Suzhou, Part II

On to part II of our Shanghai/Suzhou trip.  Arriving at Chuck and Caryn's apartment after our cold day in Shanghai, we regrouped and then enjoyed pre-dinner hour long foot massages at their local favorite massage place and then went out for Sichuan food. That'll warm you up.  The next day our first tour stop was a 1000+ year old Buddhist temple with a big pagoda called Huqiu Tower or Tiger Hill Pagoda.  It's a nice walk up the hill through the grounds and various other buildings up to the pagoda.

 

This was the start of the walk and you can see the famous pagoda framed in the background.

 

Throughout the park there were various signs encouraging appropriate behavior, but Paul and Chuck are not civilized and do not add grace to the scenery.

 

 

A good view of Suzhou from up top.

 

The tower has seven stories and eight sides and has a definite lean as you can see here.  It used to have a traditional wood exterior, but that was torched during the Cultural Revolution.

 

There were many pretty spots throughout the garden with waterfalls, big rocks, sculpted trees.  Would be prettier in spring, of course.

 

 

After lunch we explored the classical Chinese garden in Suzhou, which is a UNESCO heritage site.  Lots of pretty buildings, ponds, waterfalls and gardens.  The architecture is amazing.   

 

 

There's also a giant ancient metal bell that I was saying how fun it would be to ring it, when sure enough, for about $1 you can bang it three times with a big wooden battering ram and then get a souvenir postcard.

 

 

And the third sight of our day was wandering down an old waterfront road with lots of old buildings converted into little shops and food places.  There were little bridges and cobble stone streets, it actually reminded us of some of the European old town areas we've been to.

 

That night for dinner we joined a Seagate event at a big German restaurant featuring German food, Malaysian food, and karaoke.  Kind of a funny mix.  Our last day Paul and I both made work visits.  Paul went with Chuck to Seagate to tour around and meet some people and Caryn escorted me into Shanghai on the train so I could visit the Target Sourcing office there, where my boss is based, and have yummy Shanghai food with the Finance team for lunch. 

 

After lunch the four of us all met up for one last tourism bit--going to the big fake market.  You're all getting $10 "Rolex" watches for Christmas next year, surprise!

 

Paul's last request on the way out of town was to take the "Maglev" train to the airport, seen below.  This train moves via magnetic levitation rather than wheels and averages 260 mph, but disappointingly you can't actually see it levitating. Boo.

 

And that's it!  We packed a lot into four days, thanks Chuck and Caryn!  Next stop, Bali...

 

Shanghai & Suzhou, Part I

 

Happy new year 2014!!  We had a great time on our whirlwind holiday trip back in the US, hitting ND, MN and MI in two weeks.  But there's no rest for the wicked.  After arriving in Hong Kong just in time for New Years and working for three days, we headed up into the friendly skies again.  This time for a long weekend to Shanghai and nearby Suzhou to visit MN friends, Chuck and Caryn.  Chuck works for Seagate like Paul and is currently working for Seagate in Suzhou for a couple of years.  His wife Caryn visits in four week chunks of time every three months or so.  The kids stayed behind with Jelyn, which made them happy, as long as we brought back presents. 

 

We arrived in Shanghai late in the evening, in time to head to our hotel and get some good sleep for all our sightseeing the next day.  As you can see below, we started off the day with masks.  The air pollution indicators were at "extremely unhealthy" that day.  Even if you don't believe climate change is real, can we all agree that it might be better for all of us if we stop polluting so much? My vanity can't take wearing a mask in all of my vacation photos.

 

 

 

We enjoyed some souvenir shopping in the Yu Yuan Bazaar and a nice walk through the Yu Yuan Garden (Garden of Contentment).  The garden was created in 1577, but the buildings are "period style", so not that old, but have the look.  The architecture is beautiful and amazing. 

 

 

Paul thinks it's better for photos when he wears a mask and he doesn't have to pretend to smile.

 

Here are some decorations in place in advance of the Chinese New Year holiday that started at the end of January.

