The second to last day of our trip was spent in Suzhou. The tickets were only 40 RMB and on the fast train, the trip took half an hour. Unfamiliar with the territory, however, we were sent off to the Hongqiao Shanghai train station to take our trip there. On our search for the departure gates we walked all the way down this long hallway and back again, pretty much the distance between two subway stops. Things in China are big.
Suzhou is a place known for its beauty: it's canals, gardens, and older architecture. Instead of immediately finding the tourist destinations, we spent a while just walking around hoping to come upon something. Here are a few of the sites:
This building was actually pretty nice. The space underneath the building was a water pool and there was a "porch" area within the concrete lattice walls before entering the building proper.
Humble Administrator's Garden:
More walking. After seeing the picture perfect Suzhou in postcards and brochures, we were sort of expecting the whole city to be some sort of picture perfect spot. Needless to say, we found ourselves strangely frustrated at being unable to find the postcard paradise. But there were still interesting spots to see:
Anybody know why there is so much temporary housing around? 
Still not sure what to make of these types of buildings. They struck me as awkward when I first came to Taiwan (this one's relatively tame compared to the other images in my mind), but now I've become accustomed to their style. Hopefully that is not a bad thing.
I enjoy the way people make use of the street. In the US, everyone seems to stay within boundaries of home, yard, or park. Here the street is truly public space. We also saw a family eating dinner on the sidewalk:
The most exciting and stressful moment of the day was departure. After seeing the up and going part of the city (which i have no photos of... because it was sort of typical tourist nice) we decided to walk north and see what we could see on the way to the train station. Upon reaching the road to the back of the station we were accosted by various people on mopeds telling us the station had moved and they would take us to the new station. At first the sentiment was that they were trying to rip us off, until we realized they were telling the truth. Needless to say, for 5 rmb, Lian got her first ride on the back of a moped after commenting about how dangerous it looked a few hours earlier. We arrived at the gate a few minutes before departure.
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