Marco Polo named Suzhou that after seeing all the canals. I was wrong about Suzhou being flat. There are mountains here, including Tiger Hill. There is a leaning tower atop, built about 1,000 years ago. They couldn’t figure out why it was leaning, ’til they recently used sonar and found an ancient tomb beneath it. Basically, the hill was hollow. After the tomb was constructed, the workers who built it were all invited to a celebratory dinner, fed, and then killed to ensure the secret. One of the earliest occurrences of “Dead men tell no tales,” eh?
Suzhou is perhaps best known for its silk. Here the “farmers” grow the silkworms in their houses, harvesting mulberry leaves to feed them. The eggs hatch after two days of 70+ degree weather. Five weeks after hatching, they start spinning their cocoon. One week later, the farmer steams the cocoons to kill the pupa, or they will eat through the cocoon as a moth, destroying the silk. 1% are allowed to do that, in order to lay next year’s crop. One cocoon can produce a fiber 1.7 miles long. Suzhou’s silk is reportedly the finest, purest white and longest. The silk industry is controlled by the government, so farmers can work the government land to grow the mulberrys to feed the worms. But they must take the price the government gives them. Our guide was quick to point out that the U.S. charges a very high export fee.
We visited a factory where the silk is unwound from the cocoon. Again, moderate mechanization. It is so fine, the fibers are combined. One thread may contain 48 fibers.Occasionally, two worms will cocoon together. But unlike a double-yolker egg, the thread is now terribly intertwined and cannot be separated. However, the harvesters have now found a new use for these twin cocoons – comforters. The cocoon is simply dropped in hot water to loosen the glue, then turned inside out to rid the pupas, and stretched out to form the batting. One more use for these little guys – their poop becomes a filling for some of the pillows! The factory has all this and more for sale – and good prices, too!
Another great lunch – buffet style for “American Chambers” delegation. This was one of the first, I think, where we weren’t served eggplant. Altho I like it, everyone talks about how good it is, but it’s usually one of the few dishes with something still in it at the end of the meal!
There’s a beautiful garden in the heart of the city, called Lingering Garden. We spent quite a bit of time there, reflecting on the limestone sculptures from Lake Tai. That’s the big stone in the background of our group photo. They also have bonsai trees.
We also visited the embroidery institute. You wouldn’t probably think that someone could get excited about that. However, this was amazing. It’s done with the finest silk thread on the finest sheer silk fabric. The exquisite craftsmanship (there are four levels – student, teacher, technician, and master) produces pieces that rival paintings. They showed us one piece that had an image on one side and another on the other. It’s done by embroidering on top of a base layer of thread, without going into the fabric on the other side. Incredible.
Unfortunately, we had to depart the Venice of the East that afternoon on our way to Hangzhou. It’s about 1 1/2 hours to the south . . . unless you run into a traffic jam – as we did. That got us barely to the hotel in time (Holiday Inn Xiaqshan Hangzhou) to have dinner before departing for our business conference. We met with the Director of the local development corporation. I think it was more an opportunity for him to promote his development project, but we did see some opportunity for business connections in the future. This might include tourism to Montana, since China overall, and Hangzhou in particular, are seeing some rapid increase in per capita income. Incidentally, the Holiday Inn is nice, but nothing to write home about . . . oops, I just did!
