Goodbye 张家港, Hello 苏州

So I officially moved to Suzhou this weekend. Suzhou is located about 1.5 hours south of ZJG and is only about a 30 minute train ride away from Shanghai. I learned recently that Suzhou is actually a Sister City to Portland, Or. The Portland Chinese Garden is an exact replica of a traditional Suzhou garden. So I know its not just coincident I like it better. I am living in Suzhou Industrial Park, SIP for short, and despite its name it's actually very pretty and modern. I live just around corner from Jinji Lake. I enjoyed my time in ZJG and will miss all the friends I made, but now I'm closer to other members and church. Not to mention, Starbucks, Cold Stones, Subway, Burger King, Sephora and H&M.


Here's a look at my new apartment:

Can we say fate?

Living Room

Kitchen

Bedroom, its much smaller than in my last apt.

My new bookcase from Ikea

Feels So Good to Get Outside

   

View of the pagoda through the entrance archway

Zhangjiagang is actually a bigger city than what the locals would lead you to believe. About a half an hour north of city center is the Xiangshan Scenic Area. 

It's a large park with lots of pavilions, ponds, and a towering pagoda high on a hill top. 

It was such a beautiful fall day that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get out of the house again and get back into nature. 

This is a perfect juxtaposition of the ancient and modern worlds of China; lone pavilion and an expansive city behind it. 

Beacon Tower 

Used during some ancient war as a communication point, Beacon Tower used smoke singles during the day and lit a fire by night. It also was my favorite place in the whole park. There is a beautiful 360 degree view of the farm lands that surround the area as well as the distant views of the cities. After all the noise of the crowds and city it was the most peaceful place I've been to in a long time. If only I had had a chair and a book with me.    

        

       

Views from top of Beacon Tower

     

      

Look! I'm a scenic spot 

An archway that pillars look kind of like swords

Like I mentioned on the top of the mountain is the Wind-hearkening Pagoda. Advertised as an ancient pagoda it was actually only just built in 2005 in the style of the Ming and Qing Dynasty. Regardless, it was a beautiful replica and was well worth the hike up the hill.

Me in front of the pagoda.
It was a sunny day, thus the squinting.

Another view of the pagoda 

A set of pagodas where vendors had set up games and photo booths

My favorite picture of the day

On top of the hill with the scenic area and city behind me

Happy National Day!

Like I mentioned in my last blog, Monday was the beginning of China's national holiday week. I took the opportunity to get out of town as see more of China. My friend Nick set up a little day trip to the town of Wuzhen  

(pronounced like woo jen) for me and a few other people. It started out with a 3 hour bus ride, which really wasn't as bad as it sounded, although I did have to wake up at 5am.  

What make Wuzhen such a tourist destination is that it is an ancient canal city, established in 872 A.D. It's been nicknamed "The Venice of the East". The city is divided down the center by a narrow canal with shops lining one side of the river and homes lining the other. You can rent a wooden that will take you on a short ride up the center canal, like they probably did anciently. There are also several museums, including a bed and wedding museum, the former home  Mao Dun, a renowned modern Chinese revolutionary writer, and a Taoist temple. Despite the enormous crowds it was still a very beautiful and culturally rich place. 

Since I liked it so much, I'll take you on a little tour...

Crowd waiting outside to get in

Boat going under on of the many bridges 

James, Me, Nick, Fan and Que waiting to get on the boat.
We all have complimentary tour hats, helped us find each other in the crowd. 

View of the homes from on the canal

Me on the boat, wearing my new hat.

Local resident on her back porch, washing straight from the canal

More of the boats 

View from our lunch table

This was hanging on the wall at the restaurant, it is a traditional fisherman's outfit.  

Shot of all the people lining the river 

Traditional beds at the bed museum, beautifully hand craved.
Would have loved to taken one home with me. 

Going down the main street on the north side of the canal

The road kept getting narrower and narrower that it literally felt like a river of people. The street was very traditional and beautiful, I would have loved to have seen it when it was empty.

Statues of Taoist deity, I think. 

Three foot tall incense burning at the temple, almost got hit in the face by one
  

Across from the temple they have the Huagu Opera stage, where they have traditional performances
  

Close up of the women performing

Me at the end of the tour

I hope you all enjoyed it!

Asian Chaos

Imagine that all of America only had two weeks a year to go on vacation. Chaos, right? Now imagine instead of Americans they are millions of Chinese people. Asian chaos! Chinese National Day (their independence day) is upon us which mean that the entire country has a week off at the same time. Since people rarely take time off of work to go on vacation it is one of two times a year when people actually get out of the house and travel.

This meant that instead of my usually hour and a half bus ride to church it took me over two hours. The bus was delayed 15 minutes getting out of the station, there was a traffic jam caused by hundreds of people crowded around who knows what, and the bus took some random way to get to Suzhou. When I arrived we were dropped off in the middle of the bus parking lot, I had to push my way through a pack room of people to try to get to the nearest exit (my concert training kicked in at that point and I went into crowd maneuvering mode), which by the way was bolted closed. I'm sure there was a fire code or two that was being broken. Then I got lost inside the station for 15 minutes trying to find my way to a taxi. Fortunately, I was only 30 min late for church.

After church I took a taxi to a different bus station to get a ticket back home and found another massive crowd of people waiting to go to their various locations. Luckily I was able to make it back to church and a father and son from the branch helped me get a ticket back to my town... for the following morning. The Hiatts in my branch offered to let me stay the night with them, incidentally they live at the house where we hold church.  I am so blessed to have such great people in my branch who made sure that I had a place to stay for the night. It was an eventful day.

Now I know why I was warned to go out.