The Venice of China - Suzhou

April 24, 2012

We went on a trip to the city of Suzhou, a city on Lake Tai.  The first thing we did in Suzhou was to visit a garden that was once owned by a rich family hundreds of years ago in the 17^th century.

The garden had lots of bonsai trees. A lot of people think the Japanese invented the bonsai.  It was really the Chinese.

There were big rocks in the garden. I climbed some of them.  

We sat and looked at the garden because it was raining.

Next we went to visit a silk factory. They showed us the cycle of a silk worm.  The male silk moth only lives one day after mating.  The female moth only lives a week after laying her eggs. 

 

Silk worms only eat mulberry leaves. They eat a lot of leaves and grow and grow.

The baby silk worms grow very fast.

When the silk worm matures it starts to spin silk thread around itself to build a cocoon. 

People boil the cocoons and unwind the silk. 

 

After the silk factory we went on a boat ride on the canals of Suzhou. They call Suzhou the “Venice” of China.

The houses are built on the side of the canals and the people use boats like we would use cars.  

 

Our boat was very low to the water.  The bridges are low so if the boat was tall it would get smashed. 

One woman was washing clothes and another one was wetting her mop to clean her floor.

Because the town has so much silk there were lots of wedding dress stores in the town.  Some of the wedding dresses were red.

That night we had a dinner to say good bye to everyone.  We will be leaving in the morning to come home.