Suzhou

Today was back to work here in Shanghai, so expect this next week to be pretty boring :( On the upside, I went with a small group to the 'small' city of Suzhou, about an hour and a half outside of Shanghai. How 'small' is Suzhou? About 6 million people. I suppose when you compare the city to Shanghai (which is 22 million - or about 2.5 New York City's). If you own a laptop that's not a Dell, it was probably made in Suzhou. If you own a Dell, all the components were probably made in Suzhou. The Technology Park in Suzhou is the largest in the world - so chances are there's a part of every electronic device that was made there.

Fortunately, we spent our day in the old city, which is much more in line with what one would expect to see in 'traditional' China. We started off the day by visiting two beautiful gardens. I've combined the pictures below, but of note was that one of the gardens was the Master of the Nets Garden, which is considered to be one of the finest gardens in all of China.

Check out the amazing detail in the arch engravings.


This 'painting' is natural marble that looks like a landscape.


My favorite picture of the view.


Enjoying the round wall openings.


Beautiful inlay of stones making up the floor.


Next up we took a rickshaw tour. Here's Nicole and I in our rickshaw!


Suhzou is famous for it's canal system. It's often referred to as the 'Venice of the East'. Here's some locals on a typical boat.


Here's yours truly along the canal.


We also stopped in a silk factory and saw the silk making process, from larvae to finished product. I took mostly videos, and I can't seem to get the videos to embed properly, so you'll have to take my word for how impressive the process was.

And finally, one of the many arches over the canal.


Hope this can tide you over for a bit - data warehousing and BI reporting will be taking over my time for the next few days.