Shanghai Shanghai

The last leg of the tour took us to Shanghai.

We visited the Lion Forest Garden, a scenic location that was supposedly a favorite holiday resort for the empress. Here stones in the shape of lions (apparently transported from the sea) were placed in the gardens for the emperor and empress's enjoyment.

So huge were some of the stones that they formed small mountains with labyrinths in which one could climb and walk through. These were actually limestone mountains and rocks eroded into their present shapes by the elements.

It was here I go to know the oldest member of our group, an 80 plus grandmother with 12 children (including 2 pairs of twins)! She could still walk although she needed some support holding on to her granddaughter who followed her for the tour. This is one thing I like about group tours - making new friends.

Again we were taken to 3 shopping places:

1. Silk Museum - I have been to a silk shop in Beijing but not like this one. At the shop in Beijing we were only shown the loom as an exhibit. Here at Shanghai the silk museum was actually the factory where the silk was harvested from the cocoons of live silkworms. We picked out the greenish bluish worms squirming between our fingers. Fear factor anyone? Just put them in your mouth! 

We saw how the good silkworm casings were separated from the bad ones. Then the casings were soaked in hot water and the threads separated at a long loom. One by one the silk threads gradually formed a half-opaque silk blanket that could be stretched by hand on all sides. The silk blanket were then placed inside silk bed-sheets thus making silk spreads. This was real-life not just an exhibits!

So good was this place that our tour members must have spent RMB20k buying silk bed-sheets, bed-spreads, pillows, pillow-covers, comforters, mattress protectors at the silk shops. The grandmother also bought some lovely silk blouses too. 

No wonder the tour guide was smiling from cheek to cheek!

2. We were then taken to a jade museum. Here a charming man (he says he is one of the partners) married to a Malaysian with a house in Taynton View gave us a talk on feng shui (most of the time I really don't know what he is saying though)! He took up about an hour and half of our time extolling the virtues of jade and telling stories.

All I know is that the jade pendants are really expensive. They cost something like RMB44k to RMB100k (divide by half to get the RM)! Break it and you probably would have to break your savings to pay them back!

3. We were again taken shopping this time to a medical shop known as TongRen Healthcare. Eager to close a sale, they felt my pulse and said that I should avoid animal innards (actually I have no taste for these things) and they told Tim to avoid fried things. However all their diagnosis seem to be the same for almost everyone!

The cream for burns and arthritis plasters were good but unfortunately they were not willing to sell them piecemeal even though our group wanted to buy 9 of the cream!

2 by 2 we were then taken into consultation cubicles by the Chinese sinsehs present.

One of the Chinese sinseh wanted to recommend Chinese herbs worth RMB400 a month for Tim! We made a hasty retreat.

The highlight of Shanghai was the bus ride passing the Bund and the boat ride on the Huangpu River. The Bund is a gorgeous wall complete with flowers and leaves that made patterns on it lining the main street of Shanghai commercial district.

It was beautiful and stunning to see the commercial buildings (including the Shanghai Tower) lighted up at night along the river banks. With orange, blue, red, pink, green, purple, grey and many colored hues with many designs and patterns - all of us agreed that this was the icing on the cake, the best part of the whole tour!

The boat cruise took us about an hour and God was good in giving us clear weather so that we could take clear shots of the lighted buildings.

We stayed the night at the elegant Rayfont Shanghai Xuhui Hotel.

Suzhou - Venice of Asia

Perhaps one of the most beautiful cities in China must be Suzhou also known as the Venice of Asia due to its many canals.

Here we had good looking male tour guide (apparently a University graduate) who took us to the 7-mile ShanTang Old Street. We saw Chinese boats cruising up and down the canal. The front doors of the houses at the Old Street opened up to the road but the back door opened up to the river that was very clean. It was a beautiful sight with the overhanging trees and lanterns in the background. Truly it reminded me of Venice but in a more old-fashioned way.

We were left to explore the small curiosity shops along the street but we did not find anything we could buy as souvenirs.

Later we were taken to see our 3rd show - the Suzhou delicate traditional song and dance show at the Suzhou bird nest theater. Like I said this trip is unique in the sense that we could video tape every show we watched in Hangzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou. 

Some common features of Chinese shows:

1. lavish back-drops making use of the digital images of beautiful Chinese sceneries like a sense surround

2. awesome stage that can rise or go up and go down

3. fantastic acrobatics and stunts

4. flying stunts

5. traditional music and instruments

6. song & dancing include fighting scenes that are graceful but with a story to tell

It was here that Tim and I got lost as we were the last to leave (going to toilet) and we took the wrong escalator down the other entrance. Praying so hard, we back-tracked and waited for the taiyo at the reception area. Thank goodness she came back for us!

