Yesterday Lydia and I went to the Kiln Museum in the north of Suzhou. I had heard of this place but had never managed to find it and it was only by pure chance that I did. This is where they made the bricks and many of the stone slabs that you will see in the Forbidden City in Beijing. The Grand Canal that was built from Hangzhou back in 468 BC was used as they main transport route which they used nonstop until completion.

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The Kiln Museum is a simple yet interesting place where they will show you the simple tools they used to make the bricks and they do explain the process in some detail and they have English translations. We arrived quite late and so we had to quickly work our way through the floors before we got kicked out.

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In the gardens surrounding the museum you will see the remains of a couple of old kilns that look a little bit worse for wear, but it was an interesting museum and I guess some of the processes are still in use today.

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