Guilin to Suzhou

The day was spent mostly traveling from Guilin to Suzhou (pronounced "Sue Joe"). We flew to Shanghai, where we were met by a local guide and a tour bus that took us to Suzhou, which is a small city to the west of Shanghai. Suzhou is noted for its canals, and is referred to as the "Venice of the East".

The bus ride from the Shanghai airport to Suzhou allowed us to see  more of the countryside.
 

A couple of farmers working in the rice paddies.
 

Hoops over a row of plants and plastic sheeting over the hoops form a very inexpensive, but still effective, greenhouse. This extends the growing season and allows more than one crop per year in some areas.

The Grand Canal, which extends from Beijing to Suzhou and to Hangzhou, is currently a major shipping canal carrying a lot of barge traffic. We were told that it was originally built by an emperor to bring beautiful women from Suzhou and Hangzhou to Beijing to be the emperor's concubines.
 

A high tech traffic light in Suzhou. It shows the number of seconds before it turns green. Then the color of the numbers switches to green and it shows the time before the light switches to red. Very clever. We saw these at major intersections in several cities.
 

In Suzhou we visited a factory for silk embroidery. In addition to single sided embroidery, they do double-sided embroidery where a picture can be seen from each side of the material; the knots are very cleverly buried between the layers of the embroidery. The women who do the embroidery work 8 hours per day at a very tedious task. It is hard on the eyes, so they get a 20 minute break every hour. The embroideries were very beautiful, but also very expensive since it takes a worker two years to make one of the more intricate pieces. Sorry, no pictures; photography was not allowed.

The garden at our hotel in Suzhou. Very nice.
 

Tomorrow we see more of Suzhou, go to Tongli for a gondola ride, and then head back to Shanghai.