One more week to go before I leave Suzhou, well five days really. I’m definitely ready to move on. I don’t feel my life is my own at the moment.

Today we’re going to Lili water town for the night. Sissi had organised a trip with four other friends and I’m tagging along. I’ll be the thorn in amongst the roses as the others are all girls, so I’m expecting me ears to be bleeding by the end of the day.

There is however a fascinating museum down there and it’s called the 6 Arts Museum which is a very good place to go to immerse yourself in a very eclectic mix of furniture and architecture.

Next Morning.

We arrived in one piece despite the rotten weather. It’s cold and wet but the old water town just takes on a different character in the rain. When we arrived we wandered around taking many pictures of course, selfies and artistic wonders.

Dinner was not good for me at all and I was very glad that I paid a visit to the bakery on the way here. Chicken feet, cow intestines, spicy chicken with bones are not really my favourite foods, but I did say to the others that they should order what they wanted and not to worry about me and I guess they did 😀

I did have rice and a few veges and then I had my bread when I went back to my room where I was able to connect to YouTube finally and so I watched a few of my channels before going to bed listening to the dulcet tones of Tony Blackburn. It’s the simple pleasures that make all the difference.

The Hotel

It was very nice and comfortable and the WiFi was really good, it’s not the kind of place you expect to find in a small place like this.

One problem of this lovely architecture is that due to the rain being so heavy last night it sounded as if I was sleeping next to a waterfall. The rain coming through the open roof and falling into the pond below went from a soothing to disaster movie soundtrack.

The only place that had taken details of my passport, mind you it has always done this. There was A Chinese Embroidery collection along with traditional paintings, some of which were interesting but for the most part the embroidery was far more spectacular.

After here I headed to Yipu garden before heading back home. The garden is only small and because of today being a holiday it was fairly busy with many dressed up in traditional clothing to have their pictures taken. It seems like a common fad just about everywhere you go these days.

Another mountain nearby Suzhou. Sissi’s boss wanted to show us this place and then onto Dongshan where she has her home. The mountain was very busy because there is a three day holiday for the Qingming Festival or it’s sometimes known as Tomb Sweeping Day. The paths on this mountain have all been constructed and sometimes steps have been carved out of the rocks to create a series of steps. I guess this means you can go in any weather but I much prefer to walk on a natural path.

The climb was easy compared to Lingyanshan, the only saving grace I guess was that the rocks had some interesting shapes and many had very old traditional characters engraved on them, although I have no idea what was being said but the designs were very interesting.

It was a very short stay here and then we headed to Dongshan once more, I used to like going here but I feel that I’ve seen way too much of it this time through other folks eyes and my more simple approach is far more appealing I feel. I’m very grateful of course for being chauffeured and dined and it can be quite the experience but I’m feeling a little bit worn out.

The Boss’s house is very nice, an old traditional home with large gardens filled with all the usual characteristics with the main feature being the large pond filled with many large gold fish and the like. A great place to escape the chaos of the outside world and as we sat there drinking tea and having a snack with the sun on my back I was very much at peace.

I would have liked to have gone home after that respite but I didn’t realise that this was going to be a full day experience. We moved next door to a restaurant/bar which is another business that the Boss owns. We sat at a very large dining table and were served with many local dishes, apart from seafood thankfully. Sissi had mentioned that I was not a lover of food of an aquatic nature and they had been kind enough to leave that off the menu, however what we received was very delicious.

By 7pm I was almost falling asleep and I had had enough. The Boss took us home and it took about an hour, mind you there were some interesting and sometimes scary decisions being made. 15 minutes after arriving home I had washed my face and cleaned ma wallies and I was off to find the land of nod, which I found fairly quickly.

It’s been many a long day since I have been here and today I spent a couple of hours courtesy of one of the young workers in the gallery that took the time to explain much of the art on offer. And I’m not going to try to explain here other than say that there were some amazing pictures on offer.

There were two floors, the bottom floor was a collection of pastel paintings and upstairs a collection from a Chinese collection which consisted of many of the so called great artists, mind you I’ve seen kids and animals create finer pieces. I did not take any pictures of them.

Footnote:

I spoke to another young person at the Gallery and they told me that they had a working VPN, so I managed to install it and I have some connectivity. The VPN is called Shadowrocket, an oldie but a goodie as they say 😁 Happy Days 😀

I went with Sissi the other day to check the Airbnb, on the table there sat a little white rabbit that could be plugged into the mains. It seems that all manner of things can be found in the room once the guests have checked out. I don’t think Sissi realised right away what it was so she opened up Taobao, the Chinese Ebay, and quickly discovered that this little rabbit was a rather expensive vibrator 😂

The look on her face was priceless,

It’s an interesting and harmless design and very different from the a traditional models of old. Mind you the euphemism “Rabbit” has been used for many years and many were shaped with rabbit ears and all, but they were more deigned for an internal stimulation where as this little bunny seems to be able to achieve the same results in a different way. I guess this is why the young girl contacted Sissi when she found out that she had left her bunny rabbit in the room, she didn’t want to be without her lover in this age of being single in China. I just hope that it had it’s shower before she retrieved it from the room, or it might have been a bit tacky 🤔

Apparently in this wonderful digital age you can control the bunny from an app on your phone, someone else can control it for you too, as it connects via Bluetooth getting intimate in a bunny sort of way……Isn’t technology wonderful? How will AI enhance this kind of technology? It won’t be long before we have our own personal robots multitasking between chores and pleasure 😜

I remember watching Top Gear many moons ago and they were doing a Christmas special where they were showing a range of stupid and weird gift items for Christmas and one of those gifts was a plug in rabbit. All you had to do was use the cigarette lighter outlet and Bob’s your orgasm. And it won’t be long before gesture and voice control will had a whole new dimension in the pursuit in the Pleasure Dome.

