Throughout my time in Suzhou, one of the things I enjoyed the most was finding a book in the hotel library, of all places. The book was written in, of course, English. It was a walking tour of Shanghai. The book was from the early 2000’s and I have no doubt that most of the sceneries described in the book had changed because China, as a country, is constantly in flux. A shop can be here one day and gone the next, just like that.
Though I would love to say I enjoyed Suzhou, the weather alone was enough to scare me away. It was even more sticky than Nanjing. It’s like the humidity is there but not high enough for my body to sweat.
When my mom announced we would going to the museum on our final day in Suzhou, I was ecstatic, not for the trip to the museum but for the air conditioning.
There are two Suzhou Museums – the main museum and the west museum. My mom opted for the west museum because she said it has a bigger collection. At the entrance, we dutifully put our bags on the conveyor belt of the x-ray machine and go through the search for explosives. For the first time on this trip, my mom’s backpack set off the alarm on the x-ray machine. There would be a second time when we were in Shanghai.
Do you want to know what set it off this time? A bag of her pork jerky brought from home.
There was a lot to see in this museum and frankly, if I had the energy, I would’ve spent the day here. My favorite exhibit was the unusual artworks like this one made from olive pits. Yes, what looks like wood is actually pits.
Meanwhile, my mom rushed through the exhibits, seemingly to had lost interest and wanting to leave and go somewhere else. After a few exhibits, she had decided that it was time to get back outside and into a taxi.
Outside, the sky threatened to rain. The entire China had been threatening to rain even since the start of my trip. The weather app on my phone constantly buzzed to let me know that rain was imminent but it never came. Rain did come that day but by the time I grabbed the umbrella from my purse and opened it, the rain stopped.
A short taxi ride later, we were dropped in another scenic district – Panmen Core Exhibition Park. My mom said this was the only land-slash-water-city-gate in the country, meaning, there’s a gate on land to stop the enemy and there’s also a gate in the water just in case the enemy came charging via other methods.
When I saw this temple, however, I had no idea where I was and why I was here because my mom had not share the historical tidbit yet. We walked around the park, trying to find our way to the gate but, as always, we got completely turned around as the signs just took us in a circle.
On my walk, Cousin T and I encountered a blond woman and immediately, Cousin T was enamored with her. “I love your hair!” Cousin T said, touching and feeling the woman’s hair while making conversations in Cousin T’s version of Mandarin.
I tried converse with the woman in English but she didn’t understand me, so I had to switch back to Mandarin. “Where are you from?” I asked her.
“Turkey.” Ah, that explains why she couldn’t understand English.
Meanwhile, my mom and Cousin M were looking for direction to the gate. They’ve asked multiple people and no one knew where the gate was. Apparently, most people come to this park as a bypass to the amusement park next door. When we saw the man shooting a video on his phone, my mom waited for him to finish before asked. Thankfully, the man was very knowledgeable as he made videos about this area as a hobby.
Before my mom called me back to the gate, I was walking along the city wall, taking my fill of photos because there weren’t people walking the city wall. As I said, I didn’t know what we were doing there, so naturally, I just assumed we’d walk the wall. Apparently not.
After spending much of the afternoon walking around, I was happy to hear my mom is calling this a wrap to the day and our time in Suzhou. The next day, we would be on another train heading toward the megametropolis called Shanghai.
