully this can be one of the last few, but I doubt it. I'm tired of them and they are way better in Jiangxi. Anyways, I'm always tempted to just go see what's there so I'm sure I'll get sucked in again later. From the photos you can clearly see that there are not many barriers to people falling into the canals. I don't think this would be a good place to let your children run amok. Nonetheless, a three year old boy rammed smack into me at full speed. I wasn't looking in his direction and thought that maybe I ran into a dog. So, for a second I felt bad for the dog. I probably accidentally kicked him in the thigh a little too hard, he might have a bruise. The instant I realized it was an actual child, I looked around for his parents, and there they were, mad at me. OK, whatever, I just walked away flummoxed.

Just so you know, this bathroom is not for transgendered people. Only families!

I had a cruise included in my tourist card and they gave me a whole private boat to myself!

This whole village was being massively gentrified with a garish upscale boutique resort moving in. I watched them deliver a huge load of glass walls for the balconies. You have to walk past this huge wall just to get into the village and if you get on the wrong side of it watch out, it will take at least 15-20 minutes to go around.

This mural didn't fool me!

After I was bored of the village, I went back to town to see Hui Shan park. On the way there, a cyclist slammed right into my left ankle and left side of my face. It took me a while to get over the shock and another while to figure out that my teeth were OK. The cyclist apologized and I did too, but I think it was his fault. He was going way too fast on the divided street. I was just crossing the bike/scooter road. I had looked to my left and I didn't see him, he was going really fast. It was pretty awful. Anyways, I got to Huishan park after that and it was predictably crowded. I was not interested in staying there very long.

After lunch on Thursday, I headed to Wuxi to check out some of the locations on my tourist card. My students helped me make my hostel booking, so I had a place to stay for three nights.
There was a super cute dog there, who played fetch with this rock. He would try to give it to everyone to throw for him. I gave him some of my snacks, and he had the same horrible problem as Melo. The pieces were just too big for his mouth, I had to break them up small enough for him so he could eat it.

I left early in the morning because I thought that "Wuxi Studios" would have more to do than just a few photo ops with green screens, and some old studio props from famous Chinese TV shows. There was a green screen Titanic boat. I couldn't figure out how to do it haha.

Free Willy themed mall. Except with a girl and her dad?

Terrified Charlie Chaplin...

Old railroad station

Old fake cars

Very budget studio props

Impressive looking imperial palace (from far away)

Map, explanation

From the entrance, it looked completely deserted! And it was.

Then I had a lot of time for the rest of the day so I rode the ferris wheel, for views of Tai Lake. It was 115 metres high. I forgot to take a photo from the ground, just believe me, it was scary.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon at "Flower Planet" taking photos of flowers for my mom, with lots of ideas for her garden! Hahaha.

There were amazing sculptures made out of hay and sisal.

Annoying people sitting on the sides of their seats in the aisle. Why???

Just some random rice noodle soup for dinner.

Breakfast in the courtyard

Lots of flowers for my mom!

Creepy animal statues

On top of the hill in the park you could see the garden all around.

A little train for kids, but there were no kids on a Friday afternoon so I didn't see it working.

Bright pink sand pit!

Hobbiton

I carry around old popcorn just for feeding random animals I find on my jaunts. I have two more bags at home, but this horse ate one of them!

Map

Found this alley where I had my dinner and some cheap 2.5% beer

Another day off, another jaunt to Nanjing. First stop was a stroll along the northern edge of the city wall:

There was an exhibit inside the wall that had some pottery they found and also an old opium pipe with, I guess, an explanation:

After the short stroll along the wall, I went to the Confucius Temple. I was expecting peace and quiet but it was very loud with techno music blaring and crazy amounts of consumerism.

This is an imprint of my butt, I don't know why they had this at the imperial examination museum, but it was hilarious anyway:

A giant wall of bamboo slips, which were used as paper in the olden days:

Some famous scholars in Chinese history:

Wax sculptures of people taking the imperial examination in the presence of the emperor, the last step, only the smartest people were invited to do this

Cheat sheets and cheat socks!

A reflecting pool outside the museum:

Explanation:

There were a few things I really liked at this underrated museum, Jiangnan Imperial Examination Hall. My favourite was this enormous wall with fish scale roof tiles. Taking the imperial examination transformed you from "a fish into a dragon", so the wall is symbolic of that transformation. All visitors to the museum are also transformed from a fish into a dragon by walking down this long hallway, four floors underground as a symbolic entrance into the museum. Interesting experience!

Just the impressive interior of the museum:

The uniform at a school:

Largest bronze statue of Confucius in the world

A press conference of some sort:

Fake flowers:

The street leading to the Confucius temple

Examination cells, people would have to sit in here and take the test for nine days!

Some more famous scholars:

I sent a few postcards before going home.

Art deco architecture from an old abandoned bank I noticed:

I woke up with massive period cramps and stayed in bed in and out of consciousness until noon. The owner of the hostel was very nice and she gave me some "brown sugar water" which was supposed to help. It did for a bit I think. I went to a temple called Han Shan and it was also crazy busy. That's because there is a poem that every school child must recite about this temple. Here it is:

The moon is going down
And the crows make a ruckus
The sky is covered with frost
There are maples on the riverbank
And the lights of fishing boats
Drift with the current
I fall into a sad sleep
from the monastery on Cold Mountain
The sound of the bell
Reaches the guest boat at midnight

I had some vegan noodles at the buddhist restaurant on site, and then the cramps started up again. It's a bad idea for me to eat heavy food like noodles on my period ugh.

