Wuxi - Pronounced Woo - Shee

Nov 5 - Monday

Monday takes Gerald to work, Charlotte stays home, Sid, Jyl and I are driven to the ShangHai HongQiao train station by Bruce Lee (I love him BTW). 

 We join the tour group led by Tracy (no picture of her - but we see more of her next week) and Michael

 and board the train headed to Wuxi.  The city of Wuxi has a population of 6 million and is 3500 years old.  It borders the Grand Canal which made it a strategic shipping destination for goods either coming or going from the north.

We have a 45 minute train ride and board a tour bus for 30 min to our first destination, Wuxi City Hall.  Wuxi has experienced very rapid growth in the past decade, the city fathers are trying to strategically plan its continued growth. 

We were greeted by an American , Brian Linden, who gave us an overview of one area of expansion.  The project he heads has the intent  to restore the historic (small) downtown area of Wuxi into a hotel and tourist area.  While he yammered on about the plans, we walked through the area,

 it felt like we were having a  time share up-sell.  It was very odd.  Brian's verbiage about how they wanted to have a very luxurious resort that would provide tourists (ex-pats really) a unique taste of the culture of China, while designing all of the comforts and activities based on a decidedly Western  (USA) culture.  AND the Chinese govt. is providing 50 million dollars in funding!  Brian Linden developed a similar resort, the Linden Center, in south China. The whole experience was bizarre really, and left us with more questions than answers.

After the City Hall and walk about we have lunch. 

  I will be doing a whole blog about the food.  I keep using the words, amazing, unbelievable, fantastic and beautiful, but not really relaying too many details of the experience.  I will work on putting those thoughts into words.

In the afternoon we visit the Hui Shan Temple in the historic area of Wuxi, once part of the Ming Dynasty. 

  The gardens at the entry, at the moment, are a kaleidoscope of mums.  

Our guide gives many details of the garden,

 including feng shui, a few details on Buddhism, and ancient Chinese culture.

We continue to notice the single child families-

After the gardens we go to yet another restaurant to have Chinese dumplings, tea and cookies.  Still very full from lunch, we have the locally prepared meat filled dumplings, served with balsamic vinegar - so good. 

 The cookies are tiny, have been rolled in sesame seeds,  stuffed with ground sunflower seeds with a walnut in the center.  I could have eaten 10 of them!

This fellow:

is the son of the lady above serving the dumplings and represents the 35th generation of family business  in the historic Wuxi area. 

After tea we board the bus to the train and arrive back in Shanghai at 6:45.  Of course Mr. Lee greets us at the arrival gate, leads us to the vehicle and delivers us safely 'home'.