2006-01-24 08:20:31Cabnolen
My Trip to China - 18/Dec/2005
6. 蘇州 同里 (新世紀) 大娘水餃 KFC (18th)
6th day in china:
MY BIRTHDAY
Wow, it is indeed my birthday, my first birthday in China with no parties.
TONG-LI
We woke up early in the morning, checked out and immediately went to the New Century hotel, and left at around 9am to Tong-Li. It’s a town much like Wu-Zhen, built by the river, but it’s a lot bigger as it has lots of compartments for tourists. We paid $80 RMB per ticket, pretty expensive for a spot like this. As you may have noticed, all places in China costs, unlike Taiwan, suppose that’s how they make money coz otherwise their salary’s not very high. Tong-Li, although similar in the sense that it’s also built around a river, is different coz the buildings here are all cement and rock based, rather than wood, like Wu-Zhen. On the ticket, there are 10 spots to visit, so we went to Gu-Feng Garden first.
GU-FENG GARDEN (GU-FENG YUAN)
It’s actually not as interesting as I thought, when I walked in, it’s just a place with lots of tree carvings, very similar to the Liu-Yuan we went to, a house with gardens and Gu-Feng basically means ”Acient Style” so obviously, the entire place was just like Liu-Yuan. By now you’ve probably figured that ”Yuan” means garden.
SEX MUSEUM (well, it’s sex museum, no translation needed here)
Next to the Gu-Feng garden, is the sex museum. We found out that it costs an extra $20 each to entre and all kids must be accompanied by teachers or adults. This museum, unfortunately for you lot, could not be filmed or photographed, so no photos for you lot! It was actually quite funny, as we walked in and there’s a rock path with stone carvings all along the way, one of a massive penis and several of other kinda stuff that’s a little too big to go inside a building. The symbol of Chinese Sex, are 3 monkeys. One monkey has its hands over its eyes, it means ”no looking”, one over its ears, means ”no listening”, and one over its mouth, means ”no talking”, so sex, in China, is something that can’t be looked at, heard about, nor talked of. This is probably my favourite statue in that museum. The museum is divided into 4 sections, Acient Society, Marriage and Women, Everyday Sex, and Abnormal Sex. The first section was just of paintings on silk, books, and pottery of humans and animals (seperately).
2nd section, the sadest one, was of how women was used by men, and it also included punishment tools which was really disgusting. The tool for women caught with another man that’s not her husband (even if her husband’s deceased), would be placed on top of a horse with a stick on top for her to sit on. It is very large and long, and is meant for her to sit on so it penetrates her while it takes her parading around town naked, until she dies.
The 3rd section was very interesting, it’s of sex in everyday life. You get to see the bottom of normal cups, bowls, plates, and pillows (Chinese pillows has always been hard and high, as the saying ”The higher the pillow the less you worry”, so it’s usually made out of china, clay or jade) would be vivid carvings or paintings of sexual activities. It also has cute fruit and and boats, where it’s given to to-be-married brides by their mothers as a marriage gift. It looks like a simply decorated cosmetic container, but when you open it, it’s a carving of sexual activities, usually missionary style, for the bride to learn of sex in marriage, and the bride would usually teach the groom how to have sex on their first night. There’s also a really cute underwear, which is similar to G-strings these days, that was used for brides who feel shy on the first night if naked.
The 4th section is filled with sex with animals, horny monks, God of Happiness (a male god wrapped around by a naked female in the front), 3P - 5P, and homosexuals. It was interesting to find out that homosexuality was common, and was treated more like a difference than an abnormality.
LUNCH
Nothing much to report, it’s a place my father found online that has special dishes in Tong-Li, and since we bought the tickets, it’s not like we could leave Tong-Li, eat out, and then come back, so we ate here. The place was just normal, the only thing was that the rice took half an hour to arrive, and father had to go to the kitchen and told them he’d fill the rice himself.
HISTORICAL RELIC EXHIBITION
After lunch, since it was near the exhibition, we went there. Honestly, I don’t remember much of this place, it’s just rooms and rooms of wood and stone carvings. At the entrance of the exhibition, there’s a guy who sells cute little wood necklaces and decorations, where the maker carves in poems on the little piece of wood where you can only read with a magnifying glass, his proudest work consists of characters that are only 0.5mm square each.
THE REST
There were so many others we went to, I actually don’t remember them much, but as one say, if you don’t remember it, it probably wasn’t important anyway. Although we started at 10am, by 5pm, we still had 2 places that we couldn’t go to, one seemed like the best place, and we found out near 5pm that it’s 40 min away and you get there by boat, extra $60 and they’ve stopped by 4pm anyway. It’s called Louxing Zhou Island, which you can guess, is an island, and the photo on the ticket looks really cool, pity we missed it.
