Suzhou- The Suzhou Museum

      Going to Suzhou was the first trip as a couple for me and Hui. I have heard in the past that traveling can either make or break your relationship, and I have to say, Hui and I travel immensely well together. Thought our trips are always a huge adventure with ups and downs and an interesting twist here or there, we always make them an adventure. Having so few opportunities to travel because of the few breaks we get, these days if there is a three or four day weekend, you can bet Hui and I will not be in Hangzhou or Haining. We really love traveling together!
      I can't remember exactly which holiday it was when we went to Suzhou (maybe qingming festival, the date on the pictures are close to that time), but it was quite busy, and that might have been my first exposure to the Chinese phenomenon known as 'people mountain people sea', aka 人山人海. It basically has the meaning of sooooooooooooooooooooooo many people! It was really rainy and a tiny bit cold, and we got pretty wet, but it was still a great adventure. I was always calling it that, and Hui would say "c'mon, it's just travel, not an adventure," but by the end he agreed with me.
      Going to Suzhou was my first time to ride a bullet train. It was really nice, similar to the service you would get when you ride an airplane, but you don't have to buckle up. The thing I remember the most is that every single seat had a picture of David Beckham on it twice. I decided that the Chinese must really love him.

 

      Our Suzhou adventure began the next morning when we traveled to the Suzhou Museum. One of our experience at the Suzhou Museum reminded me of the power of money in China. It was a free museum, but the line to get inside looked miles long. We met a man on the street nearby who we paid I think about 30 kuai and a man took us through the exit, and we entered without waiting in line. The first area we went to didn't look much like a museum, but more like a historical landmark. It included many rooms of historical artifacts and documents from the Taiping Kingdom. I haven't studied much about the taipings yet, but I know the taiping rebellion happened around the end of the dynastic period. (By the way, sorry if you don't like so many pictures, but I decided to show my pictures to people on a nice blog instead of putting bulk pictures in facebook albums where nobody will ever see them.)

Because my family really loves to visit museums and historical sites, I always try to take a picture whenever I see something in English, so that they can understand and learn about the kind of things I am seeing when I visit a new place.

One of the famous cultural things in Suzhou is kunqu opera. There were many different old costumes and a whole stage, which was mentioned to be one of the most well preserved kunqu opera stages.

      After walking around for a while, we finally found our way into the main part of the museum. I was quite impressed by the architecture of the place. Its appearance was modern and distinct, but uniquely Chinese.

Hui wanted to point out in this particular picture that I am the one with the unbrella, meaning that he sacrificed being warm and dry to take this picture. He is such a great guy!

 



 Inside we saw many different interesting Chinese artifacts. They had the usual objects, like congs, jade bis, and bronze dings, but they also had some things that I never had a chance to see in America.

This particular object I photographed, because I have seen it used before in the Chinese drama, 甄嬛传. It was often sitting on the lap of the empress, and I remember that it had some sort of health benefit, but I have since forgotten exactly what that health benefit was.

 

Xiao in Haining

    Sooooo, I realized I messed up the chronilogical order of my blog posts. I forgot to talk about one thing. Early in my China experience one of my good friends from my university named Xiao came to Haining to visit me and made my life like ten times more awesome for a day and a half. Even though Xiao was only in Haining for one day, it was quite the adventure. She arrived in Haining on the evening of Easter, and we spent the evening hanging out with my co workers, who were singing and being silly like they always do. We finished that night by skyping with my family.
      The real fun began in the morning. We decided to go shopping, so we headed off to intime (called 银泰in Chinese) to explore. One of the first things we did was buy the llama named Stan for my sister that I mentioned previously, and it was with Xiao that I came up with the idea of putting him on my backpack and taking pictures of him around China.

We ate

We ate lunch at a restaurant that serves ethnic food from the western part of China (aka 新疆菜）。It was delicious, and we especially enjoyed the barbequed goat.

The manager of the restaurant asked to take a picture with me (oo look a waiguoren), and he gave me a free fruit plate since I said yes. I was missing eating apples, so I was really thankful for that. We also saw a painting near our seats that kind of reminded us of one of our friends, so I took a picture of it.