I caught up with my friend Amy the other day, I used to help her with her English when I lived here. She got me a gift, it’s a very expensive box of tea, I just hope I can get it back into Australia.

Lydia and I decided to go for a stroll to Lingyanshan today, first time in for years and a few things have changed. No need to take the bus because the new line 5 stops at the foot of the mountain, however it’s about 2 km from where I usually start.

It was hot today and the sun was strong and the locals were out in force, mind you as usual I went to a different area to avoid them. Most folk go clockwise but I like to go anticlockwise because it’s not as dangerous. Some of the steeper areas are very sandy due to erosion and if you are heading down you might engage gravity for an exciting ride.

After about an hour we began to meet folk coming the other way. As we got closer to the beginning of the trail it was hoachin. We headed on up and immediately encountered an army coming down the hill towards us. I kept to the right side and walked a path that was fairly quiet. This is what it was like for the next couple of hours, the only problem was trying to get through the narrower sections was challenging because there was absolutely know etiquette in the on coming hordes. I had to tell a few people to wait till we came down difficult areas, they just kept barging through without looking at what’s in front of them.

Young kids as well as adults and then some of them just sit in the middle of the path because they’re trying to have a rest and then no one else can get through. They are Fuckin’ stupid if you ask me. Why not do the sensible thing and step off the track. Fuckin’ numptees.

Lydia struggled a bit but pushed on through and we got to the top for a well deserved rest and a big bowl of noodles at the restaurant next to the temple followed by a coffee. The gardens of the temple are really worth a visit and a great place to sit and recover. I like coming here and I used to climb here once a week when I lived here, however I rarely came at the weekends because of the hoardes however I am running out of time to visit places like this as I’ll be leaving here in just under two weeks to head west before going home.

There’s a park near our apartment and yesterday we went for a wander around it. It had a certain brutalist design about it. It’s not a pretty park but more functional, mind you the trees and bushes do compliment each other although at this time of year on a driech day it’s hard to tell.

As usual, you will see fishermen where they shouldn’t be fishing and there are a few interesting signs. The sign that drew my attention the most was this one,

Was this sign telling the older folk, maybe me, that when we exercise we need to do it in an unenthusiastic way just in case we snuff it as we stroll through the gardens. Nothing worse than finding a body under a tree.

Gambling is illegal in China, there are no casinos and there are strict rules against it. We all know how crazy the Chinese are for gambling and most of the countries that border China have casinos and some are specifically for the Chinese. In Burma there are special areas within the country that are of of bounds for most apart from the Chinese, mainly because these areas are really an extention of China.

Cambodia had been infested by them, and of course now organised crime has many scams running out of here that again are run by Chinese crime gangs.

Laos has a massive casino on the banks of the Mekong built by Chinese with its own airfield I heard. Macau has many casinos also, many are similar to those in Vegas.

Now the reason for this post is that I have noticed a surge in the number of Chinese  Lottery outlets, many are now in metro stations and food halls. They are called the Chinese Welfare Lottery and I’m not sure of the prizes but I have seen many a queue of young people in buying frenzies as I’ve passed through.

The youth unemployment is at an all time high in China, the government has even stopped reporting the numbers. It seems that the Chinese youth are investing what little money they have by gambling, this is something that I never saw when I lived here because the usual clientele were an older demographic killing time. These new customers seem to have a look of desperation.

I was tired this morning, Sissi and I went out last night to see another concert of the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra and this time they played Shostakovich and what a powerful piece of music it was. It felt that we were in the middle of a battle in space somewhere, standing on the bridge of the Enterprise about to have a square go with the Klyngons. If you had a weak heart then you could have been in trouble.

After the concert I came home but Sissi stayed out with a friend and didn’t crawl home until the wee hours of the morning, I never heard a thing. So this morning she got up very late and we both decided that because it was raining we should have a lazy day. The pair of us have started to run up the 22 flights of stairs in our apartment block. Sissi had started this for over a week and I only started yesterday. We said that if we do this we can eat more, mind you this is also combined with around an average of 12 km a day.

In the end we headed out for lunch and went to the Vietnamese that we saw last night. Delicious. After which we went to the old city and got my old sandals repaired for about $10 by the old coblar sitting on the street corner, he’s been there for over 20 years I think. He stitched them back together and resoled them and he was quick and every move and cut deliberate.

We walked around the old city avoiding the busy thoroughfares and we stumbled upon a few places that neither had been to before. One fascinating place was this multistory carpark that is automated. You drive your car in on to the hoist and then it gets taken up as you will see below. Brilliant 🙏😁

Just when you think you know a city you find a whole new place to explore.