Suzhou, with some Hangzhou on the side

The heat has arrived. Well, it arrived and then has temporarily left again with some rain. This weekend the temperature topped off near 100. And oh so humid. The air tasted so thick and horrible, like a physical wall when you walked out from the shade. So, of course we took a hot stuffy bus to Hangzhou. There we finally climbed up this hill (later in the afternoon...) next to West Lake and by this really cool tower. This tower is lit up at night and looks really neat- with the huge sprawling city to the north and east. We could look down on the lake like looking at a map view. Its probably my favorite place in Hangzhou! I went with Yang Yang to the train station, but after saying goodbye I needed to make it to the West bus station to get back to Lin'an- which is on the opposite side of town. And unfortunately, I just missed the last bus that ran between the train station and the bus station. So I needed a cab. A few weeks ago, a cab had tried to charge Morten 100RMB to make this trip. I began to chat with a man who asked where I wanted to go- at first I just wanted to connect with another bus that was still running- but I didn't know what other bus went there. A large group of people suddenly surrounded me, all offering prices to get me to the station. "50RMB" was my first offer. The man was simply opperating an illegal 'taxi' using his moped. "For that vehical?" I asked (the other drivers thought that was pretty funny). "Ok, 30!" (this was all in Chinese by the way :) ). "25RMB. Okay?" I say. For an actual taxi- or a car at least, they offered 40RMB- which would be about right to take a metered taxi. A metered cab would be about 35 maybe. So I took the little moped. He scooted the 20 some km to the other side of town, I practiced my Chinese, made a new friend, and eventually got to the station.
These are some photos from the previous long weekend when we went to Suzhou. This photo is from an extremely crowded, overpriced garden we went to. I felt like this was just made so people could randomly take pictures of themselves in front of various pagodas and rocks... not many cool plants... so many people you needed to wait awhile for people to pass before you could take a photo... not very enjoyable.
Suzhou is a city of canals. Cool canals and little boats that go in them. Most of the buildings follow similar architecture with white sides and black, shingled roofs.
This was also the first time I dared to ride a bicycle in China. Here I am in action! Navigating a narrow alleyway.
While in Suzhou I also "mastered the art" of Chinese calligraphy. Most calligraphy says something profound- like boundless sky (what Yang Yang wrote) or something about harmony.. here I am writing the name of my favorite snack- jiao zi! (dumpling)
Behind me in the canal are lots of boats you can take touring trips on. All the lanters came on when we were walking along this little stretch. Cute shops, tea houses. Foreigners really like this part of town :) English everywhere!
After going to the horribly crowded garden, we ended up here later in the day. This is an ancient part of Suzhou which has some of the remaining original city wall and where some of the government buildings were back in the Wu Dynasty (229-280AD, wikipedia.org). We got to climb that really cool pagoda in the background. The stairs were so steep it was like a tiny ladder and you could hit your head on everything if you didn't look out. Basically, there would be no way people would be allowed to go in something like that in the states and I saw someone fall a few steps while I was there- BUT MAN, that was so cool. They found some kind of ancient artifacts in it maybe 15 years ago. There are also really cool koi in this pond too and not thousands of people getting in the way of the picture. Moral of the story? Don't go to the Humble Administrator's Garden if you happen to be in Suzhou. This place was cheaper and also came with a little boat tour- that unfortunately we didn't have time for. Suzhou is also a sister city with Portland Oregon, and Portland donated this weird wooden structure that is in the gardens here that no one understands but takes their picture next to anyway.

Now that I'm back from the recent, hot, weekend, I've been a little under the weather. Apparently if you go to the doctor for any reason people are assuming you have Swine Flu. I felt a little fevery Monday and didn't go to my Chinese class and today I've had a bit of a cough so I've been drinking lots of orange juice and trying to get more rest. Morten was out a lot this weekend too and he thought he got mild sunstroke, but has been feeling poor this week too. We decided we must have piglet flu because that sounds cuter and our symptoms aren't as severe as swine flu :P.