Suzhou, launch the surprises

Lonely Planet: If you want to see the most beautiful gardens of China and the most gorgeous women of China, take a trip to Suzhou.

The train is crowded as usual; remember we are in the middle of the most important Chinese holiday. We were seated with 4 other travelers; everyone was busy glancing through magazines or playing cards - Chinese love to spend time playing games: cards, Chinese chess, mahjong, dice etc. – as Julien and I were brainfucking. He was trying to solve his new Chinese brain twister and I stayed more traditional, solving Sudoku puzzles of my Black Belt Sudoku book. The kid next to me was quite amazed by me using my left hand to place senseless numbers in a senseless grid. Niu rou mi fan (let’s say this was his name, actually it means “rice with beef”, but I can’t remember his name so keep on track) started questioning me in Chinese about who I was, what I was doing and so on. I ended up trying to explain the principles of Sudoku to my little buddy, but failed under the pressure of people around laughing at me speaking Chinese (as usual, may I add). We changed the subject and started Julien's favorite game: guessing Chinese characters in a newspaper. People around laughed again.. Hell with it buddy, why don’t you try to read the English foreword of my Sudoku book? Oh can’t you guess more than 5 words? ..Hmm alright (hehehe).

We arrive to Suzhou around 10pm, it seems like there are no public buses around. As we were staring at the bus information board, a man approached us…

…what would have happened next in France…
Noticing that we are lost, the guy claims that he knows where our hotel is and proposes to guide us. We walk through dark and narrow lanes, suspicious. 10 men come out of nowhere and fight us to death. Once they have screwed us, our guide and his friends disappear with our bags, phones and wallets.

…what would have happened next in Turkey…
Noticing that we are lost, the guy claims that he knows where our hotel is and proposes to guide us. We walk through dark and narrow lanes, suspicious. We finally get to our hotel, relieved. The man helps us to our room, translating what ever we need, without dropping that friendly smile on his face. Once settled, he asks us whether we are hungry or thirsty and takes us to a restaurant. Last thing we remember: he chooses the meal for us… The next morning, we get up in a bathtub full of ice, with a missing kidney.

You love shitty clichés don’t you?

Here is what happened in China…
Our man, David Sun (that’s his real name) noticed our distrust and insisted on taking the bus with us, telling us about Suzhou, the history and the places we should not miss. He felt so sorry when he understood the first hotel he took us to was not the one we had booked. We walked 15 minutes more; it was almost around midnight when we finally made it to our hotel. He came with us to check the rooms, and was the only one of us three not happy about it. “The shower is not even in the room guys! I’m 35 years old and I earn my own money. Let me pay the difference for you to have a room with a shower in it, please!”. We had to fight 20 minutes to keep is hand away from his wallet. Then, we went to a restaurant all together, discovered the Cai dan (menu) and ordered while David Sun kept talking about Suzhou. I finally told him about the “beautiful girls in Suzhou” thing, thus I got my answer full of humor: “I don’t think Suzhou has the most beautiful girls in China. My wife is from Suzhou, you know what I mean? If you guys are done, I would like to take you to a night club to have beers”.

Indeed, the night club had an entrance fee and the beers were quite expensive, but he kept telling us about China, showing his happiness of meeting foreigners while fighting to keep our hands away from our wallets, even though we were not really fighting back. However, we were not listening to him anymore. Since 3 months we had been in China, and it was the very first time we had stepped into a nightclub that you can actually call “night club”. Sexy women, more women than men, hell of a sound system roaring Sean Paul, Chemical brothers and Mister Oizo, women who like foreigners. We forgot about David Sun and went to hit the dance floor. Two hours later I had the decency to ask David whether he wanted to stay or go: “I would like to now”. Over.

Thus, we went back to our hotel, surprised by our host, cherishing our positive thoughts about China and longing to discover Suzhou. Of course, the same could have happened in France or in Turkey, don’t you be mad. It’s just that I have never seen such friendliness in Turkey, even though Turkish people are very kind and are willing to make other people love their country. Well, in France, I cannot imagine happening even the one tenth of this story.

Wassup doc'?

