The People of the Water Houses

 In the last post we took a look at the water houses along Shan Tang Street.  In it, I made a couple of observations about how the people in those houses live along the canal.   Here is some evidence that those were truly observations and not just conjecture.

The boats must come and go past these houses at least one hundred times each day.  It appears the the residents have gotten used to the noise and the gawkers because you can see them going about their lives as if no one is there.  The top photo shows a lady going out to the canal.  She has something in her hand, though I'm not able to make out exactly what it is.  She is intent on some type of housework.

 The gentleman above is checking out his garden.  The fellow below is drawing water from the canal.  You can see he's lowered a bucket on a rope.  He pulled up three bucketfuls during the time we passed by.   I'd like to think he is watering plants....but he may be using the water to wash his clothes or his dishes.   I can't believe he is using this water to cook with, but I wouldn't rule that out.

 It seems these folks are living here on the canals as people have done for hundreds of years.  They use the water as probably people here have always used it.   I would guess the water quality has improved over the past 50 years.  It certainly doesn't stink...at least not like the waters of Venice stink of fish and seawater.  But I still would not think the water qualifies as clean.   Though the canal is not clogged with trash, Joe and I saw bottles and papers floating by and even an old pair of shoes.   Keep in mind, too, that Suzhou's taxi drivers think the world is their urinal.

 For the people here, it is clean enough to wash clothes.  The folks above are not the only ones we saw doing their laundry on this Saturday morning.  There were others.  The lady on the right was washing as we went up to Tiger Hill and was still at it when we returned about two hours later.  That's at least two hours stooped over in the hot sun and humidity flailing at dirty undies and such.  It makes me appreciate our washing machine.

By the way, in most stores you can find washboards for sale.  They are usually on the shelves beside the detergent.  That suggests that a lot of people are still doing laundry by hand.  They may not all be laundering with canal water.   But still, it's a far cry from what we're used to back home.

 The water not only giveth, but it also taketh away.  The fellow above is peeling his potatoes into the canal.  It's the ultimate in garbage disposals.  Perhaps his potato peels provide the starch for the people laundering downstream.

 It's not just on the back porch that you see the people.  You also see them through the windows opened to bring the breeze into the house.  If you look closely at the photo above, at the window at left, you can see a shirtless man working in his kitchen.  A closer look makes me think he is in his boxer shorts.  On the window is his bucket to draw the waters from the canal.

This is a way of living that I've never seen before.  I don't know if they live like this because of habit or tradition.  I don't know if they live like this because they're too poor to live otherwise. Maybe it's all of the above.  I just don't know.  From what I can tell, the vast majority of people in Suzhou live in houses with running water and electricity and normal modern conveniences.  China is not the Pearl S. Buck novel picture of poverty that it used to be.  But it is a place of curious contradictions.  Or as the King of Siam would say to Anna....It's a puzzlement.

Water Houses

Once more, I'm going to annoy you with lots of photos.   I'm like the neighbor who assaults you with pictures of the family vacation.  Much more than you'd ever want to see, but they're so wrapped up in their experiences that they don't notice the boredom in your eyes.  Ah well....get ready, cause here we go again.

For two straight week-ends I've had visitors.  The first to come was Darren Rowan, a colleague from the U.K.   He was on business in Shanghai for two weeks and came up to visit on the week-end to get away from the big city.  Then last week-end, Joe Grabczak wrapped up a week-long visit to Suzhou on business from the U.S.  Both week-ends, we did the same thing - we took the two mile walk up Shan Tang Street along the canal to Tiger Hill.  And then we took a boat ride down the canal back to our starting point.

 Shan Tang Street and the canal it parallels were built long, long ago as a route from the old city of Suzhou up to Tiger Hill.  Even 1000 years ago, Tiger Hill was an attraction for residents and tourists alike.  The street-facing sides of the houses are all pretty much the same.  They are all one-story or two-story buildings of thick, brick walls.  Most are stuccoed and whitewashed to reflect the evil summer sun.  The houses butt up end-to-end so that you can't see the canal from the street, except at the gaps every block or two.

