Visit with Kevin and Effie

Last week we went to Suzhou to visit Kevin and Effie and the kids. What a wonderful trip! It was great to get away for a few days. We were a little nervous about catching the train, but we did ok. The signs were in English as well as Chinese (not a common occurrence here) so we were able to make our way with a minimum of trouble. The funniest thing happened when we came home. We arrived back at Nanjing about 7 pm. We wanted to catch a taxi to go home, but all the taxi people wanted 100 yuan (Chinese money). When we said it was too much, they dropped to 50. We had only paid 13 to go to the train station so we knew we were being cheated. We showed them our address card and wrote 13 on it. They shook their heads, no. So being "locals" we went down to the subway stop at the train station, bought a ticket to the next stop, got off, went out and hailed a taxi on the street. We got home for 14 yuan! We might be "western" but we are not stupid.

At Kevin's we ate "real" food on plates that match, with silverware that doesn't bend. We slept in a good bed and played with wonderful grandchildren. It doesn't get any better than that. We did do a little

sightseeing.

We went to a silk factory. This is a picture of a woman sorting the silk worm cucoons. They are sorted by size and quality. The best ones are spun into thread. The others whose color is not so good are used as filler for bedding.

After the silk worms are sorted they are "cooked" and then the silk is unwound and put onto spools. There are 8 silkworms in each pan and the silk thread is spun from 8 strands of silk. If you look carefully you might see the strands hanging from the girl's brush. The things at the top of the picture are the spools of thread that have come from the silk worms in the pan.

This is one of the looms that takes the thread and weaves it into cloth. The patterns are on cards--sort of like those old player piano cards. It takes all day to make just a few feet of cloth. I can't imagine how long it took to weave cloth by hand.

The silk that isn't pulled into thread is taken off the silk worms by hand and put over a stretching bar. You can see the worms in the pan and the silk laying beside it. The arch is the stretching bar. They put many layers on it and then move it to a larger bar and stretch the silk over that. The worms can be eaten, but the lady who was our guide said she had never tasted one. She had heard that they taste like peanuts.

After they have several layers on the large stretcher bars, they remove it, let it dry and stretch it out to go into the middle of a silk duvet cover. Here we are helping to stretch out a layer of silk. They put many layers on top of each other to make the filling for the quilt. It is an amazing process.

No, we did not buy any---this time. We will go back.

After the silk factory we went to an area where they do embroidry with silk thread. The street was about a mile long with little shops lining each side. Pretty soon they all looked alike. Here is a woman working on a lion. They put a pattern under the backing and then sew almost free hand from there. It takes up to a year to make a picture--depending on how big and detailed it is. We also discovered that there are many different qualities of embroidry, from very fine stitches to quite long stitches. We plan to go back here also.

The next day we went to the Humble Administrators Garden. Shzhou is known for its gardens and this is supposed to be the biggest and one of the best. It was huge and very nice. I've decided that gardens in China are like cathedrals in Europe. Each city has one, of which it is very proud. They are all unique, but after a while, they begin to look alike. Here we are at the entrance. Potted flowers are everywhere in China. In the summer it was petunias, now it is mums.

The gardens are always a combination of buildings, water, bridges, trees, grass and flowers. Here is a building that was built to look like a boat.

This was my favorite building in the garden. I loved the curved roofline. It is one of the most exaggerated I have seen, but I liked it. There is a well in the building so I think it is basically a well house.

After the Humble Administrators Garden we went to the North Pagoda. There are many pagodas in China, also. Often they have 9 stories. This is the second one that we've climbed with 9 stories. It gave us a good view of Suzhou, or it would have done if the day had been clear.

Here is Kevin's family in front of their house. They live in a lovely, quiet neighborhood with mostly expat neighbors. Their house is a 3 story-free standing home. It very nice and since they shipped most of their furniture over to China, it felt like home when we stepped inside. It was a wonderful week-end and we hope to have a better teaching schedule next semester so we can visit more often.