This was actually the least busy spot, but I thought it was the most interesting. Inside that building is a giant bell that they ring every new year 108 time because people will have 108 "annoyances" all year long. The bell is supposed to help get rid of some of them for you.

I caught the wrong bus back and Baidu maps helped me fix my mistake, so I still made it back just without the subway.
I bought some really expensive Advil and then went to sleep as soon as the pain subsided, again drifting in and out of sleep until 5 a.m. when I woke up, had a shower, and left for home.

I woke up pretty early but hung around seeing what Toshi would do. He wouldn't be in town until noon so I went to Tongli by myself. It was normally 100 yuan to get in but it was free with my magic tourist card!
There was a new self-driving bus that took tourists for free from the subway station to the town, so that was fun.

It was very confusing to get around this village and I was constantly comparing it to the idyllic water villages I visited when I lived in Nanchang. The villages outside Suzhou are just too Disneyfied and sterile for my taste.

I went to the three spots mentioned in Lonely Planet. In one mansion I got yelled at for feeding the fish some old popcorn.

A famous pathway in a Chinese movie where the couple "cute meet" by bumping into each other.

Another garden was a UNESCO world heritage site so it was too crowded.

Another garden was called pearl tower because of a tiny replica pagoda covered in pearls. Not actually because of any tower on the premises, as I initially thought. Also it was the garden built by a guy who married his daughter??? I dunno weird stuff went on back then and no one cared I guess.

Somebody was selling silk tapestries of Xi Jin Ping alongside silk tapestries of Mao. Hmmm.

Around 1 or 2 Toshi showed up and I found him at the gate. We were hungry and immediately had some lunch. I got a deal from Chinese Groupon and toshi didn't like the squirrelfish I ordered. It was deep fried, so I should've known a sushi eater wouldn't be a fan. :P He did like the tofu, eggs and vegetables, so that was good. We had way too much food anyway.

Toshi didn't bring an umbrella even though I told him to. So it rained and he got wet. It was not a good weekend for him.

We wandered around but he just wanted to go home, so that night he went back to Wuxi and I went back to my dorm.

There's nowhere in the world you can go without bumping into some insufferable Germans. That night was one of those times. After untying my boots and laying down I heard a quiet "Hello" with an unmistakeable German accent coming from the shadows. I was very tired and my knee was aching. I didn't feel like talking but whatever. The woman in the next bunk over then asked me what my trip itinerary was. I just laughed and said this was it, I was going home about three train stations west of here the next day.

She then proceeded to tell me in excruciating detail about her whole plan for the next month or so. I don't know about you, but when I'm in her shoes, repeatedly answering that dreaded question "Wherehaveyoubeenwhereareyougoing?" (all breathlessly asked in a single word) is exhausting. I avoid it like the plague. She just up and volunteered that information to me and prattled right along as if I didn't exist. It seemed as if she was reciting her itinerary just to remind herself to actually continue on this quest. It seemed as if communicating such knowledge to me was just a byproduct of that process, because lord knows I was an uninterested observer.

I began stretching out my quads and massaging my ligaments while she babbled away. Then I had an idea that would either make her my best friend forever or shut her up for good. I told her I lived here for five years and hardly spoke any Chinese. Every time I told some German that tidbit they immediately lost respect for me. I suddenly became this ignorant American to be tossed in the garbage. Why haven't I been relentlessly studying Mandarin night and day since I arrived? That's what any self respecting German would do, you know. Predictably, after confessing my poor mastery of the Chinese language, fraulein suddenly had to finish watching this amazing TV show Sex in the City on her phone. Ok schlaf gut fraulein.

On Thursday morning I couldn't get out of bed until about 8 a.m. I realized though, that the teacher bus left at 8:20 a.m. and maybe the driver would take me to the end of the road to catch the bus to Zhenjiang. From there I could catch a train to Suzhou. I bought some breakfast and the driver was nice enough to drop me off. I waited a bit for the bus and there weren't any seats left when I got on. I sat on some stairs and got all muddy but I didn't care it was an hour long bus! At the station I quickly bought a ticket and was on the train soon. It seems like the trains are always full around here. I don't know if this is a post pandemic bump or just how it is in Jiangsu. I remember the couple of times I went to Nanjing the trains were full four years ago and prior to that too. On the train, the conductor told me to wait at the door a stop before Suzhou about 30 minutes in advance. He pointed at a seat that was vacant telling me to sit there. I soon found out that it wasn't. I just sat there and ignored the angry woman glaring at me. I pointed at the conductor when he came back and they worked it out amongst themselves.

When I arrived in Suzhou, I put my bags down at the hostel and then my plan was to go to a temple. But I had a tank top on and couldn't go in. They wanted to sell me a scarf but I didn't need one so I went to the silk museum down the street instead. It was really great with a lot of old textiles that were at least 1,000 years old.


Suzhou was the place for the emperor to get silk for all his ceremonial needs. Normal day clothes were made in Beijing but his special day clothes were made in Suzhou.

They had some intricate looms and there were people operating them. Can't imagine who came up with that machine.

There was also a nice mulberry tree garden.

I had some won ton soup and Suzhou style dumplings, along with some very watered down rice wine. Toshi said he was having poopy problems so he stayed in wuxi.
I went right to bed after that.