The Tai Tai Trip

 Two week-ends ago, the Expat Association of Suzhou (EAS) organized an overnight trip to the town of Wuzhen.  EAS offers these trips from time-to-time and normally calls them "Tai Tai" trips.  Tai Tai is Mandarin for "wife" because....well, normally it's all the non-working wives making a day trip together during the work-week.  For this one though, they organized it for the week-end and also let the guys come along.

I suppose that sounds like a 1950's Leave-It-To-Beaver kind of stereotype.  But the demographics of your normal Suzhou expat just work out that way.  Suzhou is an industrial park so most foreigners are working in industry and most of the industrial jobs are engineering and most expats are there to fill senior roles and most of your senior engineers are late-middle-aged men.  QED.

Tai Tai, by the way, is an interesting word in Chinese.  There are several words for "wife", but Tai Tai is the most formal.  It is also the respectful title for any married woman - equivalent to Mrs. is English.  They spell it 太太.   A single character 太, as an adjective, means the most honored or most respected.  So a wife is the most honored twice over.  Double-plus-good. 

 Wuzhen is a relatively small town about half-way between Suzhou and Hangzhou.  It's claim to fame is that it is well-known as a traditional Chinese "Water Town".  It claims to be the "Venice of the Orient", along with Suzhou and about 20 other cities.  Regardless, Wuzhen is a charming little village with a river running through its middle and serving as its main street.  It's much too small to be Venice...which is not necessarily a bad thing to say.  In any case,  it's a nice place to spend the week-end.

Wuzhen is located at the point where a small river/canal joins up with the Grand Canal.  It is one of those places that prospered for a while and then faltered and found itself unable to keep up with the changing times.  The cities around it - like Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Suzhou - all grew like crazy.  Wuzhen just stagnated and never drew the people or money for new construction or expansion or modernization.  It was not appreciated for commerce.

And then one day it woke up and realized that it had become historic.  Like the ugly duckling it awoke the realization that it was beatiful.  Or more aptly like Betty White or Tony Bennett,  it had the good fortune to live long enough to be rediscovered....to find love and appreciation with a younger crowd.

The official Wuzhen website says the same thing, but says it like this...

Wuzhen has become a living fossil of ancient oriental civilization for its profound history and culture, graceful water town scenery, unique-flavoured delicious foods, various and colorful folk-customs and festivals. It’s a kind of beauty that naturally endowed.  While displaying the extraordinary charming of Chinese ancient culture and the soul of the oriental life, Wuzhen has become a disseminator of traditional culture and an emissary of the communication between China and foreign countries.

 Wuzhen has a bit of a Disney/Epcot feel to it.  And rightly so. Tons of money have been spent restoring the village.  That which was old and falling down has been propped up and restored.  That which was modern has been ripped out and replaced with new stuff that appears to be old.  Modern sewage, electric and cable TV services have been masterfully hidden under the cobblestone streets.  Wuzhen is a tourist attraction of the first order within China.  The tourists may come to see historic Wuzhen, but they most certainly want to experience modern China when they visit the toilet or crash in their hotel rooms.

 There were about 40 of us on the trip.  Most were expats - Germans, Finnish, British, Australians, and Americans.  It was a good chance to make some new friends and to deepen some bonds with acquaintances.  The tour was guided by a very nice Chinese lady who is retired from the government's tourism bureau.  I'm happy to say she never raised an umbrella or a flag for the group to follow.

The next few posts will probably be about this Wuzhen trip.  So I hope I haven't lost the audience with the first episode.  Hang in there.