The Monkey Kings 美猴王

Today Joy 女王 and Chris 猴王 went to Taihu Lake (太湖) and West Mountain Island (西山岛) and ate jumping shrimp.

First we went to a long, wooden pier that leads out over the lake. You can see big schools of tiny fish among the seaweed in the calm lake water.

For lunch, we drove by a number of 农家, farmer’s homes that are partly converted into restaurants. There were about six of them by the road, and being such a quiet day, one farmer’s wife was outside each house frantically beckoning us to her restaurant. We ate big platefuls of delicious seafood, including one dish of shrimp that were still alive! They were cooked but not so cooked that they actually died. The shrimp were semi transparent and soaked in a liqueur that drugged them long enough that they more or less stopped moving after a few minutes. At first of course I was wary, but they turned out to taste really good.

I also ate 螺, which is a kind of snail I ate several times at Joy’s house in Fujian. They don’t have a lot of taste but they come in a really good sauce. To eat them, you take a toothpick, stick it in and slowly pull the snail out of its spiral shell. If you are skilled enough and in a hurry you can eat about ten in a minute. At that rate it would take you an hour to fill up on them.

After lunch, we went to Shigong Hill (石宫山), a park by the lake with a small Buddhist temple and a playground. We went in the temple and saw the four god kings that you see when you go to most Buddhist temples in China, and big Buddha and his big belly. In the yard was a number of stumps for those training in kung fu to step on. You are supposed to close your eyes and balance or walk from one to another. I could do it a little but I think I need more practice. The playground had old swings and some rope things that are hard to cross but worth the exercise.

And on the way home, we looked at some expensive villas that are for rent and for sale. Some of them are empty and can be rented by the night, so we thought it would be a great idea to rent one for Christmas and have our friends come for a party. We will ask our friends (contact me if you want to come!) and have a big Christmas party at Taihu! 好兴奋啊！

Zhouzhuang is a town outside Suzhou. I hesitate to call it a tourist town but the tourist spots were all we saw. We went there for the day and saw this charming little old town and had a great time.

Monkey royalty Chris and Joy went with apes Ivy, Sharrif and Chris (from China, England and England) to Zhouzhuang. If you have ever been to Shantangjie (山塘街, you have a good idea what Zhouzhuang is like. It is mostly narrow, cobbled streets with little shops on either side, and canals running through the town. The canals apparently form the character 井, which means a well (although that is presumably incidental).

The town is sprinkled with attractions like big houses for lords, parks, a daoist temple and, of course, the canals. In case you have not been to Suzhou, it has canals running in each direction through it, running alongside main streets and necessitating bridges everywhere. It is my favourite part of living in Suzhou, in fact. And in Zhouzhuang, the canals are even more obvious.

They are full of boats waiting to take tourists, but they are organised so that not everyone is yelling at you to go with them. We went through the town on a boat that rocked perilously left and right as we moved. The old man rowing was singing in the local dialect, which some of us didn’t like but I loved. He asked for a tip for the song and even though, for some reason, there was a sign saying we should not give him tips, I handed him ten kuai (a dollar and a half). He raised two fingers, asking for twenty kuai, and I laughed and said no. He kept smiling anyway.

The boat ride was my favourite part of the day. It was peaceful, musical and interesting at the same time. We got to see the old walls of the houses lined up by the canal, the banks, the boats, the bridges and the birds.

Traveling to Zhouzhuang was a bit more expensive than last year’s trip to Qinhuangdao and Beidaihe (in Hebei, when we lived in Beijing), and it was quite touristy, which can be really annoying in China, but overall it was worth the time and money. We would also like to visit Tongli (同理), near Zhouzhuang and, so they say, far less touristy. Guess that’s our next stop!