Wuxi - Hollywood of China

We made the 3-hour bus ride to Wuxi from Hangzhou on the second day. 

At each city we had a change of tour guide. At Hangzhou was a friendly guide by the name of Chang who had been to Malaysia and knew all about durians!

At Wuxi we visited the Hollywood of China called Wuxi Studios. Spanning more that 80k square miles, this is the movie set specially built according to the architecture of the Tang and Han dynasties with palaces, houses, gardens, pastures, gates, rivers, lakes, boats (big and minature) to cater for the shooting of some of the most dramatic Chinese movies like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

We took pictures posing with lotus-filled lakes and ancient Chinese junks built for battle scenes! We visited ancient Chinese homes where supposedly battle strategies were discussed and mapped.

We took a boat ride in one of the Chinese junks and enjoyed the wind and the breeze. The weather was very clear and cooling.

It was here that we watched our second show in the open air theater where guests sat on wooden benches in the circle. The show was about horseman and fighting among the kingdoms with horses, sword-plays, canons and explosions.

After Wuxi studios we were taken to a Pearl showroom. There the tour guide was so eager to make sales that she started the sales pitch even before the sales lady came! Pearl cleansers and creams were going for almost 1.2k RMB! 

However some of us bought beautiful pearl earrings for RMB 200, hand-creams made of crushed pearls for RMB 25 per bottle, bangles with pearls for RMB 100.

We hopped onto the bus for our lunch (a spread of 10 dishes or so) and made the next stop at the Zisha Gallery. Here all kinds of tea-pots were sold. Our tour members bought clay lined mugs and vacuum flasks. RMB300 with a free teapot set thrown in!

We got on the bus again for another hour's ride to Suzhou.

Hangzhou & Wuxi

Buffet breakfast at the hotel was simply scrumptious. We ate the local dumplings in soups and tried the noodles and fried rice. We had the local deserts and also local broths. Fruits such as melons and honeydew were common.

In the morning, Seow Wen left us at the Haining China Leather City Mall. The entire mall was dedicated to all things leather - leather bags, leather jackets, leather souvenirs, leather shoes. At the lower ground floor the bags were affordable but as we went higher up we were shocked to find the fur-lined leather jackets were selling at RMB100k!

The other thing we found puzzling about China toilets in an expansive mall like this was that they were all mainly squatting toilets and dimly lighted! In fact of the toilets in other places featured only the steel longkangs!

After the free and easy shopping we were taken to the North Peak mountains and up to a temple (we did not go in). Apparently the point is the highest point in West Lake accessible only by cable car seating 6 people at a time. The view of the green landscape below us while on the cable car was stunning.

After a sumptuous buffet lunch at a revolving restaurant in Hangzhou (giant crab claws, fish with figs, different kinds of nutritious soups, barbecue fish, Beijing duck, barbecue meats, herbal teas, traditional Chinese deserts and many more) we then visited the Long Jing Tea Village for a taste of Hangzhou's famous Long Jing Tea. 

"No discount" was the oft-quoted phrase of the tour guide because this was apparently a government funded industry and prices were fixed. We were taken into a room and heard the virtues of AAA green tea extolled to us. The price? A cool RM600 for the best quality green tea! Nevertheless some of our tour mates asked for freebies which were also given!

The accommodation at Wuxi was the Scholars Hotel (a classical hotel) with books as our bedside companion.

Hangzhou on Oct 14

17 of us were greeted by Seow Wen at the Hangzhou airport. She sounded pleasant enough but as the days unfolded we found out that she had quite a sharp tongue!

Although most of the time, I did not understand what she said in Mandarin (in a way I was glad for this) I was happy to be spending time with church friends and my beloved hubby for this October tour. Also it was a good thing that I am quite an anglophile cos I was told by one of my good friend who came with us that she was scolding me during the last day of the tour and I wasn't the only one who got it from her!

It was a great crowd. I really appreciate the Tan family, Suesan and Wilfred (our meal companions) and the other 6-member family who brought along their 80 plus year-old grandma. She needed a small chair to get around (not a wheelchair but more like a push-chair) but she gamely walked up and down, here and there with us whenever she could!

There was also another couple who had a 3-year old son whom they loved very much otherwise they would not have been willing to buy him thousands of RM worth of silk bedding at the Shanghai Silk Museum!