 

Next stop on our chilly, gray day was a walk along the Bund, the famous riverfront area in Shanghai.  There are nice views of the river and the skyline along the way.

 

After being outside all morning, it was time for a pretty tea break to warm up at a coffee shop in the M50 Creative Park.  It's an area of art galleries and Chuck and Caryn are considering going in on a new one with an artist friend so we stopped to meet her and check out the space.

 

We refreshed ourselves back at the hotel and then had a delicious dinner at Yunnan, a restaurant with northwestern Chinese/Tibetan cuisine.  Loved the plate toppers.

 

The next day was a little warmer, a little sunnier and less polluted.  We took a stroll through Fuxing Park, which was designed by the French (it's in the so-called French Concession area of Shanghai, settled by the French in 1849 for almost a hundred years).  It was fun to see everyone out enjoying the day, participating in a wide variety of activities from karaoke performances, couples dancing, kite flying, kids playing, and one of my favorites is this old guy doing calligraphy on the sidewalk with water.  We're guessing he was telling a story to the group.

 

I loved the trees in this park and around the neighborhood, so pretty and felt very European.  Even though Shanghai has three times the population of Hong Kong (21 million), it's not sandwiched by water, mountains and the China border so there is more room to spread out, so it felt a bit roomier with bigger sidewalks, more greenery and trees. Here 's a Tai Chi lesson going on below.

 

Birthplace of Chinese Communism anyone?

 

Time for more shopping and eating in a quaint network of alleyways that I can't remember the name of or find on Trip Advisor.  Paul warmed us up with hot chocolate with tapioca pearls and hot milk tea with red rice (was kind of like barley, not as tasty as tapioca pearls).

 

 

After two days in Shanghai, we continued on to Chuck and Caryn's place in Suzhou for two more days, but that will be separate post.  For my parting shot of this post, I'll take you back to Fuxing Park for a fun sight... little kid playing in the dirt wearing easy toilet access split pants (common in China) completely oblivious to the cold air on his bum (and to the dumb foreigner gawking and trying to get it on camera).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring Taipei



Two ways to tell who's writing the post-- Paul likes smaller pictures and centered text.  I hate reading centered paragraphs and like large pictures.  I think we can all agree my style is better. :)  But on to the post: Taiwan!  Three of my team members are in our Taipei office and after nine months of connecting via phone, email and video conference, I finally got to go see Julie, Elsie and Carol.

 

 

The three of them were great hosts and the whole office was so welcoming.  Target feels like Target no matter where you are.  But I won't bore you with work, let's move on to food and sightseeing.  During the three work days I enjoyed eating some local specialties including the country's specialty, beef noodle soup.  I forgot to take a picture of the soup, but got one of this guy at the soup shop making different buns and flat bread.  He was so fast!

 

 

Different shop, different day, the highlight was this dessert-- shaved ice topped with brown sugar syrup, sweetened condensed milk and tapioca pearls in a pile the size of my head.  I tried, but could not finish the whole thing.  Taiwan is the supposed inventor of "bubble tea" made with these same tapioca pearls.  I love the bubbles so I was intent on having them every day in some form.

 

 

On Friday night, Paul and the kids flew in to join me for the weekend.  Carol and Julie were so kind to be amazing tour guides for us the whole day.  We started the day at the Taipei Zoo, which is the largest in Asia.  We didn't want to spend the whole day there, so since it was super cheap and the panda was located right up front, we just stopped in for a short time.  The panda got the memo and made three laps outside right as we walked up, check!

 

 

After some monkeys, elephants and hippos, we decided to say goodbye, but this camel really wanted Paul to stay.  They made out for a while and she left Paul with some really good smelling slime on his neck and collar (I guess this is better than finding lipstick on his collar?).

 

 

Next to the zoo is the cable car up to Maokong, a tea growing area up in the mountains.  Our gondola had a glass bottom, which made for fun views.  The ride up was about 30 minutes with the Taipei skyline in the distance and nice nature and old temples to see on the way up.

