Suzhou(493 views)

Release date:2009-08-25 10:30:27

Ubiquitous in any discussion of China’s attractions are the names of Suzhou and Hangzhou. Speak to any Chinese person and they will tell you that they are the jewels of their country’s East Coast. With only two days of time at my disposal, I had to choose between the two ‘heavens on earth’; Hangzhou’s West Lake or Suzhou’s gardens. I chose the gardens.

It certainly seemed, from the first few minutes in the city, that Suzhou was trying to push me to heaven in one form or another. The bus station, as bus stations often do, encapsulates the atmosphere of the town in a few noisy sweaty steps. Architecture pieced together with great purpose, coruscating with hawkers, beggars and red-hat wearing tour groups. Overladen with overheavy and oversized suitcases, we struggled into two separate taxis, myself in the second, and in my broken Chinese attempted to instruct as well as I could for the driver to ‘follow that car’. Such an instruction turned out to be a mistake, as the two drivers took on their own version of a police chase through the putrid traffic system. Given that a large proportion of the drive was conducted down the opposite side of the street, at various points mounting the pavement, and that there was a notable lack of seatbelt in my front seat, the dingy front door of our one-star hotel came as an enormous relief. Canals and gardens would be the perfect respite to such a frantic beginning.

And this is just what Suzhou’s major attractions provide. Suzhou’s proclaimed centre succeeds in setting itself largely apart from the bustle of the normal life outside. There are cobbled streets, there are exquisitely manicured gardens, and there are extraordinarily peaceful canals. Unless you have a large amount of time on your hands, or are gardening/ canal design aficionado, then limiting yourself to an overnight trip to Suzhou is enough to take in the atmosphere of the town and its main delights.

The gardens themselves will please those hankering after effective and pleasing use of space, rather than those looking to wander and wade through acres of flowering scenery. In other words, they are tight and intricate; the miniscule ‘Garden of the Master of the Nets’ epitomising a pattern of streams, bridges, rocks, and delicate huts knitted together in a way that I am sure would be romantic, if it weren’t for the hundreds of other sightseers packed into the same miniature area. The ‘Humble Administrator’s Garden’ is markedly less humble and less conducive to claustrophobia, and a couple of hours are easily spent moseying through its pristine designs.

The canals of Suzhou more resemble the canals of Birmingham than those of Venice, unessential as they are to the present city’s daily life, but this break from the city itself gives them their appeal for the tourist. For a large proportion of an afternoon in Suzhou I dropped back a few hundred years, wandering through the peaceful and in some places dilapidated system of waterways; interrupted only by the occasional bicycle or fruit-seller, before, as evening broke, emerging back into the hectic modern Chinese city life at the Waicheng River.

Lurched back into this more familiar life, we attempted to pass our Sunday evening in Suzhou’s ‘Bar Street’, which although certainly a street, and lined with bars, was noticeably bereft of patrons. As a result, the Xiaojies were out in the street and our evening was spent dodging the cries of ‘hey! handsome man! beer!’ and vainly searching for a place to sit without interruption. Eventually perched on chairs neighbouring an empty dance-floor, shouting over the obliviously blaring techno music, we discussed what we thought of the city over a warm Qingdao beer. The consensus we reached was that Suzhou tourism itself had a beautiful face, but was trying ever so hard to botox its way through its own natural wrinkles. The city is a curious mix between the face of tourism and the settled body of a typical Chinese metropolis; the desire to be a model town, a Venice of the East, seems to be gradually choked by the sheer scale of the industry and daily life thrown up by 6 million people.

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