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.

Shanghai at Night

Oriental Pearl Tower and Downtown

Busy Shanghai Shopping Street

This weekend was the District Conference for the Shanghai, China International District.  As a special activity for all the young single adults (YSA) in the district they had a grand tour of Shanghai. I had to work so wasn't able to meet up with them until around 7pm. In all there were about 50 YSAs that were there for the tour. Most of them are here for study abroad or a semester of teaching english. I had been to Shanghai before, during the day but at night the city comes alive! We took advantage of the nice weather and walked along downtown side of the Huangpu River. The city is an explosion of lights. Some more elaborate than others. We then took a super short ferry ride across the river to The Bund.

After The Bund, we walked to a main shopping street. They had an Apple and a Gap store right across from each other. Pretty much Shanghai at its finest. It was so beautiful, everything was all lit up and the streets were filled with people. I would definitely recommend Shanghai at night.

The Bund

About The Bund (rhymes with "fund"): The Bund was initially a British settlement. It has dozens of historical buildings, lining the western back of the Haungpu River, that once house numerous international banks and trading houses, consulates, a newspaper and several clubs. It continues to be the center of Shanghai financial district. A lot of the main builds have very European styled architecture, it reminded me a lot of my mission, well except for all the Chinese people. 

 

P.S. They have Cold Stone! I got my favorite Cheesecake with Snickers!!

It Takes Like America

So China likes its meat...chicken feet, duck head, pork fat, but they have nothing on All-American beef.

Dear Red Meat, how I love your artery clogging goodness.

the trifecta of taste

After weeks of Pizza Hut and KFC being the closest to American food,  I found a Burger King on my weekly trip to Suzhou. Now Burger King is my last choice for burgers at home (I'm a Burgerville and Wendy's fan) but when you have no other choice it becomes the greatest thing you have ever tasted. I was not the only one who felt that way since there were more white people in BK then I have ever seen at one place (excluding church and tour groups). So far BK is the most authentic western restaurant, no weird chinese-ized spices or toppings. They suck with the good stuff. It was tasted how things should taste; cheesy, greasy and covered in bacon. That's how America taste.

Chinese Dinner Time

Last night my work had a dinner for all of the staff. It was my first  authentic chinese eating experience. These kind of dinners are very important in Chinese culture, they are a time for socializing, well wishing and most of all... drinking.

They like to eat things still in the shell

the spread

Each table has a large "lazy susan" in the middle, food it placed around the edge and everyone eat straight from the same dish. So if you don't like sharing food, don't come to China. Fish, crab, prawns, soup, pumpkin and noodles. I stuck to the vegetables, noodles and lots and lots of Sprite. I'm still not used to eating things that still have their limbs and eye attached. Also, It a lot of effort to crack a crab or de-limb a shrimp for the small amount of meat they have.

fish: bone and all

Toasting is the most important activity of the night. The person with the highest status (manager or boss) opens the evening with a toast for everyone. After that it is customary for people to go around and toast each other individually, especially the lower employees toasting those above them. So you can imagine after a few rounds of toast that those with most authority are often the ones who are the most drunk.

the broccoli that I ate mostly

After dinner we hit up KTV (karaoke) in true Chinese fashion. The regional manager and the branch manager were both visually drunk. The regional manager, Coco took every opportunity she could find to give me a big hug, this was the first time I ever met her. I became her best friend in the room. I sang a couple songs, gave a few (too many) hugs and then called it a night. Being Chinese wears you out.