Yeay!! It's time to take a look to the Hangzhou Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine!! I will finally learn more about the very well known natural healing methods. As we are full tourist blended humans, we got in the museum by its way out and started our visit with the "take care" shop. At least, they are selling some real stuff in here: plants and parts of animal bodies! And the prices are the funniest thing to see: China, the country where you have a delicious meal for 4 euros - China, the country where you can buy crappy plant roots for 53700 Euros. Okay Hangzhou's citizens are known to be rich, but who would buy these?

Click the picture and take a good look to the price

What can a tourist possibly think about the root healing? Here is my thought path:

• What the hell??
• How did people find out about healing properties of roots?
  
• Do you take a bite every time your back hurts?
• Maybe you have to put some in your tea!
• ..or up in your *ss?!?!
• How many people died trying to uproot this on high mountains?
• Shall I tribute these people and take a picture?
• "Click!!"
• Sir!! Taking photos is not allowed in here!!
• .....Don't you worry, I won't blog this picture, I swear.
  

Roots are so expensive, you'd better not spoil the recipe. Whatever, lets have this museum tour..

The first part counts the historical and cultural aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. How did Chinese people study the nature and discover its power. What was the influence of occidental medicine on Chinese knowledge. How did the trading with the entire world thing begin. Many interesting information aim to enlighten the tourist's apprehension concerning the mystic Chinese medicine.
The second part of the museum is made of for more concrete items. A dozen rooms exposing jars full of animals, rocks, plants and their legend which more or less look like this:

Rana Temporaria Chensinensis David
Effect: nourishing lung and kidney

Okay who the hell are Lung and Kidney?? can't they eat by themselves? Whatever, legends you cannot understand without an encyclopedia. The section awakes your brains imagination area though. During one hour, I built scenarios of how did Chinese people discover the benefits of these exposed items. It could have gone like "Hey, how should I use this Rhino horn to feel relaxed?" or "Go catch that monkey and we'll figure out what to do with it later! Oh by the way, grab the dead pigeon laying near by the tree over there, and bring it to me on your way back, I have an idea..".

I felt like this is not the kind of museum enjoyable by anyone. Scientist or plant passionates would appreciate the knowledge exposed in here. I enjoyed my own imaginary Chinese traditional medicine.


Grab your bags, jump on the train, move to Suzhou..

First day of the year - Have it in paradise

As I wrote before, there are two islands in the middle of the fantastic Hangzhou West Lake. We wanted to appreciate the first morning of this New Year with a boat trip to the islands and a "natural" walk in this very peaceful after-party atmosphere; fireworks still illuminating the sky though.

I’ll pass the first island we visited as it was 5 meters large and 10 meters wide, with one classic pagoda in the middle, the kind you see everywhere in China.

The second island we stepped on is called Xiao Yingzhou, we are supposed to watch the moon reflecting in the three central pools. In fact, the island is split by a zigzag bridge which lets appear four tiny lakes: "an island in the lake, lakes in the island". What a shame the moon is not around at 10am. Anyway, the scenery is the nicest I have seen since I arrived to China. Bamboos, pools, lake, paths look like a movie set in this foggy morning, I wish there were less people around. Hang around, enjoy the landscape, take pictures for yourself, take pictures with Chinese people amazed by the foreigner presence, practice Taichi, be an R'n'B lover..the pictures say it all.

"Above is heaven, below is Hangzhou and Suzhou"

Chinese New Year - Who let the dog out?

Sorry reader, I have been busy lately and had no time to write. Here is the next chapter of our road trip in China.

January 28th is the Chinese New Year. These days, wherever you go in the country, firecrackers and fireworks are talking to you: "Hey, aren't you deaf yet? Alright, I’ll destroy your ears, gimme some time!". The sound of firecrackers is a distinctive feature on Chinese festivals, more than in any other country I have visited. Since there are no laws to supervise these "toys", anyone can sell/buy/fire rockets almost anywhere. But especially tonight, sounds of explosions have started around 5pm and we were told it won't stop until tomorrow morning. Burners will have fun during several days to welcome the Dog Year. Chinese people use fireworks to express the fact of being ready for the New Year, and also to get rid of evil spirits by frightening them. We wanted to spend this evening in Shanghai to see some real kick ass celebration, but we didn’t manage our trip well enough.

