Clearer air thank goodness-

Our first day of touring started with a visit to the Shanghai Museum - 4 stories of Chinese antiquities and arts in quite a modern building next to the People's Park. Outside there were kite vendors flying their wares and lots of small children running around. We started at the top and worked down through ceramics, Minority costumes,& furniture but didnt get to see lots, just a taste.
I was prepared to give Shanghai the benefit of the doubt about the haze. But my eyes have been giving me hell and today we moved on to Suzhou and they feel better already, then others said their eyes had been hurting. It reminds me of LA in 1984 when locals no longer noticed the pollution & just accepted it as natural. The traffic wasn’t that bad but it isn’t well managed so there are many traffic jams. The bonus was we didn’t go up the Jin Mao Tower because it would have been a waste of time. We went for a ride on the Maglev train instead - 431 kph top speed & 8 minutes for 30 km, which our guide Troy is so proud of. His naïve optimism is fascinating. He is committed to all the newness, the excitement of the changes, but unfortunately most of our group is here to see “the old stuff”, so he is treading a fine line all the time.
In the group there is an ex-pat Chinese, an accountant from Auckland and a Korean woman who works in the Tax Office in Canberra so fortunately we can’t be dismissed as Westerners who don’t know anything, & to their surprise most of us are well used to chopsticks. We have 5 people from England, including a gardener at a National Trust property, but there is a constant assumption we know nothing about China. One good thing about the group is that there are no smokers. However smoking is still a major problem in China with people still smoking everywhere. Although there are a huge number of bikes, scooters & motor bikes almost none of the riders wear helmets. On many major roads in cities there are dedicated lanes for them separated from the cars.
Up early this morning to drive to Suzhou, north of Shanghai. Distance-wise, it's only about 90 kms but due to weight of traffic takes around 3 hours. Sitting in slow moving traffic is something to get used to in China. Also, even if the traffic isn't heavy, you often don't go over about 60-80kms/hr because of the state of the roads. The major roads are pretty good, but some of the smaller ones are shocking, even though the drivers pay tolls on nearly all of them. The building thinned out between Shanghai and Suzhou, but you never actually felt like you'd hit "the country", it's housing and industry all the way. First stop was the government owned No. 1 Silk Mill, which opened in 1926. We saw silkworms eating their way through mulberry leaves right through to sale of the end products but mainly a huge shop selling silk stuff. Eddie had a go at stretching silk to make the duvets, and found it surprisingly difficult. The silk fibre itself is very strong. The factory also sells pillows filled with silkworm droppings, which are apparently good for insomnia - not sure that claim really needs to be tested. After lunch at the silk mill (along with a small and select group made up of about 40 other tourist coaches) we went on a boat trip on the Grand Canal, the oldest & longest canal in the world, the first 85 km section built in 495 BC. It finally became 2700 km long – an amazing feat like the building of the Great Wall. It winds through several cities including Suzhou which has 24canals with houses built all along these
. We then visited the "Master of the Nets Garden", the smallest private garden in the city.
There's a market lane from the garden back to the main street, so interesting to have our first experience of the bargaining required in a market street.
Wednesday 25 September
Suzhou also has several other world heritage gardens. This morning we visited the Humble Administrators Garden, a world heritage site covering about 11 acres of land and dating from 1509, the Ming Dynasty. The garden should be quite peaceful and calming apart from the sheer volume of visitors wandering around.