What really made my trip to Suzhou so great was not necessarily that the city is so cool (although it does have it’s charms), but that I met the most fantastic people while I was there. It all started with my hostel. I was the only Westerner in my room, but I got very close with my roommates: a late-20’s woman named Phoebe, a mid-30’s computer technician named Lao Zhang, a recent college graduate from Shandong named Wan Zhen, an International Journalism major from Guangzhou named Irene, and a Korean exchange student named Ji Young. In our few days together, I really became very close friends with them. The experience I had was what it was because of them, so the following are stories that both reflects my time in Suzhou, but who they are as well
Wan Zhen: He was practically the first person I met when I came to Suzhou, and quickly turned out to be a loyal friend despite our short time together. He’s a recent college graduate from a finance school in Shandong. He came to Suzhou to look for work, and so was staying at the hostel while looking for a job. Having been around for a while, he graciously accompanied me, Ji Young, and a friendly pair of Texan girls also staying in the hostel (on a break from teaching in Korea!) to lunch. He took us to a beautiful, two-tiered wooden restaurant ten minutes walk from our hostel where we got piping hot bowls of duck noodle soup (that’s a bowl of noodle soup with duck, not noodled duck) and hot tea, all for under $2 American.
From there, he showed us to an opera museum on a well-preserved alley that runs parallel to Suzhou’s pastoral canals. The ‘museum’ was really more of a music bar, where patrons were given tea and sat at tables before a stage where two opera performers sang pingtan opera for two hours. The best way that I can describe pingtan is a combination of Beijing Opera and ‘Prairie Home Companion’. It involves two people on stage, a man and a woman, who exchange witty, slightly combative remarks back and forth, and then break into song every once in a while. Or, at least, that’s what I picked up from it. It’s not performed in standard Mandarin, but in Suzhou’s local dialect. While beautiful, it’s almost completely undecipherable to a Mandarin-speaker, let alone a student like me. That didn’t take any of the fun away from it, though. They put on a really good show, and the atmosphere was really pleasant.
My experience with Wan Zhen made me realize, too, how loyal and generous Chinese friends can become in such a short period of time. He spent a pretty big portion of his day showing us around, despite having other chores to do that day. Good guy.
Ji Young: She’s a Korean exchange student studying in Shandong Province, a linguist prodigy, and a good friend. We actually met in Nanjing by pure happenstance. We struck up a conversation at Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum, and learned that we were both headed to Suzhou, albeit on different days. She is really a fascinating character; she’s learned English in Australia, has come to China to learn Chinese, and plans on picking up Spanish in the near future. When I asked her why she wanted to learn so many languages, her answer was only, “because I like them!” And she’s damn good at them, too. She’s learned in three months of Chinese study what I have in a year-and-a-half. We had a lot of fun strolling through some of Suzhou’s world-famous parks together, speaking Chinese. We laughed a good deal at our own conversations; we shared that language that only foreign-language students know. It’s a language that isn’t quite right, since our grammar still has so many problems, and it’s one that gleans humor from the little turns of phrase that are natural to the native speaker, but sound so strange when they roll of off foreign tongues. We’re planning on meeting once again this spring and to go to Qingdao together. She’s a good friend, and it will be nice to travel with her again.
Lao Zhang: My friend Phoebe described him aptly when she called him the RA of our dorm. He’s an older guy, a computer technician in Shanghai, but had a great, dry sense of humor. He’s the kind of guy that was quite willing to go to bed at 9pm, and laze around the hostel all day without a tinge of melancholy. Despite being so seemingly lazy and cloistered, he’s really well traveled, and gave me some great advice on where to travel once I get down south a bit. In accordance with his advice, I think I’m going to go slightly farther west than originally planned, making a brief sojourn into the minority province of Guizhou.
Irene: A pretty, stylish college senior from Guangzhou, but studying in Hong Kong, she was where the party was at. On New Year’s Eve, she took us to a fantastic bar north of the old town. It’s a refurbished, late-Qing era home, now carefully converted into a music bar. It still maintains the tall ceilings and dark, intricate woodwork characteristic of the architecture of the time, making it a real treat to visit. They also had great music, hosting a Filipino rock band to play rock classics to sound in the New Year. One of the strangest experiences I’ve had so far in China was a bar full of drunken Chinese locals and Westerners singing “Hey Jude” at the top of their ever-so-inebriated lungs in the last minutes of 2009. Irene was the source of great drama, too, telling off the band’s guitarist for dancing with another girl, and chipping in on a keg of Tsingdao for our table.
Phoebe: She was my closest friend on this trip. She was on a brief vacation from her job working HR at Microsoft in Shanghai, and came to Suzhou to see the sights. She and I went to a small town outside of Suzhou together called Tongli. It’s a very well preserved canal-town with a good number of museums and pretty scenes to relax over. One of the best parts of this day trip, however, had to be the Chinese Sex Culture Museum housed in the town. It used to be in Shanghai, but the authorities found it too risqué, and booted it a few towns over. I took few pictures within, but there is one that absolutely has to be seen to be believed. (Picture forthcoming).