Anyway, it is quite fun to live such a joy around us. We studied the event with our Li Laoshi (Teacher Li) in Dalian, before the holiday. Thus, we know the special words to use today. In each coffee shop we get in, each restaurant we leave, we practice our "Xin nian kuai le!" (Happy new year), and the "Wo gei ni bai nian!" (Wish the New Year to the elders).
Who can resist to the firework sell-spots flourishing in every single street? We stopped at one of those; it is hard to tell everything we saw. There are these huge boxes, one meter wide, you can hardly imagine what kind of think it launches in the sky. And there are these colorful tubes, 5 cm diameter, and 1 meter long.

I am looking around for some rockets and missiles while the others buy firecrackers, the small ones, 300 little red crackers linked with one flammable line, how neat it is.. Please imagine Rambo with his machine gun bullets around the neck, make Julien the Rambo and have the bullets red colored, there you are.

It is time to find the best place to burn our crackers. Is this lane good? No, too many trees. Is this street okay? Nah, too crowded. We finally got to a wide square where no one seemed to fire anything: “Great! We will see our fireworks well enough”. As soon as we light up our first firecracker, a policeman comes: “Here, you cannot!”. How on earth did we manage to end up in the only place were this thing is forbidden?? We probably are the best tourist ever.
We head to a narrow street, illuminated by the fireworks burned on its sidewalk. To be clear, when I say fireworks, I am not talking about little glitters. Each family here can challenge the French 14th of July national day celebration fireworks show. But in a dangerous way though. For example, we saw this 10 years old kid borrow his father’s cigarette, run to the huge firework box, light it and return the cancer stick to his daddy. Hence, the box launches 3 war heads straight to the sky and knocks off balance, aiming the sidewalk across the street. The next missile hits a car; the last one hits a building. Who cares anyway, Xin nian kuai le!

The more lately it gets, the more fireworks explode. There is not a single silent second. Around 8pm, you feel like being in Baghdad, in the middle of American/Iraqi riots, explosions sounds surround us. You can grab a Kalashnikov and fire around, kill hundreds of people. Nobody would notice. Thankfully, Mc Donald’s sundae ice creams are here to remind you there is no war going on. The fast food restaurant is also useful to give our ears a rest.
We make it to a park where a lot of people are gathered. The ground is covered by the fireworks’ red paper. We watch happiness around. 3 young guys decide to settle their bombs one next to another in order to fire them at all together. Of course, one of them gets late because his lighter won’t work. He is soon hidden by the white smoke, which is, by the way, allover the city, making the Baghdad illusion truer. “Forget about the guy, we’ll see how he did in that smoke once the fireworks are done exploding”. Alright.

Besides fireworks, Chinese New Year must be traditionaly celebrated with “Jiaozi”s, the meal we call dumpling or raviolis. As we want to be as Chinese as possible, we decided to find a restaurant to eat jiaozi and ended up in a cheap dirty place, the kind we are used to eat at in Dalian. This one was hardcore though: cold solid rice, oil bathed jiaozi. Whatever, lets have this meal short and grab Snickers back to our Hotel.

What a pity Chinese New Year is the busiest day for hospitals. But at least, it is a hell of a celebration achieved in such a happiness we hardly live in Europe.
Wo gei ni bai nian.

Tea time!

A town named Longjing near Hangzhou is famous for its tasteful tea, a little museum explains the history of tea culture: why on earth Chinese people started to drink trees, how the dynasties used it to pull up the country's economy, how to recognize different types of tea, how to prepare the best tea ever? The museumbuildings are spread in a beautiful garden, surrounded by tea plantations. Tea smell is allover, and no one is around. Considering that we are road tripping during the Chinese New Year, being alone in a museum is quite incredible. You end your visit with a cup of the famous Longjing tea, given the price however, we did not.

