After getting acquainted with Nanjing, we felt we’d knock another famous city off the list that was just around the corner. So we slid by Suzhou on our way back to Shanghai. We only had one night and one full day to check’er out. As is always the case, we should have had two days in Suzhou instead of Nanjing. Suzhou is far more photogenic.

We lucked out and were staying at another really cool hotel, this one being the Pan Pacific. Surprisingly, it was built in 1999, since most buildings of that vintage are usually rotting into plague infested heaps of filth by now. Things here were ship shape, and although the room was smaller, it was still clean, modern and had a decent view. The biggest advantage was the gardens in the back that attached to a temple/pagoda complex that had free entrance for guests of the hotel.

After rising and shining like the stars we were we headed into the backyard of the hotel to see what was up. The weather was a total pile of shit, but that pile of shit was served with silver cutlery – we were virtually the only ones there. The name of this particular complex is Panmen City Gates. In my research I’ve determined that this particular site is well over a thousand years old. In my research I also found that it’s impossible to tell which buildings have been built more often than Linux and which ones are original, but I hear the main pagoda likes to keep it real. So we ponied up the 90 some odd cents for the additional entrance ticket you needed to pay to climb it, but that was fine, because come on man, 90 cents. It gave some nice views of surrounding Suzhou and the rest of the complex.

Next up we went over to another ancient site by the name of Tiger Hill Pagoda. Yes there was a Pagoda up on a hill. Sadly there were no tigers. There must have been some kind of cultural exchange going on here, because it looked like the Pagoda’s engineers had been studying in Pisa (or maybe Pisa’s engineers had been studying in Suzhou?!). Either way this one looked like the realness, it was bare to the stone, no fancy woodwork – nothing. As we wandered around the grounds, the weather actually gave the place a vibe. I kept thinking some kung fu dudes would pop out of the bushes and usher me into a long lost era of enchantment and mystique… or kick my ass and steal my wallet.

Wandering around Suzhou, they’ve done a decent job of hanging onto lots of the older white traditional style buildings, while maintaining the look for newer buildings. Rivers and creeks run throughout the town, which woulda been mighty handy back in the day if you wanted to wash your clothes or or show up at your friends house in a canoe.

For dinner, we decided to go back to the future, and headed off to the east end of the city to visit the Suzhou Industrial Park (or SIP as the locals call it), to do a little SIP’ing ourselves. This area is basically a monstrous suburban borg collective of identical looking apartment blocks, and empty endless avenues. The restaurants and bars all clustered in a modern development that reminded me of the refurbished Sanlitu’r area in Beijing. On that particular night it was completely soulless in more ways than one, but the Italian restaurant we dined at was delicious. I believe it was called Piccola.

The next day, it was absolutely gorgeous outside. It was like the Communist Party secretary said to the Sun, “let’s try and rope em in for another day to get those GDP numbers up a bit”, the Communist Party being all powerful, the Sun could only oblige. Alas, it was time to get back to Shanghai. We went down to Suzhou’s massive new airport train station and hopped a train that was so fast if I stuck my head out the window, my face would’ve melted off. We got back to Shanghai, and my face melted off anyways! The end.

Filed under: tourist shit