Day 4 (Nov 8 Wednesday):

On our way to Suzhou, I circulated two tourist guide books, one on Suzhou and the other, Shanghai. Winnie was the most diligent and spent aplenty of time poring over the guidebooks while her hubby snoring at the back. And prior to our departure for Huang Shan I'd distributed a dozen face masks to the wives just in case should they come across a 1 or No-star pitstop. So far (actually throughout the entire tour) there's no occasion to warrant such action. Though Danny has to wear one when we got to Suzhou at the advice of Frank to alleviate his minor respiratory ailment.

During our Suzhou tour we got another local local guide, a Ms Chang. And on the question of where have all the beautiful Suzhou girls gone since we couldn't find any real beautiful. The answer is, according to the local guide - Grade A: USA &/or other big foreign countries; Grade B: Taiwan, Hong Kong; Grade C: Shanghai, Beijing; Grade D: Entertainment business. Just kidding. Actually we did not spend too much time looking around.

Since we were somewhat early when we reached Suzhou, so we were given an hour to hang around the Guanqian Jie. We broke up into small groups. And I shared a Grande (or is it Tall?) 'sour plum soup' with Maggie and Peter using three straws. Later on in Shanghai the others shared their soup dumplings likewise. The rationale is to try as many variety as possible.

Then we went to lunch at Tian Zhu Jiu Lou. The meal is good but the more memorable thing is its men's room. Quoted below is what Justin wrote in his Nov 14 email:

Quoted:
"not to mention that in one restaurant, the men's WC was a 15 feet long waterfall (the other one I know of is at the Madonna Inn at San Luis Obispo in California) with a waterfall cascading in front of you while you are peeing. Better still, lining the wall behind the falling water were a thousand red roses! So impressed that the ladies in our group took a tour of the men's room and even tried it, (pretending standing up....)"
Unquoted.

Both Justin and Peter did take some photos but I didn't. So you need to ask them for these fun photos.

After lunch we started our tour of two of top four gardens:

Lingering Garden (Liu Yuan) (built in 1525, rebuilt in 1953)
The Master of the Nets garden or Wangshi Yuan (built in the Song Dynasty)

The other two are (which I visited in April this year):

Lion Grove Garden (built in 1342)
The Humble Administrator's Garden (or Zhuozheng Yuan) (built in 1513, rebuilt in 1860)

We started with the small one, The Master of the Nets garden and then Lingering Garden. It not easy to describe the gardens by words, so I suggest that you should look at the photos which I append below or better still go visit the gardens. And my personal preference of the four gardens? In descending order its The Humble Administrator's Garden, Lingering Garden, Lion Grove Garden and The Master of the Nets garden.

For dinner we went to BS Restaurant at the new district. Yes its called BS in English but the dishes are definitely not BS. Before the dinner commenced we got a local artist couple to perform for us the renowned Suzhou music. The first one is free and we ordered two standard ones at RMB30 each and a longer one at RMB50. Since we'd difficulty to appreciate the local dialect so the additional three songs that we ordered are the 'normal ones' in Mandarin! Peter is responsible for the selection.

After another happy meal, we took a 30-minute ride to our hotel, Spring Lake Hotel which got a hugh lobby and lot of Christmas decoration (yes in early November) but to some's dismay no swimming pool. Though we needed to return to the restaurant half way as one of us found out he'd left behind his bag. Well we got free drink the following day as compensation.

After we have settled down in the hotel, five of us (Bob, Danny, Frank, Peter and me) played bridge in Frank's room. I got my usual partner Danny against Bob & Frank and took the first rubber in two straight games. And I lost the draw and Peter took over my place. Since Bob is still a regular player so he probably is the best among us. And some other - Ben & Winnie, Esther and Justin (?) got in room massage service (RMB60 per hour I think).