Tea plantations in Hangzhou

Tea museum

As we had started our day with a "natural" visit, we headed to the Buddhist Lingyin Temple, a few kilometers away. No buses around, we are in the middle of nowhere. Let's follow the highway and take a walk through the country side. In a little village, we admired a woman smashing a turtle's carapace with a chop, as village people admired the two tourists we happen to be. In China, no matter where you are, people rarely get to see white people. Even if they are used to it in places of interest, they stare at you because they are, in some way, happy and proud to have they country visited. Moreover, Julien has dread locks and my height is 2 meters, does not help does it..

We finally made it to the park where the temple is supposed to be. We discover Buddhist sculptures incrusted to the rock, their layout on high places and down in caves are amazing. On top of it, the sculptures perfectly fit the natural scenery, offering to the visitors a wonderful sight of the park. We decide to climb the hill ahead of us, to take a picture of Hangzhou. As we walk, we can hear rising sounds of drums hit in a ceremonial rhythm. There are too many trees around, we won't have the opportunity to see the city from the hill, let's go back down to find the temple.

Doors are closed, few people are coming out. The little Buddha at the gate explains us "the temple is closed". Quick look to my watch: 2:30pm. Whatever, never mess with religion. Let's enjoy the park a little more and go back in town. I was chillin' around while Julien was playing Karate Kid with a branch of bamboo, when we bumped into Dara and Nicolas. These guys are two EPITECH students who came with us from France to China, we had no clue they would be around. They were as disappointed as we were by the closed Temple, we exchanged anecdotes about our trips, and took a bus to downtown to see how Starbucks was doing.

Hangzhou the fantastic

Subway 1…hall 9…wagon 14…seat 76…11:30pm…180 kms…Bus K9…101 Nanshan Lu…
…We moved to Hangzhou.
Does every Chinese city offer factories as a scenery? Hangzhou does not. Its forests, parks and its West Lake have charmed and inspired many poets and artists. Pagodas appear on every surrounding hills. Sunny, foggy, rainy, who cares? Hangzhou is beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world, my friend Polo (Marco) said once.


As we were looking around for our hotel, we ended up in a street nearby the lake, a bars & nightclubs neighborhood. Our address indicates a lane; it looks like the night clubs' backdoor street, we are almost there. A flashy red post with its Latin characters pulls my attention; it says “Paul Van Dyk – The politics of dancing: Absolute House”. You might have no idea who this guy is, but as God is a DJ, Jesus probably bounces on this German’s mixes. He and Tiesto (This God mixes in stadiums, not in clubs) are the progressive trance masters I prefer. Just find their music somewhere, plug it into your head, and start to climb the Everest. The DJ will perform the 29th, we will probably be gone by then. Now that I am posting about it, I regret, I wish we had spent one more day in Hangzhou.

God, the DJ - Crunked Media

Alright, back to my story, we made it to the hotel, practiced our Chinese 5 minutes and switched to English as usual, dropped our stuff in the room and took a walk around the lake (scheduling our visits, of course). There are 2 main islands we should visit, some boat tours take tourists there..boring. We want to have our exotic conquest of the islands. Little crappy boats are to be rented nearby our hotel. No questions, we jump on one of those as soon as we see that we can go alone with our life vests. The Captain Hostel might have influenced us way too much and our stuntman souls might have blinded us: clearly, we cannot go further the buoys. We had fun though, our motorboat was slow enough to be passed by swimmers, we had enough time to detail the mountains… forget about the adventurous island discovery, I’d rather represent the tourists, we are cool people :).


We kept breathing fresh air around the lake, even though on some places, you can touch both, lake and highway, at the same time. We experienced once more the ‘show me the money and I’ll trick you the Chinese way’ thing, I won’t write long about it. Just so you know, around 6pm, we ended up at the opposite side of the lake, and had to find buses to get back to our hotel. Oh, By the way, we had not lunched yet :)

Old Shanghai

We tasted new Chinese meals in an expensive cafeteria of the old Shanghai before taking a walk in those narrow streets. I fell in love with the ambient disorder. While some people sell food on the sidewalk, others hang their wet clothes to wooden sticks fixed to buildings. Scents of cooked meals tickle our nose; we keep dodging the kids running around us and the bicycles trying to make their way out the crowd. Slowly quitting the neighborhood, we visit some houses as “naïve & curious tourists”, with this permanent eye dialog we have with Chinese people, who usually stare at tourists as they pass by.

