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“Pubic telephone!” yells Liz as
the class rides around the fake Three Kingdoms
City/Amusement Park (both cheesy and historical).
But going back to Day 3, the
whole class enjoyed going to the markets and
shopping around trying to buy the merchandise for as
cheap as possible. Some of the highlights included
Mr. Rokuskie buying a simple toy for 50 yuan while
Charles later buys it for 20. Charles later in the
day starts haggling with a lady for a knife and she
pulls out a huge butterfly knife. Later when
Charles refuses to buy a smaller knife that she
pulls out she starts rubbing the knife against his
hand, cutting him a little. Throughout the buying
excursion plenty of people tried to rip the students
off. A lady at a candy store tried to sell Charles
a piece of candy for 3 RMB which is unbelievable.
That night some of the students
decided to discover the cool parts of Shanghai.
While they didn’t quite find the “night markets”
that they were thinking of, they did find a truck
full of human feces, dumping the contents of the
truck into the river. They didn’t quite see
Shanghai in the same eyes again.
The next morning everyone woke
up or at least tried to wake up at 5:30. The bus
left and took us to a canal in Zhou-Zhuang with many
small stalls surrounding the river. Because of the
location of the river and the fact that the people
here are extremely dependent on the river, it is
often considered the “Venice of the East”.
Everything was extremely low priced. The owners of
the stalls there were very persistent when trying to
sell us their merchandise. Later when leaving
Charles put down some of the stuff he had bought to
buy a drink. When he went back to get his bag it
was gone.
The next stop was the Lion
Forest Garden in Su-Zhou. Our tour guide, David,
was incredibly knowledgeable about the Wu Kingdom
and was able to convey that through fluent,
excellent English. Because this is where the
Yangtze delta is located, the society located here
was and still is extremely profitable. The economy
is doing extremely well and David believes that it
is because of the low cost of renting or buying land
and buildings. David also believes that the economy
is doing very well because there is cheap labor.
Su-Zhou is said to be one of the “paradises” of the
earth.
The garden was made up of
exquisite pieces of stone, ageless trees and a
beautiful use of architecture by Aaron Pei. The
stones brought in to make up the garden are smooth
and naturally shaped by the weather of many years.
David said that many movies were shot here at the
Lion Forest Garden.
Our next stop was at Wu Xi
meaning in Chinese as “no tin”. Here in Wu Xi in
the mountains there once was a lot of tin. The tin
was then mined to make weapons. Over the years, all
the tin was taken and so now the city is called Wu
Xi. Here in Wu Xi a famous body of water is Tai Hu
Lake. The lake is 2,400 sq km and is split into
different parts in order to protect fishing as well
as the pearl industry.
Here in Wu Xi we also visited
the Three Kingdoms City which was a “good” try at
trying to replicate what had happened long ago.
While visiting the city we were able to ride a “war
ship” that was incredibly slow. If it was really
used in war, the ship wouldn’t have even been able
to get out of the harbor without being shot full of
arrows.
With the tour getting
monotonous the students all pleaded to Lee Laoshi
that dinner was the next place to stop. But there
was one more stop before dinner and that was the
Fresh Water Pearl Factory. Here students drank
Pearl Tea and were mobbed by people trying to sell
their merchandise with pearls. The price was pretty
decent so some lucky family members of the group are
really going to be surprised.
Tired and half asleep the
students went on to dinner which was surprisingly
good. I thought this was the best meal so far in
this trip. What the students didn’t know was that
there was going to be a grueling ride after dinner
waiting for them. During the trip to Nanjing, the
roads were terrible. The whole ride was a killer
and when everyone arrived in Nanjing, it felt like
it was 3:00 a.m. when it was really 10:30 p.m.
Time for shout-outs:
Abraham says hey mom, dad, and
Aaron. Hope you have an awesome time in Taiwan.
Mr. Rokuskie says hello from China to
Mrs. Rokuskie and the kids, his nephew in NC, plus
his family in NJ and NY. His coworkers all get
a shout-out also.P.S.
We have downloaded about 20 minutes of video to the
computer. the edit takes place next so by
Saturday we hope to have video for you. Sorry
for the delay in this. |
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