7. 蘇州 虎丘 麥當勞 上海 外灘 薩莉亞 (青松城) (19th)
7th day in China:
We woke up at almost 10am, later than usual, as we’re only planning to go to the Tiger Hill before we leave to Shang-Hai.
HU CHO (Tiger Hill)
As you may have guessed, it’s called a Tiger Hill coz it’s shaped like a tiger. There’s actually more to it. The entire place is just rocks and rocks and rocks, EVERYWHERE, and coz of nature’s causes, it looks like it’s been sliced by a martial artist, the entire rock floor’s just filled with splits and it looks rather cool.
All the rocks we were walking on were natural, they were just naturally so flat that it’s like it’s made for walking. After a few min walk, we came to the Sword Spring.
SWORD SPRING
It’s a natural spring, you can see water coming out from underneath the lake, and there are several holes with different level of pressure of springs. The place is very pretty, it’s like a hidden valley with a lake. When we went right around it and climbed up a little, there’s a stone-made bridge over this lake. In the middle of the bridge, there are 2 holes that looks like a well, apparently Xi-Xu, one of the 4 Beauties, used to wash-up on the bridge and used the lake as a mirror (this is stating how clear the water was), and she used to bath in the Sword Spring.
THE PAGODA
After the Spring, we kept climbing up, the rest were just building and temples for and by monks, until the last Pagoda, which has just started to slant a couple of years ago. The slanting was caused by rapid development of the city and use of underground water, but the pagoda stands tall. All pagodas are to be built 5, 7, 9, 11 etc levels, ie. odd numbers of levels. This Pagoda is special in the sense that the entire building is made of concrete, so it’s supposedly quite heavy but they managed to make it light enough so it stands for hundreds of years.
LUNCH
It only took us barely 2 hours as it’s not as big as most other places, so getting ready to leave, we went to Maccers to take care of our lunch.
TRAFFIC
Before moving onto another city, Su-Zhou and Hang-Zhou usually come in a pair, as these 2 are close to each other (only 1 1/2 hours drive) and they’re both famous for their beauty. Coz these 2 come in a pair, there are several similar things about them. For example, the traffic’s very similar. The way they drive, as we’ve come to notice, is that horns are used to warn ppl of your existence. They use horns very commonly here. The traffic rules in China, is that the smaller you are, the bigger you are, so if a pedaestrian gets hit by a bicycle, then the bicycle is naturally at fault no matter what. If a truck hits a van, the truck’s naturally at fault too, the bad thing about this, is that pedaestrians just walk everywhere and they don’t look, coz others wouldn’t dare hitting them. Because of this, the bigger you are, the more you have to honk to tell ppl you’re behind them, watch out, or as we’ve noticed, it’s more like ”get out of the f**king way!”, ppl in China honk their horn in the average of once every 15 sec. Another rule, that may have appeared in Chch that you used to think they’re crazy ppl, is that you can turn right if the light’s red. This caused alot of trouble in Chch, as ppl in China may have forgottten that the rules are different, or that they don’t even know it’s wrong. There’s once when we were in Hang-Zhou, by the West Lake, where a truck stopped for a red light, but is in the right turning lane. Note here: half of the drivers don’t signal to change lanes or turn in/out, 1/4 of the drivers don’t turn their headlights on at night (probably coz the town’s always so bright anyway). Anyway, the truck should be turning right, but he stopped, and the car behind him started honking. It’s not a couple of short ones, but it’s a continuous one that’s extremely loud. We were near the truck being honked. The rest of the cars came along and started their continuous honking, there were at one stage 50+ cars honking their continuous horn all at once, it was unbearably loud but the truck just didn’t move as if it wasn’t the target. The honking went on for a good 2 min before we couldn’t care to listen, it was a frightful sight/sound.
A difference between TW and CN’s ”crazy driving”, is that ppl brake in TW if this random car decided to cut in/change lanes right in front of you, but in CN, you fight for your right of way, and squeeze straight ahead until the person who’s trying to cut in brakes. This shows how pushy the Chinese are, it’s scary, like they’ll never get hurt or die in a traffic accident.
SHANGHAI (SHANG-HAI)
We got on yet another touring bus to Shang-Hai early in the arvo, and got there around 2 1/2 hours later. Shang-Hai, as all of you should have heard of, is right now the most vigorous City in China, and there’s this place called Wai-Tan where those bright neon buildings are, the ones you always see that presents ”China”. That’s the only place we have planned to visit as it only looks good at night.
DINNER
After arriving at the hotel I booked online for us in Shang-Hai (which is btw quite nice), I looked up a restaurant online that’s rated 4/5 stars. Most restaurants rated on this website’s only 3/5 stars, so I only aimed for 4-starred ones. I was in the mood for a western meal, so I found one called Sayriya (or something like that) which is an Italian restaurant rated 4 stars and average spending p/p is $31 RMB - that’s affordable. We got there at around 6:30pm, and before we found the restaurant, we found the queue outside of it. There were a good 6 - 7 tables worth of ppl queuing outside of the restaurant, waiting to eat next. Although we were supposed to meet up with the airticket delivery person at 8pm, we know that if anything, the restaurants worth eating at in Shang-Hai are the ones with a queue. We decided to join in the queue to find out what the fuss was all about, and after around 20 - 25 min, we finally got a seat for 3. We were told by the waiter that she apologises for the fact that it’s a smoke-free area, so we urgently told her we prefer smoke-free by far anyway. We looked at the menu, everything’s around $8 - $15 RMB, which is VERY affordable, so we ordered some $71 worth of food in the end and had a very very satisfying meal. We ordered a salad, a soup, 2 pasta bakes, and 2 desserts. Their food is SOOOOO good, it’s definitely worth the half an hour walk and the 20/25 min wait. It is definitely worth the 4 stars, too.
WAI-TAN
Isn’t actually much to say about this place, only pictures speak.
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