Well I haven’t had one of these for a while and it’s related completely to consuming way too much red wine last night. I went on a trip to a place called Dongshan which is at Taihu Lake about an hour or so from Suzhou. It’s a large freshwater lake and is famous for the fish and the creatures that come from the lake. There are many restaurants that you can go to but today we went to Dongshan township where they also grow tea. The green tea that is grown here is very famous and also one of the best in China.

The mountain is quite high, the tour guide said it was around 3000m but I don’t think is correct as we climbed to the top quite quickly, but the path on the way up is very steep. We walked over the top and down the other side and into the old village where we went through an old house which had been standing for the past 500 years. It did look very old, although you could see where there had been some modern fixes.

We entered through the main door and into a Cart park apparently. This would be where the guests would arrive and park the horse and carriage before entering into the main reception hall. All very civilised.

After this tour of the old house and Township we headed back for the banquet. I again forgot to take pictures here but I can assure you that there was food aplenty. We had eel, crab, mutton, jellyfish, fish, veggies and lots more and copious amounts of red wine. There was a celebration going on this evening where two tour companies where beginning a partnership and there was lots of Ganbei, which is bottoms up and you have to skull your drink. And you can tell the folk that have played this game before because if they have a lot of wine in there glass they will say cheers, so you only have to take a small sip. But if they only have a little then they will say Ganbei , so you have to sink in in one and I did this many times. Too many as I discovered this morning. But it was a great day out in a very crisp winters day in Suzhou.

And now I’m going to have some Tea and food and maybe a siesta, 🙂