SHOPPING
When we first got there, we walked past a lady who does ”painting in a bottle”. It’s a famous local art, usually it comes in shapes of a crystal ball, a smoking-grass container, or a pencil container. We bargained for a good 10 min when we first arrived, and then thought it’s too early to buy glass to carry around the entire trip, so told the lady we’d go back later. She didn’t believe us, she wants us to pay first and she can reserve it for us and everything, but we insisted to leave it till later. She was very surprised to see us at 3:30pm, she told us she thought we were never coming back, and that she’s lost our business. What’s a ”painting in a bottle”? When you look at it, for example, the crystal ball, is that at the bottom of the ball, you can see a hole big enough to fit a thumb. What they do, is they get a very thin hair pen, bent at an angle, dipped in a colour she wants, and then goes through the hole and paints inside the ball. You can see the image on the outside, and it looks rather delicate. We ended up getting a set of 4 bottles of THE 4 Beauties of China. (the most famous beauties within the past 2500 years) Their names are: Xi-Xu, Yang Yu-Huan, Wang Zhao-Juin, and Diau-Zhan. (2 will be mentioned later) This set was being sold for $160. Another kind, a bigger, steadier, squarer shaped bottle were being sold for $80 each. Brother also had his eyes on some really cute, 5cm diameter crystal balls, for $5 each. We ended up getting the first set for $80, squarer bottles she accepted selling 3 for $100, and the little balls for free.
DINNER AND AFTER
We had dinner at the dumpling restaurant again, as it’s a chain store, there happened to be one directly next door to the hotel we were staying at. Brother and I agreed to have less dumplings, so we could go to the KFC near it and try out their KFC. There are ridiculous amount of KFC in China, there are around 4 KFC : 1 Maccers. Pizza Hut is also another new hottie, for every pizza hut that opens in China has ppl queuing up outside from 6pm to 8pm every single night, literally LONG queue, maybe that’s where all the Pizza Huts went from Chch? The KFC had lots of different things, it had Samba Prawn Balls, Manhattan Chicken Wings (or some kinda USA state), which was what I tried. Their fries are the same as Maccers, they offer more varieties of drinks, soup, and although we were not hungry enough to try, but apparently their coating for chickens are nothing like NZ’s.
After dinner, since it’s my birthday, we went to the department store nearby that comes with a supermarket and a bakery (a mini mall really), and bought 2 cup-cake-sized capuccino mousse cake, it wasn’t too bad.
6th day in china:
MY BIRTHDAY
Wow, it is indeed my birthday, my first birthday in China with no parties.
TONG-LI
We woke up early in the morning, checked out and immediately went to the New Century hotel, and left at around 9am to Tong-Li. It’s a town much like Wu-Zhen, built by the river, but it’s a lot bigger as it has lots of compartments for tourists. We paid $80 RMB per ticket, pretty expensive for a spot like this. As you may have noticed, all places in China costs, unlike Taiwan, suppose that’s how they make money coz otherwise their salary’s not very high. Tong-Li, although similar in the sense that it’s also built around a river, is different coz the buildings here are all cement and rock based, rather than wood, like Wu-Zhen. On the ticket, there are 10 spots to visit, so we went to Gu-Feng Garden first.
GU-FENG GARDEN (GU-FENG YUAN)
It’s actually not as interesting as I thought, when I walked in, it’s just a place with lots of tree carvings, very similar to the Liu-Yuan we went to, a house with gardens and Gu-Feng basically means ”Acient Style” so obviously, the entire place was just like Liu-Yuan. By now you’ve probably figured that ”Yuan” means garden.
SEX MUSEUM (well, it’s sex museum, no translation needed here)
Next to the Gu-Feng garden, is the sex museum. We found out that it costs an extra $20 each to entre and all kids must be accompanied by teachers or adults. This museum, unfortunately for you lot, could not be filmed or photographed, so no photos for you lot! It was actually quite funny, as we walked in and there’s a rock path with stone carvings all along the way, one of a massive penis and several of other kinda stuff that’s a little too big to go inside a building. The symbol of Chinese Sex, are 3 monkeys. One monkey has its hands over its eyes, it means ”no looking”, one over its ears, means ”no listening”, and one over its mouth, means ”no talking”, so sex, in China, is something that can’t be looked at, heard about, nor talked of. This is probably my favourite statue in that museum. The museum is divided into 4 sections, Acient Society, Marriage and Women, Everyday Sex, and Abnormal Sex. The first section was just of paintings on silk, books, and pottery of humans and animals (seperately).
2nd section, the sadest one, was of how women was used by men, and it also included punishment tools which was really disgusting. The tool for women caught with another man that’s not her husband (even if her husband’s deceased), would be placed on top of a horse with a stick on top for her to sit on. It is very large and long, and is meant for her to sit on so it penetrates her while it takes her parading around town naked, until she dies.
