Suzhou: A study in contrasts

Today in Suzhou was a day of contrast--the very old and the very new, the very clean and the very dirty, the very traditional and the very transitional.

In the morning we visited Tiger Hill and its beautiful 1,000 year old Buddhist pagoda, one of the few visible remnants of a very rich religious history; most Chinese do not practice any religion today.

Just a few miles away, we boarded a traditional flat bottom tour boat to see the old part of the city from the moat and canal that flow all the way to the ocean some 10 hours away (by boat.) The narrow canal provided a fascinating and intimate look at life in a lower class neighborhood with small and very old residential buildings right on the canal edge and an open air market looking like a typical third-world gathering place—dark and dirty stalls selling everything from live eel to monkey-on-a-stick. But a look just above the stalls and one can see the very new and modern skyscrapers in the background less than a mile away. The houses on the canal were much like the private residence where we were invited to dinner earlier in the week.

The residents served a nice dinner to 20 of us in a dingy, tiny home of less than 600 square feet. The kitchen was about 6 x 10 feet, so small that food was stored inside the tiny washing machine.

We then drove almost three hours in light traffic North to Hangzou--without ever leaving the Shanghai metro area. That’s right: we drove through more than 100 miles of city without any significant open space in sight. Hangzou, essentially a Shanghai suberb, has itself 7 million residents. That’s more than New York City.

It takes time to adjust to this huge mass of humanity. It will take longer to come to grips with how this huge and skilled workforce and huge potential consumer base will impact the U.S. and San Luis Obispo.

Dave Garth