We had trouble with the remaining gardens. We went in search of the Mountain Villa Embracing Beauty Garden and walked round the outside of much of its perimeter. Despite many and conflicting directions from locals we failed to find the entrance and in the end aborted the attempt. We did find the Haiyan Yuan but it did not seem to be open to the Public ,cetainly not that Sunday and we were waved dissmissivley away by the man at the gate. We did in the search tumble across Ting Feng. As a garden it is just one courtyard with people hanging their washing on the rockery but it is really famous for the teahouse attatched to it which hosts perfomances of classical chinese music but was deserted when we were there.
Suzhou just gives and gives. We did not visit the Pagoda, lost the twin pagodas, (they seemed subsumed in work for the metro extension),nor the Pan Gate. The outer gates and canals we did not even think about. Given that about an hour south there is Hangzhou, another former capital, and there are a whole clutch of "Water Towns" on the canals south of the Yangste, Tongli and Wuxi to name but two you could easliy spend more than a month exploring the region and not exhaust it's charms.Any way two helpful young women with excellent english told us we had found Ting Feng and then insisted on taking our photos, chinese style.
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