 That day I bought my first piece of Chinese clothing! It was this adorable skirt that actually cost me $100. I didn't actually realize at the time that it cost that much. I was just excited to buy Chinese clothes, and most of the other clothes there were more expensive than that, but it was totally worth it. This is one of my favorite pieces of clothing I own.

 My time with Xiao was very fun. Though we did have a very small funny disaster, which I will not mention for the sake of her honor (it's not really that serious, I am being too dramatic), but even that was still fun. I love Xiao, and I hope I can hang out with her in China again!

Hangzhou (day 2)

      We began day two of my fabulous adventure in Hangzhou by going to the catholic church. I wanted to go to the English mass, but we found out it is held every Saturday night, so we just went to the Chinese one. I am beginning to feel that Chinese preists really like to talk. This priest's homily lasted at least an hour, and I feel like the mass was going to be at least two hours. Also, I didn't really understand what they were saying, so I told Hui it would be alright if we left.
      We ate at a wonderful restaurant that mainly served a type of dumpling called 水饺(shui jiao). This is a type of dumpling that has a little bit of soup inside, and it translates directly as water dumpling. At that restaurant I also ate 汤圆(tang yuan) for the first time. 汤圆is also a sort of dumpling filled with a type of black soybean paste, which I think tastes reminiscent of peanut butter. After that experience of eating 汤圆, I went back to Haining and bought tons of frozen ones to eat for breakfast. These days it is one of my favorite things to eat.

 After breakfast we went to the Hangzhou zoo. In China zoos are more for children, but I love going to the zoo no matter where I am. The zoo we went to was nearby west lake, and it was on a mountain, so there was quite a bit of walking. I saw many things at this zoo that I had never seen before, and zoo stories are some of the best stories in my opinion.

      while before this trip I bought a small flying llama for my sister, which she named Stan, and I decided I was going to take this llama around and take pictures of him in different places in China. Stan very much enjoyed his time at the zoo. He liked talking with his cousins, the alpacas.
      Hui and I found a very lazy kangaroo. I didn't take a picture of it, but he was feeling very hot, so he was just lying there in the sun. Then suddenly he started to get up, but he just laid back down and went back to sleep.

 In the picture to the left you can see two mandarin ducks. Hui explained to me that they are a very special kind of duck that mates for life, and that the zoo needs to have two. If one of them dies, the other will soon die as well. These ducks are important in Chinese culture, and images of them can be seen at Chinese weddings as a symbol of marital bliss and fidelity to your spouse.



My first time to see a white peacock

Monkeys! The Hangzhou zoo has a lot of monkeys, including a few rare species of monkey. It was my first time to see a Capuchin monkey, which I heard about from the movie, Night at the Museum. If you were wondering, these monkeys were actually a lot bigger than Dexter.

The Hangzhou zoo had one other animal I had never seen before, and that I had always wanted to see my whole life. That was the majestic, beautiful, and fluffy PANDA! I was so excited to see the pandas. They were both sleeping, but it was still worth it. I saw one of their ears twitch, and I was satisfied. They were so fuzzy and adorable, I just wanted to jump through the glass and give them a big hug. Pandas are awesome! I was happy just to gaze at their sleeping greatness.

I know I mentioned a lot of firsts, but I am in China, so it is to be expected. To my knowledge, this was also my first time to see an Aian elephant, and hear an elephant make a really loud sound (what do you call that sound?). They were quite a bit smaller than the African elephants I saw in the past, and their tusks were crossing eachother. I thought that was pretty interesting.
      The elephants were my last first time seeing animal, but I can't wait for the day when I travel to a different Chinese zoo and find a sun bear, which is another animal I have always wanted to see.

The last two animals we saw were the tigers and the leopard. There were two tigers, and their enclosure was probably the coolest of all of the animals I saw. Based on my picture here, it almost looks like I just saw them sitting their in the wild. I also learned the Chinese word for leopard from going to this zoo. It's 豹子(baozi), and that's different from the steam bun! If someone serves you 豹子 at a restaurant just be aware that you are not getting steam buns (not that Chinese people actually eat leopards or anything like that), that's 包子(baozi), not 豹子。I know, I am not funny, but I still try.

      The zoo in Hangzhou was really fun! It tired me out a lot more than the zoo in Indianapolis, but it was still worth it! A zoo on a mountain has many stairs, and I climbed them all. Exhausted, I headed back to Haining to prepare for school the next day.