After the short trip to Germany (short at least for Stephan) we're back in China and we'll stay there some longer. Stephan got his contract lengthened until August 2010. No big surprise, was many expected. Regina found some time next to her chines lessons to visit the gardens of Suzhou.
In the Suzhou Museum there is a lot of more or less old stuff to look at, but the real attraction is the building itself. It was design by I.M. Pei, the world famous architect. He is a Suzhounese and designed the museum to honor his hometown. He designed some other buildings, e.g. the pyramid shaped entrance of the Louvre in Paris or the National Gallery of Art in Washington or the Bank of China Skyscraper in Hong Kong.
Next to the museum is the humbles administrator garden. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt somebody may think, but hey, at the moment is the flowering of the Lotus.
Basically a Lotus looks like a water Lilly with the flower having a stem. But the big difference is that you can eat the root and the seed. The seed is sold for much money - 3 RMB or one seedpod. But it's worth each single RMB because the Lotus is a symbol for pureness, fidelity, creativeness and inspiration. But maybe someone have to smoke it to get that far.....
In Suzhou the real summer started, so we'll not talking about temperatures but sweat levels.
Except the museum and the gardens Suzhou has also a couple of temples. One of the not yet visited by us is named Han Shan temple and Regina took a newbie in Suzhou with her to an adventure tour. In this temple there pretty much bells. One of the bells is striked 108 times each Chinese new year. Why? Nobody could explain, but it's very traditional.
The temple was destroyed several times of the centuries and always re build. So everything is "original". The temple is named after the abbot Han Shan who won a competition in order to enchant his cane into a bridge. And yes, all these stories are true. Definitely.
Everything sounds like happy living forever in China, but Stephan was pushed back to reality. He was happy enough to get not harmed in 2 accidents within 24 hours. First one was in a company car on the way back to the office, when suddenly a Taxi materialized out of nowhere in front of the hood. My driver had a green traffic light, but what does colors mean in Chinese traffic.
After roughly 1 hour the police arrived and another 30 minutes later, Stephan was allowed to leaf the accident. Nobody hurt, that's the most important. Next morning on the way to the office on the bike, Stephan was hit by an car. The bike is total crashed but once again, no injuries.
But no complaints about the bike, now Stephan had a real reason to buy "black beauty". A real e-bike, real fast and real cool. At the shop we got informed, that the e-bike needs a registration at the town administration. Uuups, and why did nobody told us when we bought the first ones? Ok, we registered and everything is fine now. TIC by the way.
Sun shine, no rain, pretty hot, that's how it was the last couple of weeks. But today, the day of the solar eclipse, it's raining. Hey, thanks for that, not only raining but clouds everywhere in the sky. No chance to see anything. So taking half a day of, getting up really early, meeting the folks in the Starbucks and then nothing. It got dark for 6 minutes and that's it.
After the light was switched on again, the rain stopped but the clouds was still not moving anywhere. So we haven't seen the sun at all.
During the solar eclipse there was plenty of traffic accidents. Nobody could know, that it's getting dark during a solar eclipse. Not that the news papers, TV shows and the whole media was reporting anything else than solar eclipse in the last weeks.
Currently we're planning our vacation in the Shangrila (not the hotel but the area in Yunnan province), but this is a complete different story......
Advices...
...are very common. also in luxury hotels . Always nice and
friendly. Sometimes just excessive....
