Sunday, August 27, 2006
Recent activity in sweltering Suzhou
Today, despite the 36 deg heat we got into an old intercity bus for the town of Shengze, just an hour away to the south of Suzhou. Shengze is the place where they make all the silk cloth. Otherwise it is just another small town, indistinguishable from all the others except by a large number of flash imported,cars. Many of them two door coupes.
The bus was clean and old fashioned albeit with fixed windows and (ineffective) air conditioning. It wasn't full when we left but we stopped at four small bus stations on the way, picking up and putting down, full most of the time. Shenze is in the city of Wujiang which borders Zhejiang province, to the south of Jiangsu where we live.
The road runs alongside the old Grand Canal which I must say is a very busy artery, with very large motorized barges full of mostly building materials, sand, gravel, brick, dirt, steel and concrete girders. They move along at about 10 knots I would guess. In some places they are lined up bow to aft, in others they are spaced out.
The canal is quite wide allowing the barges to pass each other easily in the opposite direction. As you all know the Grand Canal is said to run from Hangzhou in the south to Beijing in the north. But I must admit I've never seen such big barges around Beijing.
We ate in a small Taiwanese style fast food food place. Bean milk, onion oil cake, Shanghainese dumplings (Xiao long bao), noodles and some sweet buns. Very filling and mostly very tasty. Yes we got the dry msg mouth soon after! The place was relatively clean and not every table had smokers.
After a full lunch was wandered down to the silk shops to try and buy some ties for son Ollie who has been promoted to Duty Manager at the St George Sailing Club in Sydney and so works regular hours now, albeit with five evening shifts. He was a bit diffident about applying for the job when it came up but the other managers urged him to go for it and his colleagues were supportive. At 23 he might have thought he was a bit young to be taking authority, but everyone seems to be very keen. He is learning the paperwork and has made the very corrupting discovery that supervisors don't have to run around like blue arsed flies all the time!
Susanna went into a couple of shops and we checked out the ties. Not too bad. Good quality but fairly conservative style. Anyway we got about five ties so he is sure to find one or two he likes. Susanna had good fun negotiating the prices down until the owners where in tears about the massive losses they were making.
Then she had a look for a silk top and came up with something nice there as well. By this time I was in the mood for a nice silk shirt if we saw one but we didn't. Local style is very old.
The trip back was uneventful except that I miscalculated the sun direction and we found ourselves sweltering on the sunny side of the bus. I have a sore arm from fanning Susanna. I felt guilty about getting the call wrong!
We didn't do much yesterday except have yum cha with Bosco and Linda, our American Chinese friends at the Haiyi Dynasty Cantonese restaurant.
Well the Hungarian Grand Prix will be broadcast late tonight so I will finally have motor racing to watch. If it gets any more exciting I might have to go and watch the Shanghai GP here Oct 1st.
Finally I have to announce the end of the world (well the solar system) as we know it. Pluto is not longer a planet. I thought that after a lifetime of memorizing the 11 and 12 times tables and then the government bringing in decimal currency, I would have no more big shocks in my life. But I spent the rest of my leisure hours memorizing the planets of the solar system and as some may recall, I was foundation president of the James Cook Junior Astronomers which met at the old Ambulance station in Sutherland (I think). Well now there are eight. I am devastated. My world will never be the same. Old age doesn't seem so attractive any more.
On Friday night we had a farewell dinner for Robert Smith, the English Coordinator and his wife. He has got a plum job at the Nottingham University College in Ningbo, to the east of Hangzhou, and is the envy of everyone as Nottingham is new in China and has raised the bar in pay for academics. It is famous all around China! He is denying his wages have taken much of a leap. The rest of us are waiting for draft contract to be circulated and of course the rumour mill is ugly. Fear and loathing is the order of the day so the dinner was very merry as we all hit the (Wolf Blass) red wine.
Photos: The ties, the Great Negotiator and a victim, a pic from the dinner, and street scenes from Shengze including the restaurant where we ate.
