Leaving the canals and silk stores of Suzhou, the next part of the trip was the nearby city of Wuxi, which is a relatively small 7 million people, notable for the rather beautiful Taihu Lake and freshwater pearl production. After a day there, the next stop was Hangzhou, which, along with Wuxi, is rather notable as a scientific research hun. It is also a very convenient base to visit the rather astounding Longmen Ancient Town, famous for its Qing dynasty buildings. Inhabitants of the town like to claim that they're all descendants of the Emperor Sun Quan, who had Longmen as his hometown almost 2000 years ago. In many ways, it was like visiting some of the preserved medieval streets in some European cities (e.g., Barcelona, Freiburg), but it was superior to both those examples in authenticity. Hangzhou is also famous for its tea and tea research, so a visit to the Meijiawu Tea Village was also in order; delicious and educational.
The final leg of the trip was to Shanghai, a truly astounding metropolis with an estimated 27 million people. Situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River, astoundingly important for trade, the city is famous-notorious for being carved up by foreign powers (French, British, American) with extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction. If anything positive can be said of these impositions, it would be Shanghai's deserved reputation as a cosmopolitan city and the existence of some fine 19th-century Western colonial architecture alongside the very modern skyscrapers, many with their own truly innovative designs. Alas, my enjoyment of these surrounds was knocked down by a day when I was struck with a literal 24-hour 'flu. One evening, I was shaking, sweating, with joint-muscular pain, convinced that I had COVID or similar, and, after a day's complete rest, I was perfectly fine. Which was just in time for a meeting with representatives of the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (they need a snappier title).
The following day was off to the airport for the overnight flight back to Melbourne. Capsule movie reviews for the journey back: "Panda Plan", Jackie Chan slapstick with an utterly improbable plot 1/5; "Los Tonos Mayores", a teenaged girl starts receiving coded messages through a metal plate in her arm, another superb example of Spanish-language magical realism, mystery, and psychodrama 4/5; "Complètement cramé!" French-English film starring John Malkovich pretending to be a butler for the nostalgia of where he and his recently deceased wife first met. The film location (Château du Bois-Cornillé, Bretagne) is beautiful, the characters and their interactions fascinating, but it's very weak on theme, 3/5. Thus ends a ten-day whirlwind trip to five eastern Chinese cities. The hotels were all excellent, the food is excellent, the Internet is terrible, and the country safe and pleasant. My next trip? In a week to Nanjing.
The final leg of the trip was to Shanghai, a truly astounding metropolis with an estimated 27 million people. Situated at the mouth of the Yangtze River, astoundingly important for trade, the city is famous-notorious for being carved up by foreign powers (French, British, American) with extraterritoriality and consular jurisdiction. If anything positive can be said of these impositions, it would be Shanghai's deserved reputation as a cosmopolitan city and the existence of some fine 19th-century Western colonial architecture alongside the very modern skyscrapers, many with their own truly innovative designs. Alas, my enjoyment of these surrounds was knocked down by a day when I was struck with a literal 24-hour 'flu. One evening, I was shaking, sweating, with joint-muscular pain, convinced that I had COVID or similar, and, after a day's complete rest, I was perfectly fine. Which was just in time for a meeting with representatives of the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (they need a snappier title).
The following day was off to the airport for the overnight flight back to Melbourne. Capsule movie reviews for the journey back: "Panda Plan", Jackie Chan slapstick with an utterly improbable plot 1/5; "Los Tonos Mayores", a teenaged girl starts receiving coded messages through a metal plate in her arm, another superb example of Spanish-language magical realism, mystery, and psychodrama 4/5; "Complètement cramé!" French-English film starring John Malkovich pretending to be a butler for the nostalgia of where he and his recently deceased wife first met. The film location (Château du Bois-Cornillé, Bretagne) is beautiful, the characters and their interactions fascinating, but it's very weak on theme, 3/5. Thus ends a ten-day whirlwind trip to five eastern Chinese cities. The hotels were all excellent, the food is excellent, the Internet is terrible, and the country safe and pleasant. My next trip? In a week to Nanjing.