Computer Troubles! Today's news is being published quite late. Let me tell you why. It is late because I didn't get home from the computer repair shop till 7:15 am Magic City Time. Let me first say, that this edition is being published from my own 'now fixed' laptop computer, thanks to 'SuZhou jingying Notebook Repair' . This repair shop is located on the 3rd floor of the big computer store on the corner of West Gan Jiang Road at the intersection of Chang Xu Road. (Chang Xu Road is where the Tall Jasmine Holiday Inn is located). Contact details are:  • Kang Yongjun • Tel: 13151186238 • 0512-60709368  • Email: kahunakang@hotmail.com  • QQ: 393110900  • No.456 West GanJiang Rd. U-town, B3158 (3rd Floor) Chinese Address  My visit ......Details

At the mention of Suzhou, classical gardens always come as the first to one mind. However I had something different to experience this time. A childhood friend works in Suzhou after graduation from college school. She is my guide and I can just go around with her without worrying where to take bus and what to see. My first destination is a interesting lane called Tai Jian Nong (太监弄, Eunuch Lane) and the first thing is to eating. Xin Ju Feng Restaurant (新聚丰菜馆) is a well-spoken-of restaurant in the city, a perfect place to taste Suzhou dishes. The restaurant unfolds an old Suzhou atmosphere. It is said that there is Pingtan performances here. Obviously, it is not the right time when you get there at noon. Here are some dishes of this restaurant I want to recommend: fried shrimp, fired fish ......Details

I was eager to experience the bullet train from Shanghai to Suzhou on a summer Sunday. The bullet train is named He Xie Hao (Harmony Train). I purchased the train ticket one day in advanced on 2F of Shanghai South Railway Station. You should go to the ticket window marked He Xie Hao(和谐号), another name of the bullet train. The ticket fare is 26Yuan. It was a pity that the return bullet train tickets on Sunday afternoon have been sold out. Thereupon, I decided to purchase a return ticket on the spot arriving in Suzhou. My train left from Shanghai Railway Station at 7:37am on time. Well, it should be the most comfortable train I have taken in China. The air-conditioned carriages were clean and wide, having enough space for walking in, of course comfortable seats with large and solid windows.......Details

Sunday is probably my favourite day of the week in China. For those who work it is nearly the only day that is taken as a holiday and it is perhaps for this reason that there's always an extra jauntiness to the streets, an extra spring in the step and moreover, an even greater crowd than usual out and about.There's a slight cessation of pace even with the increase in foot traffic, and the parks, gardens and shopping centres are full of families, children and couples. Sundays are like a pause in the monotony of working life, a time for play, a time for enjoyment, a time for meeting friends and family, gossiping, catching up or just floating along on a gentle cloud of free time for a while.Make a trip on Sundays and you'll find city squares bursting with sound and activities, you'll find the old ......Details

My long awaited visit to Suzhou happens at long last under a sudden spell of downright miserable weather that casts the day in a grim shroud of cloud, mist and almost incessant rain. I couldn’t have chosen a worse day to start my trip and sitting on the bus, watching the raindrops making streams across the windows, I wonder if I shouldn’t just turn back and give up.Needless to say I don’t, but the weather casts a grey shadow over the journey, and forces Suzhou to work all the harder to make itself memorable. I’ve found it’s much easier to like a place under blue skies and bright sunshine. To assuage my pessimism, I turn my thoughts to what I know about the history of Suzhou.Suzhou has a history stretching back some 2500 years and owes its success and renown to the ......Details

It’s a well-known fact that the Chinese were up on their game in the department of inventing things immeasurably useful to mankind: from paper to the compass, porcelain to gunpowder. Even contrary to my students’ textbooks (put out by Cambridge University) the Chinese invented the printing press a good 300 years before that slouch Gutenberg set our 26-letter alphabet into movable type (he’s not really a slouch—I just called him that to set up my witty pun in the next paragraph). So it won’t be any surprise to you when I tell you that the Pisans in Italy don’t actually have the market cornered in Leaning Towers. That’s right. The Chinese managed to incline their building prowess toward towers that don’t stand up straight more than 200 years before ......Details

The Chinese have a famous saying: 上有天堂，下有苏杭. In the sky is Heaven’s paradise, on Earth is Suzhou and Hangzhou. In the Chinese conception Suzhou, and neighboring Hangzhou, are the closest things to Heaven on Earth.This statement can largely be attributed to Suzhou’s multitude of gardens. Microcosms of nature distilled from the Daoist idea of harmony between heaven and earth, the gardens of Suzhou, which date back as far as 600 AD, are such an important contribution to the essence of that harmony that in 1997 UNESCO declared over 25 of them World Heritage Sites.From the Humble Administrator’s Garden to the Lion Forest; the Garden of the Master of the Nets to the Garden of Pleasure, each of Suzhou’s scores of city-gardens,......Details

Who first named it the Venice of the Orient? Could it have been that famous Venetian explorer and Emperor’s favorite who left his own waterways behind to be pulled into the tidal rhythms of 12th century China?Perhaps, though we’ll probably never know for sure. One thing that is for sure though is that this phrase has become the eternal byline for Suzhou, a delicate ballerina of a city in the branching grasp of the Yangtze River Delta. And it’s not called the Venice of the Orient simply because Marco Polo fell ill with a bout of homesickness—this graceful city is laced with so many serpentine waterways that the inhabitants are said to sleep upon pillows of water.......Details

One of the great joys of living in a faraway place like China is having an opportunity to share exciting travel experiences with those you love. Visits by friends and family open new doors of adventure as together you experience the beauty of ancient sights, the distinct cultural differences of an ancient land, and the culinary delights of an ancient cuisine that has become the pride of its people. Choosing to celebrate the May Labor Day holiday in China, my mother braved a long, exhausting flight across the ocean and arrived to join me in the international gateway city of Shanghai. Shanghai is a well-developed and important commercial base being one of the first cities in China to fully embrace a free-market economy after Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. To facilitate growth and commerce a system of ......Details

Badabings. Squeezed in almost anonymously on that avenue of neon that is Funghuang Jie in Suzhou’s downtown. Suzhou is about two hours outside (and about twenty years behind) Shanghai. A pub on a street eaten up by restaurants. Badabings wants to be different. From the outside it looks like a Mexican brothel and I’ve never been to Mexico. There are no windows, only a black brick wall and little light emitting through the glass door. Actually it looks a lot like an Asian brothel. Maybe I’ve got the wrong place. Only a flashing neon sign over my head announcing “Badabings” reassures me. I nervously park my bike, finding the lock at the second attempt, take a deep breath and push open the only gap in the wall. Relieved not to be accosted by working girls, I’m pleasantly ......Details