We are now in Kunming, so much has happened since my last post. They keep us busy.
Suzhou was interesting. We took the bullet train there, and then a bus to a tourist trap called Zhou Zhuang town. Its a very old city that has been sort of restored - very narrow alley/streets, lots of shops and restaurants, and thousands of tourists since it was Dragon Boat holiday. Pushing, shoving, bumping, with nary an "excuse me" or "sorry" to be heard. You should definitely not come here if you don't like crowds. There are some bridges over the canals that date to the Song Dynasty, and a Ming official's house that was jam packed with people, but otherwise was beautiful. Notice most of the shots have people in them - you just can't get a picture of anything without people in it. The stalls had a variety of things for sale, including lots of silk pieces, from clothing to embroidery. The vendors are really pushy, and of course start out with a high price, but then you walk away and they chase you, so you can get a silk blouse for $13 US.
We had lunch in the hotel there, then went back into Suzhou to tour one of the 280 private gardens. Before the Cultural Revolution there were over 1,000 different large gardens, but they were destroyed because they were bourgeois, and not useful to the improvement of the people. Again, packed with tourists, so not nearly as peaceful as it should have been. It was built by a Ming official who got the money through graft and corruption, then was forced out of office.
Not all the pics are captioned = the Internet is slower than dirt here in Kunming - I mean slower than dial-up, almost.
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