Today, despite the 36 deg heat we got into an old intercity bus for the town of Shengze, just an hour away to the south of Suzhou. Shengze is the place where they make all the silk cloth. Otherwise it is just another small town, indistinguishable from all the others except by a large number of flash imported,cars. Many of them two door coupes.
The bus was clean and old fashioned albeit with fixed windows and (ineffective) air conditioning. It wasn't full when we left but we stopped at four small bus stations on the way, picking up and putting down, full most of the time. Shenze is in the city of Wujiang which borders Zhejiang province, to the south of Jiangsu where we live.
The road runs alongside the old Grand Canal which I must say is a very busy artery, with very large motorized barges full of mostly building materials, sand, gravel, brick, dirt, steel and concrete girders. They move along at about 10 knots I would guess. In some places they are lined up bow to aft, in others they are spaced out.
The canal is quite wide allowing the barges to pass each other easily in the opposite direction. As you all know the Grand Canal is said to run from Hangzhou in the south to Beijing in the north. But I must admit I've never seen such big barges around Beijing.
We ate in a small Taiwanese style fast food food place. Bean milk, onion oil cake, Shanghainese dumplings (Xiao long bao), noodles and some sweet buns. Very filling and mostly very tasty. Yes we got the dry msg mouth soon after! The place was relatively clean and not every table had smokers.
After a full lunch was wandered down to the silk shops to try and buy some ties for son Ollie who has been promoted to Duty Manager at the St George Sailing Club in Sydney and so works regular hours now, albeit with five evening shifts. He was a bit diffident about applying for the job when it came up but the other managers urged him to go for it and his colleagues were supportive. At 23 he might have thought he was a bit young to be taking authority, but everyone seems to be very keen. He is learning the paperwork and has made the very corrupting discovery that supervisors don't have to run around like blue arsed flies all the time!
Susanna went into a couple of shops and we checked out the ties. Not too bad. Good quality but fairly conservative style. Anyway we got about five ties so he is sure to find one or two he likes. Susanna had good fun negotiating the prices down until the owners where in tears about the massive losses they were making.
Then she had a look for a silk top and came up with something nice there as well. By this time I was in the mood for a nice silk shirt if we saw one but we didn't. Local style is very old.
The trip back was uneventful except that I miscalculated the sun direction and we found ourselves sweltering on the sunny side of the bus. I have a sore arm from fanning Susanna. I felt guilty about getting the call wrong!
We didn't do much yesterday except have yum cha with Bosco and Linda, our American Chinese friends at the Haiyi Dynasty Cantonese restaurant.
Well the Hungarian Grand Prix will be broadcast late tonight so I will finally have motor racing to watch. If it gets any more exciting I might have to go and watch the Shanghai GP here Oct 1st.
Finally I have to announce the end of the world (well the solar system) as we know it. Pluto is not longer a planet. I thought that after a lifetime of memorizing the 11 and 12 times tables and then the government bringing in decimal currency, I would have no more big shocks in my life. But I spent the rest of my leisure hours memorizing the planets of the solar system and as some may recall, I was foundation president of the James Cook Junior Astronomers which met at the old Ambulance station in Sutherland (I think). Well now there are eight. I am devastated. My world will never be the same. Old age doesn't seem so attractive any more.
On Friday night we had a farewell dinner for Robert Smith, the English Coordinator and his wife. He has got a plum job at the Nottingham University College in Ningbo, to the east of Hangzhou, and is the envy of everyone as Nottingham is new in China and has raised the bar in pay for academics. It is famous all around China! He is denying his wages have taken much of a leap. The rest of us are waiting for draft contract to be circulated and of course the rumour mill is ugly. Fear and loathing is the order of the day so the dinner was very merry as we all hit the (Wolf Blass) red wine.
Photos: The ties, the Great Negotiator and a victim, a pic from the dinner, and street scenes from Shengze including the restaurant where we ate.
