Touring Suzhou

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Chinese Market
Suzhou Market
Near our hotel there was a grocery and meat market.  Here we found  a wide variety of Chinese foods.  Shown here are the fish market with the clerk watching the Americans.  Shown enlarged at the bottom are squid, live eel, and a long thin fish that I do not recognize.
 Silk Factory
Silk Factory
One of the most interesting places that we visited was the silk factory.  In this photo the workers, all young women, pull the individual silk threads from the cocoons onto the machine which combines 8 to 16 threads into a single thread.

Silk Factory Fashion Show
Fashion Show
At the silk factory we were given a fashion show which presented the silk fashions that were made at the factory.  Most of the men went to the fashion show while most of the ladies went into the shops to buy the dresses and blouses.
China Focus Tour Group at the Garden of the Fishing Net
Garden of the Fishing Net Master
The China Focus tour group gathers around the China Focus flag for a bit more of the introduction to the garden.  Note the pattern of the walk.  It represents a fishing net.
At the Garden of the Fishing Net
Garden of the Fishing Net Master
An example of the beautiful plants at the Garden of the Fishing Net Master.  Even though it was early spring and most of the trees had not yet started to leave, the beauty of this and other gardens shown through.
 
Suzhou Street
Streets of Suzhou
As we returned from the Garden of the Fishing Net Master we walked through this rather typical street scene of China.

Beginning of Grand Canal Tour
Tour of the Grand Canal
The tour group was treated to a cruise on the Grand Canal of Suzhou.  This is one of the two boats we used on the tour.  This provided us with a way of seeing Suzhou in a different light than we otherwise would have been able to do.
View from a branch of the Grand Canal
Tour of the Grand Canal
In earlier times people would live along the canal and boatmen would deliver produce and other items directly to the women of the household.  This is one of those side canals with some of the homes still there.  While they are old and pretty run down, they are a sign of things past in Suzhou.
A worker at the Embroidery Institute
The Embroidery Research Institute
The Embroidery Research Institute produced some remarkable works of art using embroidery.  Shown here is the reproduction of the scene above the artist using embroidery.  Her partially completed work shows the amazing detail this embroidery can produce.