China 6 - Suzhou and Kunshan
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Next morning Peter arrived at the
hotel with May, who is the senior teaching assistant at his school and who
volunteered to act as our guide...
 She was great fun
and proved to be excellent at her task. Her English is extremely fluent and she
was almost as good as the professional guides we’d had at knowing her dynasties
and historical figures. This particular garden which was part of the park in
Kunshan had wonderful beds of flowers but most of the other gardens rely on
small spaces artfully constructed to give ever changing views of water, rock,
plants and buildings. May took us to see The Humble Administrator’s Garden and
the Netmaker’s Garden,neither of which were humble in any
way.
   This window, frames a subject so that it looks like a painting. The cracked ice framework sets off the straight bamboos behind. This technique was used to great effect in the Humble Administrators Garden which was the most beautiful and artistic that we visited.  Bridges feature in all
the gardens, very often they are zigzag bridges to stop evil spirits
crossing
or formal and elaborate affairs to act as a centrepiece. 
The garden buildings here were beautifully finished and provided a library, calligraphy and painting rooms, reception rooms and rooms for the ladies as well as rooms just to show off furniture, porcelain or rare rocks and stones. 
A garden library room but sadly depleted when there was mass book burning in China.
Everything here, including the pavings, was beautifully designed hundreds of years ago.   As ever there were examples of rocks that were supposed to look like something…and this one actually did!  And some with holes for the comedy photos. 
The Chinese love their penzai
too…their version of bonsai, with miniaturised trees that were clearly centuries
old in some cases.
This is a wisteria which must be hard to keep this small.
May was a great guide and a great interpreter at lunch time when we were choosing dishes. Because of her local knowledge she was able to take us to a wonderful tea house overlooking the canal where we drank delicious Jasmine, White and Green teas for a couple of hours in the afternoon after all our walking in the town and gardens.
.......................What a girl!.......................... Visiting Kunshan on our final day, Peter took us out to lunch at his favourite family run Taiwanese restaurant. This turned out to be a real treat as the owners were so pleased that he had brought his parents. Mother came out to greet us and cooked us two additional complimentary dishes. Needless to say it was a long affair and we were late meeting May who took us to a lovely park not far from Peter’s apartment.
What looks like a pediment in the water is supposed to be the hilt of a magical sword waiting for the right person to come along and pull it out! Sound familiar?
Finally we were taken to see the Kunshan blossoms which are symbolic of the town.
Unfortunately time rushed by too quickly but thankfully we were able to spend the next morning with Peter then it was off to the station for the Shanghai train where we would catch the airport bus for our flight to Kuala Lumpur. All is well on Gryphon II and we must get ready now for the East Malaysia Rally. |
