China has been a curious place of stories and mysteries. History adds veils of identity and mystery to much of its culture and architecture. From dynasties to war times to present, China has taken on so many distinct identities and has archived many tales and stories on the walls of houses, arches of bridges and tiles of roofs. One of the cities that portrays these identities would be Suzhou (sorry, same city as the previous post but we went to different places so equally as exciting!)
Our impromptu Suzhou trip started off with an early G-train ride (I’m still not sure if this is bullet train or not because I was told otherwise but I can’t feel it when it starts moving, it’s like floating).
So apparently, train stations here are a big deal, I mean at least to us Singaporeans, it is a big deal. The architecture of the stations are elaborate (I don’t have a good shot of Hangzhou’s station because we were rushing and it was too huge to fit into the tiny lens of my iPhone 6 : /). But here’s a photo of Suzhou’s train station!
Suzhou is a beautiful watertown and has her own characteristic architecture of plain white walls and black Chinese tiles. This combination adds a quaint and calming atmosphere to the streets. Let the pictures do the talking.
And with that, things just got a little more exciting, and challenging. We took to a gib street-side vendor in hope of getting cheaper tickets. All is well…
Until… they decided that we were definitely interested in buying silk and pearls, and wasted our afternoon. But the rest of the ride was still pretty cool.
And so we rushed. And we rushed for our main purpose of going to Suzhou was to see the Suzhou Museum, the architecture is a perfect mix of traditional Chinese and modern Western influences.
Lo and Behold, we made it just in time (2 minutes and the doors would have been shut, so yay!). Now, enough of me talking because I don’t think my words will be enough to describe the ingenuity of I.M Peh.
All was worth it in the end. And so, we left the museum deeply impressed and inspired. Grabbed dinner (xiaolongbaos and a whole goose) and rushed *again* to the train station. This time, we missed our ride, so we had to take the normal 4/5-hour train ride back. Quite an experience!
And so we bade our farewell to lovely Suzhou.
– Daniel
