Whow, one day without writing and already happenend such a lot of things that I don't know where to start and what to select.

Yesterday I went on a day-trip with Pau. Pau is a very symphatic Architecture Professor from UPC (University of Barcelona). He lived two years in Berlin (!) but that was five years ago and he doesn't want to practice German. Besides Pau, I know now: Rita, Portuguese and also Architecture Professor from UPC (educated in the german school in Lisbon!), John from Miamy, Psychology Professor, his friend Thomas from Hamburg (!), living here already for three years in a multi-country proyect for professors-education and Ronnie from Italy, living in Kopenhagen but son of an american father and an israeli mother, he has three passports!  Really, it is always SO interesting to meet people on those trips, but here it seems that the strangest of the strange have come together (me included, of course...)

But I wanted to tell about our trip. We went to Suzhou (spell: Zuschou), to the west of Shanghai, half an hour with a speed-train like AVE or ICE.Very cheap, one way costs only 5€! Suzhou is famous for its anxient gardens, temples and channels for what it is called the "Venice of Asia". Well... it was not bad, but not what one expects when hearing Venice of Asia... First of all, at our arival we realized soon, that it is also Million-city. It's more, during the whole train-ride we did not leave urbanized area. We arrived at a gigantic train station and had to walk half an hour to get to the centre. Of course, we could have taken a Rikscha or a taxi. The first thing we visited was an eight floors high Pagode, we climbed 200 steps to get the view from the top. The other photo is the entrance, notice the illuminated price-board and the nice tourist-busses which blocked the view for a good photo.

Afterwards we walked a lot to get to the main anxient streets in the old center, where are plenty of canals but frankly not so nice as in Venice or Amsterdam. This photo is the only I could make without tourists or modern buildings in the background. The street which according to the "Lonely Planet Guide" was the nicest, was full of tourist shops, restaurats and people, people, people... OK, it was first of may, everybody was on holidays. On the right you see the famous "dumplings", in this case very sophisticated.
But finally we got to one of the axcient gardens, "The couple's garden", VERY VERY nice! It was not only a garden, but more an estate of sombody wealthy of the whatever dynasty, nearly a labyrinth of houses and gardens. This is exactly what I would like to have when I retire!! :-)
The decorations are all of carved wood and the plantings between rock etc. quite romantic.
  We passed quite a long time there, wandering around, not saturating after all the dust and noise of Shanghai.
But then we decided, instead of walking more around and see other gardens or temples of the same style, to go to a neighboured town called Tongli which could not be more than half an hour away, by Taxi of course. We found one soon and the driver understood at the first instant. But then it was quite farther than we thought, and we got into a traffic jam, so at least it was one hour to get there. That was bad, because we had only 1,5 hours to spend as the return also needed one hour and the train was at 18h. But it was worth the effort, this town was really small at least, ok, it was not a town, it was a part of the urban zone we still did not left in all this time and it cost entry! Everything has entry fees, not only the museums and temples, also the garden and tourist areas like that. The streets reminded me a little of "los pueblos blancos de Andalucia", although not as white as them... There were also a lot of people, tourist attractions, theater, but everything more authentic than the other city before. The only pity was, that we did not find the "Sex museum", read here about it: http://www.thechinaguide.com/?action=activity/view&activity_id=172

What we needed urgently after the long taxi trip and after paying again an entrance fee for the village (100 Yuan!) was a good cold beer (píjiǔ [烹])... We got one in a shop and sat on a bank on the center square to let the impressions act on us. I don't mean so much the tourist attractions like the old women dancing with a dragon,  but more the people. Here there were much more "hortera"/"schräg" then in Shanghai, gente del pueblo... Look at the orange shoes, the hair cut of the boys (Manga-style) and the old man in pijama!! It's not a joke, its a chinese style, pijama style...