It reminds me of Istanbul, you can find the exact same scenery in the Tarlabaşı district i guess.

Yu garden (豫 园)

The Yu yuan is a perfect example of Ming style gardens. Created by the Pan family in the 1550s, the garden was destroyed two times. Heavily damaged during the Opium war, it was then ransacked by the French troops. The present-day Yuyuan occupies an area of two hectares (5 acres) and is built in a style associated with the renowned Suzhou gardens, which are characterized by an exquisite layout, beautiful scenery and artistic architecture. Each pavilion, hall, stone and stream in the garden expresses the essence of South China's landscape design from the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Having no knowledge about Chinese history and culture, we did not know what we were about to discover here. I expected a Beijing heaven palace look-alike garden. We entered the place and saw a charming composition of rocks, trees, pavilion and streams. The garden is supposed to reflect the nature with its mountains, forests and seas. In the summertime, Yuyuan probably appears as an oasis in the middle of Shanghai, all green and flowered.A great place to have some fresh air and a rest after Chinese train stations.

Organization for dummies

We got up early today and headed to the train station to grab tickets to spend the day in Wuxi. I should briefly describe the state of Chinese train stations during the Spring Festival. Remember the context though, everything around us is written in Chinese, and we can guess 15 characters out of thousands. Back to the description, imagine 20 Michael Jacksons, each of them sitting at a desk. They all fired their bodyguards yesterday night. Add 600 teenagers, fans of Michael Jackson. They don’t want to wait and yet, they have not heard about the “stay in the line” concept. We get this math:

600 / 20 = 30 fans per desk
Swaps needed:

• Michael Jackson -> Train station employee
• Teenager -> Chinese willing to go home to visit his family

Here we are

9 o’clock, I jumped in the crowd to get our tickets. Luckily, I came out 15 minutes later. Julien took a look at the tickets and said “cool! We are leaving this afternoon at 3pm. We were supposed to spend the day in Wuxi, not 2 hours!”. So I went back in there, got our money back and asked the guy for tomorrows tickets, “You are in today’s tickets selling building, you should go to tomorrows ticket selling building instead”, he answered. What kind of railway station is this? Do they have buildings for every god damn day?? Half an hour later, we found the so wanted building and got our tickets for Wuxi, we will leave tomorrow morning. It is 10:30am, let’s think what we do today, visit Shanghai, alright, what about the next days? Since we want to stay at most two nights in Shanghai, we should buy tickets for tomorrow night for Hangzhou. We have to be careful with the timing though; we don’t want to miss the train to Hangzhou if the train back from Wuxi is late, right? Let’s settle it, let’s think it over (we are still in the train station):

• We have tickets two Wuxi (go and return), but we care more about going to Hangzhou.
• Best theory: we find a train to Hangzhou; it leaves at least half an hour after our train back from Wuxi’s arrival.
• Middle theory: we can find tickets for Hangzhou, but the departure time is too early. We manage to sell back the train ticket for Wuxi and waste no money.
• Worse theory: we have no tickets for Hangzhou before 1 week, we can’t get our money back for Wuxi, our hotel doubles the prices, China is bombed by the Japanese and Michael Moore turns out to be Bush and Monica Lewinsky’s secret son. Meanwhile, Jacques Chirac informs the Chinese government that France is planning to suspend the textile cooperation. Thus, Chinese people hate French people.

Considering these 4 theories, we jumped back in the Michael Jackson’s fans to practice our Chinese. Thankfully, the nature preferred the Middle theory. Forget about Wuxi, we have more time to visit Shanghai and we leave for Hangzhou tomorrow at 11:30am.
What’s next: Old city and Yu Garden.

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Walking on the Bund

We had our digestive walk on the Bund, this embankment along the muddy waterfront of the Huangpu River, or what it used to be in the 1850s. The river splits Shanghai into two parts. A fabulous sight on the Pudong on the east side, with its business buildings, huge screens and illuminations; and the west side where you can appreciate constructions in western-inspired styles --classical, gothic, renaissance, eclectic and modern--a reported seventeen styles of architecture. Formerly, this place used to be vital to the interests of the entire foreign settlement. But today, tourists have invaded the Bund and you can see camera flashes everywhere. Shanghai souvenirs are to be bargained allover the place and weird monsters come out from nowhere.

