Suzhou: My Lost City

Shang Tang Jie at night

I left Suzhou today, and although I might never have the opportunity to visit it again, I'll forever remember it as My Lost City in China. That's because I managed to get spectacularly lost a couple of times during my one full day there.

My main problem getting around was that instead of paying 10-30 yuan ($2-5 USD) for a taxi, I insisted on flexing my public transit muscle and riding the buses. Unfortunately, the buses are not easy to navigate if you don't 1) speak/understand Mandarin or 2) plan out your routes ahead of time. I had neither of these things working in my favor, so deciding when to get off of the bus was a crap shoot that I lost each time.

It took a lot of walking, luck, and comical conversations (they'd say something; I'd look puzzled; then I'd point at my map and say something; then they'd look puzzled, and so on and so on) with locals to find my way back each time. I managed to keep my cool throughout it all and enjoy the different views of the city that wandering aimlessly afforded. I even stumbled onto a nice park along the river north of city center.

Suzhou is renowned for its gardens, and they did not disappoint. The two that  I visited, the Humble Administrator's Garden and the Lingering Garden, were expansive (considering they are near the heart of the  city) and impressive. I spent at at least 2 hours at each one wandering through the many pathways, stopping to relax in the pagodas, and enjoying the scenery.

There were a lot of local tourists also taking in the gardens (~90% or more of the tourists were from China), and for the first time, I was approached by several asking to take pictures with me (a token foreigner). This normally happened in waves. Once one person in a group had successfully approached me for a picture, the others would follow suit. It was a lot of fun.

At night I walked through the two historical streets in the city: Pingjiang Liu and Shang Tang Jie. Both roads are next to canals and bustling with activity at night, mainly in the form of locals walking around, taking pictures, and shopping. Shang Tang Jie is away from the city center, but the taxi ride out to it is totally worth it. The road and surrounding area is illuminated at night with hundreds of red lanterns, and the architecture of the buildings looks like historic China (or at least the Hollywood version of historic China that I've been fed).

Other notable things about Suzhou:

• They love cute dogs in this city. 1 in 5 Suzhouans walks around with one
• It seems to be popular for girls to dress up in traditional, formal attire and do photo shoots on the historic roads
• Since there are canals all over the place, there are also a lot of mosquitos