The 3rd section was very interesting, it’s of sex in everyday life. You get to see the bottom of normal cups, bowls, plates, and pillows (Chinese pillows has always been hard and high, as the saying ”The higher the pillow the less you worry”, so it’s usually made out of china, clay or jade) would be vivid carvings or paintings of sexual activities. It also has cute fruit and and boats, where it’s given to to-be-married brides by their mothers as a marriage gift. It looks like a simply decorated cosmetic container, but when you open it, it’s a carving of sexual activities, usually missionary style, for the bride to learn of sex in marriage, and the bride would usually teach the groom how to have sex on their first night. There’s also a really cute underwear, which is similar to G-strings these days, that was used for brides who feel shy on the first night if naked.
The 4th section is filled with sex with animals, horny monks, God of Happiness (a male god wrapped around by a naked female in the front), 3P - 5P, and homosexuals. It was interesting to find out that homosexuality was common, and was treated more like a difference than an abnormality.
LUNCH
Nothing much to report, it’s a place my father found online that has special dishes in Tong-Li, and since we bought the tickets, it’s not like we could leave Tong-Li, eat out, and then come back, so we ate here. The place was just normal, the only thing was that the rice took half an hour to arrive, and father had to go to the kitchen and told them he’d fill the rice himself.
HISTORICAL RELIC EXHIBITION
After lunch, since it was near the exhibition, we went there. Honestly, I don’t remember much of this place, it’s just rooms and rooms of wood and stone carvings. At the entrance of the exhibition, there’s a guy who sells cute little wood necklaces and decorations, where the maker carves in poems on the little piece of wood where you can only read with a magnifying glass, his proudest work consists of characters that are only 0.5mm square each.
THE REST
There were so many others we went to, I actually don’t remember them much, but as one say, if you don’t remember it, it probably wasn’t important anyway. Although we started at 10am, by 5pm, we still had 2 places that we couldn’t go to, one seemed like the best place, and we found out near 5pm that it’s 40 min away and you get there by boat, extra $60 and they’ve stopped by 4pm anyway. It’s called Louxing Zhou Island, which you can guess, is an island, and the photo on the ticket looks really cool, pity we missed it.
SHOPPING
When we first got there, we walked past a lady who does ”painting in a bottle”. It’s a famous local art, usually it comes in shapes of a crystal ball, a smoking-grass container, or a pencil container. We bargained for a good 10 min when we first arrived, and then thought it’s too early to buy glass to carry around the entire trip, so told the lady we’d go back later. She didn’t believe us, she wants us to pay first and she can reserve it for us and everything, but we insisted to leave it till later. She was very surprised to see us at 3:30pm, she told us she thought we were never coming back, and that she’s lost our business. What’s a ”painting in a bottle”? When you look at it, for example, the crystal ball, is that at the bottom of the ball, you can see a hole big enough to fit a thumb. What they do, is they get a very thin hair pen, bent at an angle, dipped in a colour she wants, and then goes through the hole and paints inside the ball. You can see the image on the outside, and it looks rather delicate. We ended up getting a set of 4 bottles of THE 4 Beauties of China. (the most famous beauties within the past 2500 years) Their names are: Xi-Xu, Yang Yu-Huan, Wang Zhao-Juin, and Diau-Zhan. (2 will be mentioned later) This set was being sold for $160. Another kind, a bigger, steadier, squarer shaped bottle were being sold for $80 each. Brother also had his eyes on some really cute, 5cm diameter crystal balls, for $5 each. We ended up getting the first set for $80, squarer bottles she accepted selling 3 for $100, and the little balls for free.
DINNER AND AFTER
We had dinner at the dumpling restaurant again, as it’s a chain store, there happened to be one directly next door to the hotel we were staying at. Brother and I agreed to have less dumplings, so we could go to the KFC near it and try out their KFC. There are ridiculous amount of KFC in China, there are around 4 KFC : 1 Maccers. Pizza Hut is also another new hottie, for every pizza hut that opens in China has ppl queuing up outside from 6pm to 8pm every single night, literally LONG queue, maybe that’s where all the Pizza Huts went from Chch? The KFC had lots of different things, it had Samba Prawn Balls, Manhattan Chicken Wings (or some kinda USA state), which was what I tried. Their fries are the same as Maccers, they offer more varieties of drinks, soup, and although we were not hungry enough to try, but apparently their coating for chickens are nothing like NZ’s.
After dinner, since it’s my birthday, we went to the department store nearby that comes with a supermarket and a bakery (a mini mall really), and bought 2 cup-cake-sized capuccino mousse cake, it wasn’t too bad.