On Thursday, October 7,we all jumped in our Transit and traveled the 2 hours to Suzhou. Wow, what a beautiful place. I figure if our driver can still smile after being in the car with us for that long of a stretch, he must be the most patient man alive! We went to a silk museum. I think the children really enjoyed that. We were able to go to some Buddhist temples, and a pagoda. The boys kept trying to sneak up onto the little worship blocks, so we had to watch them. The people were burning candles and incense everywhere. At one of the temples, we saw the gods of all of the different animals. According to the Chinese, each year is the year of a different animal. For example, I was born in the year of the rat. Anyway, there were gods for each animal. We also saw a beautiful garden. Suzhou is famous for the ancient gardens there. They have kept them very well preserved. Suzhou has always been on the canal, which was dug from Beijing to the coast. The building of the canal began in 486 B.C. during the Wu Dynasty. It was extended during the Qi Dynasty, and later by Emperor Yangdi of Sui Dynasty during six years of furious construction from 605-610 AD. The canal is 1,795 Km (1,114 miles) long with 24 locks and some 60 bridges. I just looked this up off the internet since I'm sure you were wondering:-)
At lunch-time, we stopped at KFC (yes, we have it here) and it was so busy, that we went outside and sat on a small stone wall to eat. Soon we notice that there were crowds of people staring at us as we ate. Many people took our photo. Mike got up and took a photo of us as well. He decided that we did look pretty unusual. It was all great until a kid about three years old stood right next to us and "watered the sidewalk" (not uncommon). We lost our appetites.