We also went to the Suzhou Museum together, and she helped me realize how great classic Chinese culture really is. We strolled through the scrolls of centuries-old master calligraphy masters, and looked at the ancient jade work from the ancient state of Wu (whose capital was Suzhou). This museum was really modern, the translations were well done and accurate, and their exhibitions were very complete. It helped, too, that Phoebe acted as my “cultural interpreter” when we ran across something I didn’t get or needed elaboration. She was a valuable, loyal, fun-loving friend that I won’t forget soon.
Eh. Another really long post. Sorry to keep sending these without any pictures, but I have yet to find a computer in Huangshan that has the processing power to upload hundreds of pictures. Hopefully I’ll hit a gaming internet café tonight. I’m off to climb China’s most famous mountain, Huangshan, early tomorrow morning, so wish me luck and leg strength!
My experience with Wan Zhen made me realize, too, how loyal and generous Chinese friends can become in such a short period of time. He spent a pretty big portion of his day showing us around, despite having other chores to do that day. Good guy.
Ji Young: She’s a Korean exchange student studying in Shandong Province, a linguist prodigy, and a good friend. We actually met in Nanjing by pure happenstance. We struck up a conversation at Sun Yat-sen’s mausoleum, and learned that we were both headed to Suzhou, albeit on different days. She is really a fascinating character; she’s learned English in Australia, has come to China to learn Chinese, and plans on picking up Spanish in the near future. When I asked her why she wanted to learn so many languages, her answer was only, “because I like them!” And she’s damn good at them, too. She’s learned in three months of Chinese study what I have in a year-and-a-half. We had a lot of fun strolling through some of Suzhou’s world-famous parks together, speaking Chinese. We laughed a good deal at our own conversations; we shared that language that only foreign-language students know. It’s a language that isn’t quite right, since our grammar still has so many problems, and it’s one that gleans humor from the little turns of phrase that are natural to the native speaker, but sound so strange when they roll of off foreign tongues. We’re planning on meeting once again this spring and to go to Qingdao together. She’s a good friend, and it will be nice to travel with her again.
Lao Zhang: My friend Phoebe described him aptly when she called him the RA of our dorm. He’s an older guy, a computer technician in Shanghai, but had a great, dry sense of humor. He’s the kind of guy that was quite willing to go to bed at 9pm, and laze around the hostel all day without a tinge of melancholy. Despite being so seemingly lazy and cloistered, he’s really well traveled, and gave me some great advice on where to travel once I get down south a bit. In accordance with his advice, I think I’m going to go slightly farther west than originally planned, making a brief sojourn into the minority province of Guizhou.
Irene: A pretty, stylish college senior from Guangzhou, but studying in Hong Kong, she was where the party was at. On New Year’s Eve, she took us to a fantastic bar north of the old town. It’s a refurbished, late-Qing era home, now carefully converted into a music bar. It still maintains the tall ceilings and dark, intricate woodwork characteristic of the architecture of the time, making it a real treat to visit. They also had great music, hosting a Filipino rock band to play rock classics to sound in the New Year. One of the strangest experiences I’ve had so far in China was a bar full of drunken Chinese locals and Westerners singing “Hey Jude” at the top of their ever-so-inebriated lungs in the last minutes of 2009. Irene was the source of great drama, too, telling off the band’s guitarist for dancing with another girl, and chipping in on a keg of Tsingdao for our table.
Phoebe: She was my closest friend on this trip. She was on a brief vacation from her job working HR at Microsoft in Shanghai, and came to Suzhou to see the sights. She and I went to a small town outside of Suzhou together called Tongli. It’s a very well preserved canal-town with a good number of museums and pretty scenes to relax over. One of the best parts of this day trip, however, had to be the Chinese Sex Culture Museum housed in the town. It used to be in Shanghai, but the authorities found it too risqué, and booted it a few towns over. I took few pictures within, but there is one that absolutely has to be seen to be believed. (Picture forthcoming).
We also went to the Suzhou Museum together, and she helped me realize how great classic Chinese culture really is. We strolled through the scrolls of centuries-old master calligraphy masters, and looked at the ancient jade work from the ancient state of Wu (whose capital was Suzhou). This museum was really modern, the translations were well done and accurate, and their exhibitions were very complete. It helped, too, that Phoebe acted as my “cultural interpreter” when we ran across something I didn’t get or needed elaboration. She was a valuable, loyal, fun-loving friend that I won’t forget soon.
Eh. Another really long post. Sorry to keep sending these without any pictures, but I have yet to find a computer in Huangshan that has the processing power to upload hundreds of pictures. Hopefully I’ll hit a gaming internet café tonight. I’m off to climb China’s most famous mountain, Huangshan, early tomorrow morning, so wish me luck and leg strength!
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