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.
No comments:
Post a Comment