Zhouzhuang, Gardens, and Friends from Beijing

April 1, 2006

I apologize for not always including the best photos. I have a rule against blogging about people who don't know that I'm blogging about them, or who aren't familiar with some portion of the people who may read the blog. So, if sometimes I seem to be leaving things out, I am doing it out of respect for the unknowing. Back to the blog...

I love finding cool stuff outside of a major city. I believe firmly that if you stick inside of a city the entire time, you miss so much of the area that you are visiting. The rest of the exchange students don’t arrive in Shanghai until later on Saturday afternoon, so (thanks to the best concierge ever at the Peace Hotel), FG and I took off for Zhouzhuang which is a water town. A water town is a town built around canals. I have a video to share if you’re interested. I should also mention why I keep bringing up the Peace Hotel. Remember my evil professor from Doing Business in Asia? Well, he used to drop Hotel names quite often. The must have told us about his “doings” at the Peace Hotel three or four times during our class. My STs might be the only ones who find that funny.

Back to Zhouzhuang. The ride out there was a bit touch and go since I my stomach doesn’t really like swerving buses. Once there though, the trip was wonderful. We walked through the town and the shops to where we loaded onto long boats and drifted through the canals of the city. I probably shouldn’t say drifted since the guy in the back was working really hard to make us drift. Some of the ladies sang as they crewed their boats. It was so nice. I wish we could have stopped to do a little shopping, but that wasn’t on the tour guide’s agenda. I miss Huong from Vietnam.

We enjoyed a traditional Chinese lunch of whole fish, peking duck, and… hold the presses…. Vegetables! Someone probably got fired for letting a vegetable hit a table in China. Surely! Lunch was interesting since we sat with a couple from Hong Kong, a couple from New Zealand, and a couple from Croatia. The New Zealand couple lives in Christchurch, so I told them that a dear friend of mine fell in love with a Christchurcher this summer. The Croatian ladies tell me that Croatia is quite a tourist spot for Americans. Isn’t that where the shaggy haired guy on ER died? See, you can put the girl out in the world, but sometimes you just can’t make her worldly.

After lunch we headed to some famous gardens. That was fun for about two minutes. Then, I came up with my quote. “It’s not that the Chinese are too fast, or even that they are too slow, but they are ALWAYS in my way.” I know, it’s probably not a very culturally aware thing to say. However, I speak only truth.

I am being a bit hard on the gardens. They were very pretty. It’s just kind of like a temple. Once you’ve seen it, there’s not much else to see - especially not if people keep stepping on your toes and walking directly in front of you. They were pretty, though.

On the way back, we got suckered into going to silk factory. Do you know how they make silk? Well, I’ll tell ya... the poor little silk worm works his butt off growing for 25 days. He builds up all of this protein inside of him and then he spits it out as a cocoon so that he can become a moth or something. The poor guy just wants to fly. Little does he know, that those people who keep feeding him are then going to stick his new home that he worked so hard to build into an oven and kill him. Then, they boil his house (with him still inside) and unravel all of his hard work. All of this so that we can have nice silk things. Don’t worry though, he doesn’t die in vain. Once they finish destroying his house, they pull him out of the last little section around him and throw him in a bowl. Then, they cook him in a soup for pregnant ladies. I promise I’m not kidding. Fear Factor has nothing on China.

Later on Saturday, the rest of the gang joined us. Until now, there were two of us, but we added 6 more this evening. Nothing too crazy to tell other than my classmates (who were in Beijing for the first couple of days) made up “The Twelve Days of Beijing” which is available in an earlier post. They really did see someone skinning and using a blowtorch to remove the hair from dead dogs. One of the girls could hardly eat for the rest of the night.

On yeah, we stopped for street meat at the end of the night. I fed six of us for $2 USD. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I went back the next day.