I'm not sure how old these houses are.  They could be 50 years old or they could be 500 years old.  This doesn't look like the most prosperous area of town.  It may have been once, but it looks like it hasn''t been for a while.  I'm pretty sure most residents don't qualify as middle-class...though I'm not sure they are considered poor by China's current standards.  Every now on the street you pass an open door and get a glimpse of the inside.  Most often the view is of a dark interior cramped with old furniture and at least one small TV set.

Enough about the street-facing sides of the houses.   The thing I want to share with you is the view from the canal.  The boat ride gives the chance to see the normally hidden side of the water houses.

The brick walls of the houses normally go right up to the water's edge and use the stone walls of the canal as part of their foundations.  There seem to be two varieties of water houses;  the ones that are entirely of stone and are content to stop at the water's edge, and the others that steal a few more square feet of living space in wooden additions built out over the water and supported by wooden or stone piers.   Photos above are the wooden variety and below are those of stone.

 Most of them appear to be shot-gun houses.  One room about 12 to 15 feet deep...with a door to the street on the front and a door to the canal on the back.  Then again, maybe the canal-side is considered the front.  It seems like that is where most of the action is.  It's most definitely where all the laundry is hanging.

 All of the houses have a way to get down to the water.  Perhaps this was once to allow people to come and go by boat.  Or perhaps it was to allow them to easily use the canal as their laundry room and bath room.  There don't appear to be many boats these days.   I'm pretty confident the laundry and other uses are still common.

The photo above shows a home with steps coming from the back door down to the canal.  It's a design that is fairly typical, although this particularly homeowner did more landscaping than most.  Of course, it looks like he did the landscaping 100 years ago.  It could use a little pruning now.

The house above didn't even bother with the steps down to the canal.  Just a door, and a small porch, and one big step down to the water. 

In the photos you might get the impression that all the houses are dirty and run down.  But I've been to Venice before and also got the feeling that those houses were dirty and run down.   I think the years and the water take their toll on water houses in any location.  For the most part, these homes look pretty solid.  They could use a good cleaning and a little yard work.  But I suspect they will be housing people for a few hundred years more.

The Signage of the Lingering Garden

 All photos in this post were taken at the Lingering Garden.  The Lingering Garden has, perhaps, the best collection of bizzare English translations I've seen so far. I hope you enjoy the photographic evidence of these bits of tortured prose.

The Lingering Garden

The lingering garden is hidden away up on the Northwest side of Suzhou.  It is not actually in the old city proper...the rectangular island encircled by the grand canal.  But it is just outside, not far from ShanTang street and the JinMen area.

By this time, you're probably sick of garden stories and photos.  Sorry for that.  I'll try to keep this relatively painless.

 The Lingering Garden is a nice little garden....not so large or famous as the Humble Administrator's garden or Tiger Hill....but still a solid role player in the collection of Suzhou tourist attractions.   It is located in a residential neighborhood.  I walked past the gate twice before I finally figured out that it was the entrance.  You have to snake your way back away from the street to get into the heart of the garden.

 Once there, the Lingering Garden has ponds and rocks and greenery and ornate pavilions.   All that can be said for any of Suzhou's Gardens.   To set it apart, I think, the garden features performances of traditional Chinese music.  I believe the performers are serious about their craft.  You would have to be serious to perform all day in the 100 degree heat.

The lady in the second photo is playing a Guqin.  Her performance was purely instrumental.  The third picture shows a man playing a Sanxian and a woman playing a Liuqin (or perhaps it is a Pipa).  Their performance included vocals.  She did the singing.  All he had to do was play his Chinese banjo.  The vocals were of that distinctive high-pitched wavering melody that we all associate with Chinese music. 

