September 22 (Tuesday) – Suzhou and Wuzhen

First stop in Suzhou was the Humble Administrator’s Garden. The garden was a lovely set of buildings and courtyards with one large garden containing a pond with lots of lily pads.



















Then it was off to a silk factory where they showed us the process of growing silk worms and harvesting the silk.




















Some of the operations are semi automated but they will be adding more automated operations so more people will be laid off. The tour ended with a demonstration of how they make silk duvets (four people grab a piece of a silk cocoon (which about the size of a golf ball) and they gently pull the silk strands to the four corners of the table and then lay the thin mat down. After doing this a few dozen times they have a thick layer of silk stuffing that goes into the duvet. It supposedly never bunches up so they don’t have to sew the edges to the fabric. Of course, the tour ended in the show room where I ended up buying a silk duvet, duvet cover and pillow cases.

After lunch we took a half hour “gondola” ride on one of the canals. Suzhou has many lakes, ponds and canals and is known as the Venice of the East. The canal area had many old buildings and several very old bridges including two that are over 1000 years old (and they looked it). The light mist added a charming feel to the area and the ride.





































Suzhou Album


We then drove to Wuzhen, another very old, well preserved river/canal town. Didn’t learn a lot about it as the guide’s English was pretty shaky – all the other guides had excellent English – so he didn’t talk much.

















Wuzhen Album