Once we got to the top, we walked along a winding road on our way to have lunch at a tea house.  On the road there were various snack stalls so we stopped to have an appetizer of garlic sausage, a scallion pancake and fried stinky tofu. 

 

The tofu is stinky because it is fermented.  Both Paul and I thought it smelled like the horse barn at the Minnesota State Fair.  The taste was a combo of fried goodness, regular tofu, with ending notes of horse barn.  Julie said some people call it Chinese cheese.  When put in that perspective, it doesn't make it seem so weird after all.  The Chinese stinky tofu makers probably think we're weird for eating smelly moldy blue cheese.

 

We continued on our walk to the tea house and enjoyed the sights like the one below.  The large skyscraper just right of center is the Taipei 101 building, which is the third tallest in the world.

 

Here are some tea plants, reminds me of a vineyard, not sure what variety of tea though.

 

We had a gigantic lunch at one of the teahouses with most of the dishes featuring tea in some way.  You can't tell from the backlit window, but we had amazing views from our table.

 

I loved these fried tea leaves, and also love Esme photo-bombing the pic.

 

At the end of the meal we did an oolong tea tasting that included one variety grown and processed (includes heating and drying) by the tea house owner.  These kinds of experiences are my favorite thing... wine tasting in Switzerland, olive oil tasting in Spain and now tea tasting in Taiwan.  Thanks, Carol, for thinking of it!

 

Another thing I love about these places is the old, amazing architecture that you just run into.  Here's a random temple on the mountain with a beautiful roof, so special, yet easily found at the same time.

 

We rode back down the mountain as the sun was setting, and even though our bellies were full and kids getting tired, we had to power through since we only had one full day in Taipei.  Next stop, potty break in the train station.  Here is a "real-time" display to let you know the status of the stalls.  At least they don't have time-elapsed info by each light, privacy please.

 

 

When in Taiwan, you have to visit the famous Din Tai Fung (it's a chain now and we also have one in Hong Kong we can take you to when you come visit...) for the super delicious soup dumplings.  They didn't invent them, but they have perfected them.  We watched the assembly line through the viewing window.  The pictures at the bottom of the window are of Tom Cruise's visit.

 

The wait for a table was too long and we weren't hungry after the huge lunch, so we just got a few dumplings to go.

 

Next stop was for another Taiwanese specialty, shaved ice.  We went with mango and bubble tea flavors, so good.  We really need more Asian desserts in Minnesota. 

 

At this point we were getting pretty tired, but we pushed on to one last stop at a night market.  Lots of shopping and street food to take in. 

 

 

While we were obviously full after two piles of shaved ice, there was one food item we'd heard about from one of my Hong Kong team members we purposely sought out just to say we had eaten it.  Any guesses what is grilled on the stick below? 

 

 

Chicken poopshoots.  Paul is loving that chicken butt.  So what does it taste like?  Chicken.  Good grilled chicken flavor, actually, but way too fatty and gristly for me to ever consider eating it again (at least in this form... I'm sure I've eaten it ground up in chicken sausage).

 

 

After that we called it a night and let our gracious hosts go back to their families who probably wondered if we had stolen them.  Thank you, Julie and Carol, for your kind hospitality.  We had such a great day!!

The next day we only had up until lunch before we had to go to the airport, so we spent the morning in Old Taipei.  The main sight is the Longshan Temple, originally built in 1738, but wrecked many times over by earthquakes, fires and American bombs at the end of WWII.  It's a beautiful sight with intricate carvings and other works of art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also ran into a random parade, no idea what it was for, but it was a fun surprise.

 

And the last pic I took before we headed out is another example of amazing old architecture just snuggled between modern ho hum buildings.  I wish we had these kinds of finds in the US.  Wouldn't this look nice between a Caribou Coffee and a Subway in South Minneapolis? 

 

 

Our time in Taiwan was too short, but sweet.  We'll visit again the next time I come for work.  With that, I'll end this post with a picture of the one person in our family who loved grilled chicken a$$.