The other distinguishing feature of the garden was its rockery.  It had a mound of rocks with narrow passages up and down the mound.   The passages are like trenches of World War I.  It also has a substantial collection of Penjing....the Chinese version of Bonsai.  The garden also had the best signage of any garden we've visited.  The signage actually merits a post of its own.

More Art

 You deserve a break.  I look back at the last two posts and see that I've fallen into a rut of bells and pagodas.  So here is a quick return to modern China.  These are some more of the public art that is all over the Suzhou Industrial Park.

 The top two photos - the fighting insects and the blue-haired lady - are in the Central Park area.

 The last two photos come from around JinJi Lake.  In the photo above, the two women posing are....just two women posing for someone else.   It is almost impossible to photograph Don Q. and Sancho by themselves.   The people line up to snap photos of their kids on horseback with Sancho.  This is one of the few places in China where the people will spontaneously form a line.

HanShan Temple

West of the old town of Suzhou is the HanShan Temple.  This Buddhist temple sits just beside the Grand Canal.  The magical 307 bus will drop you off not far from the entrance, if you have the patience to ride that far across town.

It's a big tourist attraction.  But also,  the temple is apparently still an active place of worship.   You can see the orange-robed Buddhist monks coming and going.  They too have to dodge the taxis and the tour buses.  No divine dispensation for them.

The temple complex is not that large.  It consists of a few pavilions and there is a pagoda at the center.   Outside the temple walls there is the bell tower.  It's not a huge amount of territory.   But what it lacks in size it makes up for in gravitas (if I can use that word).  Many people come to the temple not just to gawk but also to light incense and prostrate themselves before the idols.

 This is a Buddhist temple, and the religion here has spread its roots across all of South-East Asia.  A visitor from India would probably feel at home.  

  There appear to be a number of deities represented here. Above is one.   You cannot see in this photo, but on the altar before this statue are stacks of coca-cola and pepsi cans.  Offerings to heaven, I suppose.

And if you look really, really closely... at the chest....yes, that's a swastika.  Swastikas abound on the statues and on the red ribbons that are tied to the trees as prayer offerings.  This old religious symbol has not been removed or hidden for its 20th century shame.  At least not here.

 The temple is one of Suzhou's great tourist attractions, but it has a different feeling to it.  Different to the gardens and museums and the canal streets. Hanshan Temple has a feeling of eternity.  Or at least a feeling of people striving for eternity.

 The star of the Hanshan temple is the bell.  It is hung in a three-story tower just outside the temple complex. The bell takes up two of those three stories.   It is huge.   It is also bronze and engraved with thousands of Chinese characters.  It tells a story, no doubt, but not to me. 

You can touch the bell and feel it amplify the natural vibrations in the air.  When it is rung, the sound is a low base note that is pure and clean and persistent for a couple of minutes.  After the audible base note fades, you can put your hand on the bell and feel the sub-sonic vibrations continue for minutes afterwards.

 So there you have it.   There is much more that could be said about the Hanshan temple, I suppose.   But I have neither the knowledge nor the stamina to say more tonight.

The City of Old Men

 The traditional Chinese character for doorway or gate is 門.  Even for an idiot like me, this is easy to recognize.  It looks like the swinging doors on a saloon.   Or at least it did until the government decided to go with simplified Chinese characters back in the 1950s.  The simplified version is 门.  Easier for people to write and remember - so the logic goes.  The simplified character looks a bit like the depiction of a door on a blueprint.  But I think it lacks the charm of the original.  I think the Chinese people think the same, because you see the traditional character as often as you do the more simplified version.

 The phonetic (or Pinyin) spelling of the character is "men".   Men means gate.  I've mentioned before that the city of Suzhou still has several old men that remain from its days as a fortified city.  It's a city of old men.