Back to our hotel, we wanted to check out its roof top bar and the “special happy hour for our very special guests” thing. The bar is designed as a boat (right, we are in captain hostel), the warm atmosphere sticks you to the red couches. The sixth floor, please enjoy the magnificent Lu-Jia-Zui New District and the Bund's most gorgeous buildings.

Shanghai (上海 ) day one

Two and a half hours on a plane to reach Shanghai. First question at the airport: what do we do next? Remember, we haven’t thought of where we are going once landed. Our guides (we are both, Lonely Planeted and Guide du Routarded) say: Captain Hostel cheap dorms in downtown. Let’s keep it movin’.
Our first attraction in Shanghai is the machine called Maglev. As we did, you probably think the nephew of Mendeleev made some molecular research and modified humans in the city, but Maglev stands for MAGnetic LEVitation. This high speed train is supposed to take you from the airport to downtown in less than 8 minutes; reaching 430 km/h and without touching the ground. It works pretty well, since you don’t have time to enjoy the view of the highway and the ghetto.

Settled in the Captain Hostel, we are heading to the Museum of Shanghai, well known for its classy atmosphere. Traditional costumes, jades, bronzes, calligraphies, paintings, furnitures from Ming and Qing dynasties, the museum is awesome. We even have the chance to see a temporary exhibition of precious stones, absolutely amazing. In museums, you usually don’t pay attention to other people, do you? Each visitor makes his own way trough exposed items. But what if the following happens: you are quietly reading a vase’s description when you barely notice that one Chinese father & son are approaching the same object. I wonder, how does a vase from de Ming Dynasty inspire Chinese youth? Well, this kid just freed his stomach of its disturbing gases. Laffin’ loud with Julien, we watched the father congratulate his son for his effort. How lovely. In China, you can freely free your mind, stomach, butt, nose and mouth.

Once the museum tour was over, we walked in famous Nanjing Donglu looking for some nice place to have a drink. Shanghai and its streets: a very pleasant melt of many unmixable concepts. Imagine the buildings of Gotham city (the hometown of Batman & Robin) in the chaotic and tiny streets of London; add kilometers of electric wires (you should imagine enough wires so that you can’t see the sky), rushes of bicycles at each stop light and store names written in Chinese. The final touch is tons of people getting busy around you. Oh and I almost forgot, you should also have 8 municipal employees at each street crossings. Their job is to contain the pedestrians and to prevent them from crossing the street when the light is green for the cars. Now you got Shanghai! We finally ended up in a shopping mall for the so wanted drink. The only interesting detail here is the young people of Shanghai. You know, when you watch some fashion shows on TV, you wonder who would wear such clothes, how anyone could feel comfortable with a transparent shirt or with a one meter diameter solid skirt. Well, in Shanghai, it seems like there is a rave party going on in every single street. Every one is top fashion dressed and all the colors of the nature are there. Neat!

Unpack, have a rest, meet your dormmates, day is over.

Soon on holiday

Enough! The campus has been empty since one week. Every student went home to celebrate Chinese New Year, but the 50 frenchies are supposed to stay to learn Chinese (I am not talking about computer science classes anymore, useless). Of course we also deserve two weeks holidays, and, anyway, it is not such a bad thing to see the emptiness of the campus, at least I know I want to get out of here for two weeks!
What does a well organized road trip look like? Well, here are the basics. Monday, you grab your buddy named Julien, you go downtown and you buy a plane ticket for Shanghai for the Wednesday of the same week. Than you realize you won’t go on a road trip with the huge luggage you came to china with. Thus, you run to the shopping mall and bargain a crappy 80 liters backpack for 9 euros. This is probably what you need to get started, although we spiced it up a little by packing our stuff while they were not dry yet. Yeah we wanted to leave with clean clothes, what ever. Oh, and we also messed up with the departure date: at 8pm, we realize we were supposed to be at the airport at 7am next morning. Will we survive such an organization? To be continued...