Anyway the moment we were met at the airport we were whisked off to West Lake. The weather was really cooling and wonderful. Although we had to walk quite a bit and my knee started acting up (got to lose weight once I balik kampung) I loved the beautiful and scenic lake. 

We brought black corn that tasted hard and crunchy (sold for RMB3 each) and took it on board with us while cruising the lake. The weather was delightful as it was very clear and there was no mist unlike the time when we were in Beijing.

The lake was calm, clear and really very huge. The beautiful willow trees on the banks of the lake were like 'weeping' over the waters. They made really good background for pictures! There were junk-like Chinese boats on the lake and waiting for passengers at the docks.

We had a good dinner before attending the "Night of West Lake Show" described as the most famous indoor real large-scale song, dance and acrobatic show in Hangzhou.

As for the dinner, we had fish, prawns, pork, vegetables, soup, tau-foo, eggs (about 10 dishes). The meal was totally unexpected as Wilfred told us that he went for a very cheap China tour organized by a famous tour agency (about RM1k) years ago and lost 7 kg as a result cos he was only given vegetarian food! Thus the meal was a surprise to him!

The show was fantastic. In terms of quality, backdrop, singing, dancing and acrobatic acts (including flying acrobats) and the finale of 4 motorcycles criss-crossing in a steel glass bowl (very very dangerous) I would say that this show was almost as good as Golden Mask Dynasty. The back-drops featured digital images of spring, butterflies, fire, palaces, farms. The stage also had rain sprinklers and certain parts of it would rise up from the floor with people dancing and singing on it!

We were video-taping away with no one stopping us!

Our hotel was really good in terms of size, comfort, cleanliness and a bathroom with complete accessories like towels, toothbrushes, combs, shower-cream, shampoo etc (Hangzhou Yu Long International Hotel).

Hangzhou, Wuxi, Suzhou, Shanghai - Overview

Simply awesome!

This Monday to Friday October tour of 4 cities in China really left us gasping for breath.

Firstly we cannot believe the price - RM399 per person for an all-inclusive tour of 4 cities in China with the following:

1. A young tour guide (Mandarin speaking) who offered to refund us the lunch money if we could not make it for lunch on the last day before we boarded our flight.

2. A bus that took us from city to city with a very skillful driver who avoided a massive traffic jam on the way from Shanghai to Hangzhou airport.

3. 3 meals a day including a very expensive buffet lunch (RM140 per person) at a revolving restaurant in Hangzhou with reasonable meals in each city featuring dishes unique to that city or region.

4. 3-shows including a very expensive show involving Chinese acrobats (about RM130 per person), flying gymnasts and dare-devil motorcyclists in a round-glass cage in Hangzhou.

5. Chinese battle enacted life in the Hollywood of China in Wuxi Studios and a delicate dance and song cultural show in Suzhou.

6. Boat cruises in Hangzhou on West Lake,  a cruise on an ancient Chinese battleship in Wuxi.

7. The simply beautiful boat cruise in Shanghai on the Hangpu river with the mesmerizing and magnificent display of lights on commercial buildings with ever-changing designs and colors at every turn of the boat

8. Lodging at 4 local international very comfortable 5-star hotels in each city we went to with a clean beds and fully equipped bathroom offering amenities akin to 5 star hotels and daily buffet breakfasts!

We just cannot believe it!

Although flight is on our own, the price is still unbelievable! And to top it all this is our cheapest holiday cos between us we must have spent only about RM300 per person on gifts for family and friends!

One of our tour member mentioned that the tour which was actually worth RM1,399 (actual price) tour must have been sponsored by someone as the RM399 we paid was already busted on the first day! I found out later that it was actually subsidized by the tour agency Bon Holidays.

Shopping was not the "pressure you to buy" type. 

We were taken to all the government-linked industries like the silkworm factory (now here is where you can literally touch the squirmy, squishy, squashy blue-green silkworms and watch how the entire silk harvesting process unfold before our eyes), the tea farms where the prices are fixed with no discount as we were told that the tea farms were government enterprises (that still did not prevent our tour mates from asking for freebies) and the Haining China Leather City Mall which appeared to be a government-sponsored initiative!

Whatever it is, we wish to thank Groupon and Bon Holidays for making this possible for us!

This trip equals the quality, the value and the depth of culture we experienced in our June Beijing tour. 

The only difference was that we had only 3 shopping stops in Beijing where the selling was hard and fast. In this October tour, there was no hard-selling....it was as though the sales people were just promoting their products and leaving it to us whether we wanted to buy or not. Surprisingly even the medical hall people at TongRen Healthcare did not push Tim too hard to buy the medical package of RMB400 plus per month!