One of these old men, Pan Men, has been preserved as a scenic area.  The old men is on the South West corner of the old city.  I checked Google maps for a good bus route and found that the 47 bus would pick me up in front of the apartment and drop me off right in front of the old men.  So I memorize the number of turns the bus should take and counted the bus stops and then hopped on the bus.

Now, Google maps has proven to be pretty darned accurate....but in this case the bus started making some turns that weren't shown on the map.  I suspended my disbelief until the bus crossed over the canal on the far side of the city.  That was definitely not on the map.  My faith in Google was starting to crumble.  So I got off the bus at the first chance and tried to figure out where I was.

There was a big plaza nearby with a park and a pedestrian bridge that crossed over the canal back to the old city.  So I strolled through there and checked out some of the buildings in the plaza.  That is where I found the Suzhou Planning Exhibition Center.  I spent about 30 minutes there and enjoyed the scale models of the city...and enjoyed the air conditioning and clean bathrooms even more.

After crossing over the pedestrian bridge, I found another one of the old men.  This one was Xu Men, and is shown in the second photo from the top.  Well actually, you can barely see the gateway in the photo but you get a good view of the remaining section of the city wall.  I figure the arch of the gateway is probably 15 feet high, so the wall itself is a good 30 feet tall.  Xu Men is not really developed as a historic area.  It's just an old men in the middle of a residential area.

By this time I'd figured that I was about 5 blocks North of where I was supposed to be.  So I strolled south along the canal until I got to the Pan Men area.   At that point I realized that the road that the bus was supposed to take was gone.  They were tearing up a three or four block section for repairs.  The 47 bus was obviously following an alternate route because there was no way it could get down this street.  My faith in Google was somewhat restored.

Pan Men is advertised as the most ancient and best preserved of Suzhou's old city gates.  The area around it has been developed as a scenic area and you have to pay to get in.  I forget how much it was, but was not much.  For a little extra you can buy a ticket to climb the pagoda that is shown by the photo at the top. I bought.  I climbed.  I almost killed myself on the dark, steep, and narrow stairway with strategically placed head bump hazards.  OK...I didn't really almost kill myself.  But my bald head was showing a few splotches of purple for a day or two.

The Pan Men area covers several acres.  There are several traditional buildings, one of which is an old temple.  For 1 RMB you can ring the temple bell.  The third photo from top shows a youngster in mid-ring.  There is also a large pond surrounded by gardens and walking paths.  The photo immediately above and the one just above it give you a taste.

You can see the old men in the photo above.  The gate itself is supposed to date back 2500 years or so.  I have no idea which parts are original and which parts have been added later. The wooden gate tower is, no doubt, not nearly that old.  The stones, however, look like they've been there for a long time.  As with Xu Men, the walls are probably a good 30 feet high.  The gate way double-doored...with one on the outside and one on the inside and a space in between where life could be abruptly ended by the guys on top.

Pan Men is considered special because it is a combination land-water gate.  There is a second archway over the waterway that connected the exterior canal with the canals inside the city.  Iron gates could be lowered to block boats from entering the city.

On the inside of the wall there is an old stone ramp which gave troops and horse-drawn carts access to the top of the walls.   It's an easy climb up the ramp.  On top, you can buy souvenirs from the shop in the tower-gate.  Or you can dress up like a warrior, climb onto a fake horse, and get your picture taken with a plastic spear.  You can also inspect the old mechanisms for raising the gates or take a walk on top of the wall.

The photo above was taken peering over the top of the wall.  It shows the waterway that passes below through the water gate.  The photo below shows the path along the top of the wall.  It give you a feel for how massively thick the wall is.  There is room for two lanes of traffic and a couple of bike lanes.  And this is at the top.  The wall is probably twice as thick at the base.  

