Suzhou

While in Shanghai, we wanted to spend one day in one of the water towns nearby. But which one to choose? I was searching the internet in order to decide whether I wanna see the most authentic one, the most famous one, the most touristic one, the least touristic one, the most romantic one etc., but every review had another winner. I was really confused. In the end, aren't they all the same?  Probably kind of. 

In the end we decided to go to Suzhou, which - although is not one of the water towns - it's known for its canals, bridges and classical gardens. It was one of China’s cultural and historical capitals with its 2500 years of history. It was as well an important commercial center of China, but also an economic one and one of the largest cities in the world. Today it's one of the most popular tourists site in China famous for its over 60 Classical Gardens, out of which 9 were added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Most of these gardens were built by aristocrats, scholars and rich businessmen.


In my naivety I thought that maybe after a visit in Suzhou, we could still spend the afternoon in one of the nearby water towns. Although we left the hotel in the morning, the journey to the train station, the time we spent on buying tickets and then the journey by train to Suzhou made us arrive to our destination around noon. Still I thought we had plenty of time to see Suzhou's main attractions, which in the end wasn't really possible. As everything in China, Suzhou only seemed small, but in the end distances we had to cover were quite big.

We started the sightseeing with the most famous garden - Humble Administrator Garden, which is also Suzhou's largest garden. It was created in 1509 during the Ming Dynasty. The entrance ticket costed around 10 euros. The garden was really big - with ponds, bridges, pavilions, rockeries, trees and of course zillion of tourists ;-) it was also not very easy to visit it with the stroller, but even this limited visit was very pleasant and gave us an idea about Chinese gardens.

Next place to visit was of course another garden. We chose Lion Forest Garden, which was located very close to the Humble Administrator Garden and which is one of the Classical Gardens of Suzhou on the UNESCO list. It is also one of the "Top 4 Famous Gardens in Suzhou" It was built in the fourteenth century and it is the oldest of Suzhou gardens. It was smaller than the previous one, but very interesting because of its rock formations - something special among Suzhou's gardens. Because of these rock formations is also called the Kingdom of Rockeries. Apart from rocks, it had richly ornamental pavilions and towers in different styles. 

We continued our walk till the most famous street of Suzhou - Pingjiang Lu street, which is parallel to the Pingjiang River. The street is also the longest in Suzhou with its 1,606 meters. Down the canal several tourists were enjoying cruises along the river - but since we had a baby stroller, we didn't decide to rent a boat and we continued our walk on the street. 
I loved it! Traditional old architecture was something I was missing in Shanghai. This part of the city was apparently nearly not changed for around 800 years. For many years the Pingjiang Lu street was a centre of Suzhou 's cultural life.

Time was running out, we did not even manage to see half of the attractions on our list, when we slowly had to start heading back to Shanghai. But there was one more place, which I very much wanted to see - Shangtang street. Shantang Street, also called Seven-mile Shantang, is an ancient street block built in the 9th century. Many say it is the “Miniature of Old Suzhou and Window of Wu Culture” because it is reflecting so perfectly the ancient Suzhou city. And because of having the advantageous location of both convenient land and water transportation, Shantang Street was once one of the best well-developed street blocks in China.

As it seemed to be quite far, we took Didi to get there. It turned out quite crowded, but a very picturesque place! We took a few photos from the Tonggui Bridge, which was also a great place to admire the Shangtang Street from, and after that we had to rush to the train station. After this ultra intense sightseeing we took the bullet train and came back to Shanghai. We had a lesson today - nothing in China is little and if we wanted to visit places, we basically had to start sightseeing as early as possible.