Today I was lucky enough to go for a guided tour of the Garden of Nets. I’ve been here before, but today we had Lincoln who works for the Suzhou Tourism Bureau giving us the tour. He explained in great detail the history of the garden and the many features that you would obviously miss if you just went for a wander around yourself. I’m not going to begin to tell you here because you can ask Google for the answer but of course it won’t be as good as Lincoln’s description.

We were also treated to morning tea within a room that is not normally open to guests of the garden. The room where we had tea was the room reserved for the lady of the house and in ancient times no men would have been allowed here.

The bed is so small and so are the shoes that lie underneath because they would have belonged to a young woman who would have had her feet bound to make her look cute. This was a terrible practice which has only died out in latter part of the 20th century.

The room is of a very high standard and today we were very lucky to have the opportunity to see what would have been like and I guess for me as not many men would have been allowed up to this room over looking the garden.