So lets do some math.   The old city of Suzhou is a rectangle of land encircled by a canal.  My old buddy Google maps shows that it is about 3 miles from North to South and about 2 miles from East to West.  That adds up to a perimeter of 10 miles.  10 miles of wall.  And the wall here is 30 feet high, 20 feet wide at the top, and maybe 40 feet wide at the bottom.   Most of the wall is gone now, so I don't know whether the entire perimeter was as substantial as it is at Pan Men.  But no matter how you figure it, there were a lot of rocks. 

So, to bring this overstretched pun to conclusion.... 10 miles of wall requires a lot of gateways for the people passing in and out.  A lot of men.  Most of the walls are gone, but the old men remain.  Men of stone, they are.

The Suzhou Museum

About a year ago, Theresa and I were watching TV and saw a show on PBS about the Suzhou Museum.  At that time we knew that we were likely to be moving to Suzhou.  But we knew nothing about the city.  Absolutely nothing.  So we watched the documentary, all the while looking in the background for clues as to what the city had in store for us.

What we were watching was an episode of the American Masters series.  A documentary.  The subject was not so much the Suzhou Museum, but rather its architect I.M Pei.  The plot line, in essence, was about a world-famous architect who, in the twilight of his life, returned from exile to the city of his youth to design one, last masterpiece in a labor of love.    At the time we were watching, all I knew of I.M. Pei was a.) he designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre and b.) he was a frequent question in response to answers on Jeopardy.  But since then we've learned that he has a legitimate and profound connection to Suzhou.   He actually lived as a boy in the Lion's Grove Garden.  I'm sure that will come up again in a future post.

So, when I stumbled across the Suzhou Museum it was a bit like deja vu.  I can reassure you that PBS, at least in this one instance, does not try to pass off fiction as reality.  The Suzhou Museum is really here.   I've been two or three times now.   And every time I catch a view that I've seen before on a television 8000 miles away.

The Suzhou Museum is not large....at least not in comparison to the Smithsonian or the Louvre or Chicago's Field Museum.  But it is a fine Museum in it's own way.  The collection is mainly of small artifacts from the Suzhou area.  Many of the artifacts date back to the Bronze and Iron Ages.  For example, the statue appearing as the second photo was excavated from the area around Tiger Hill.  It dates back to around 500 B.C. or so....about the time that Suzhou first gained prominence as the kingdom of Wu during the Zhou dynasty.

Other artifacts more recent...but still old.  Above is a vase dating back to the Ming Dynasty - a true Ming Vase.   Below is an entire elephant tusk from....I don't know when.... that has been carved with intricate figures in scenes of war and peace

 The museum has a nice collection of porcelains and jades and ivories and textiles and all other forms of Chinese craftsmanship over the last 2500 years or so.   More stuff than I can convey in six photos and eight paragraphs of rambling text.  But not so much that you have to spend an entire day there.  A two hour leisurely stroll will allow you to see most everything.

Below is a porcelain bowl about which I know nothing...other than it is several hundred years old and I like the red dragon pattern against the blue and white background.   I wonder what kind of people were involved, so many years ago, in making it.   Today, this would be a piece of cake to make by the thousands using automated equipment. But this was done by hand by people that had to rely upon only their craftsmanship and creativity.

But the best thing about the museum is that the price is right.   Every time I've shown up the admission has been free.  Just line up and go through the security check.  It's free.   It's air-conditioned too.   So if you've spent the better part of a hot summer day humping it around historic Suzhou, then there is no better place to finish your afternoon than at the Suzhou Museum.  You'll just have to step over the hundreds of others that are inside cooling off in the A.C.

One final photo.  Above is a birdcage that is made of mahogany.  If you like woodworking, then you have to respect this.  Imagine working, 300 or 400 years ago, with nothing other than knives and chisels and saws.  To create something this delicate and finely constructed is nothing short of a miracle.   The bars of the cage are spaghetti-like rods of wood.  They are fitted to thin wooden strips that have been precisely drilled and mortised and joined to form the completed cage.  It looks like wire, but it's all of wood.  You've got to tip your hat to the folks that did this.