Friday Sightseeing

As you should know, the Chinese holidays don't line up with the holidays in the US and therefore we are on vacation today for Tomb Sweeping Day. I'll have more information on that tomorrow but today (Friday), it's Tiger Hill, the Hanshan Temple and Fengqiao Scenic Area.

Tiger Hill, known also as Surging Sea Hill, is a large hillock, standing 36 meters high and covering an area of some 14,100 square meters. The main attractions are; The Tomb of King He Lu: His son buried him in the hill and three days after the funeral, a white tiger came and sat upon the grave, seeming to be a guard. From then on, the place has been known as Tiger Hill. Tiger Hill Pagoda: The pagoda standing on the hill's summit is part of the Yunyan Temple. The oldest pagoda in Suzhou, it serves as a landmark of the city. Built during the Northern Song Dynasty (959-961), the 48-meter-high seven-story octahedron has leant towards the northwest in the past 400 years. Sword Testing Stone and Sword Pool: King He Lu was a zealous collector of rare swords and it is said that he tested them upon this stone, leaving the crevice on the rock. As for his swords, it is believed that they were buried beneath the Sword Pool as funerary objects. Lu Yu Well: Lu Yu was a master of tea art who wrote the first book on this subject, The Treatise of Tea.

Before we entered into the park, we watched a 30 minute video on Tiger Hill. A portion of the video can be seen in small version in the lower left hand side of the page on the following link http://www.tigerhill.com/EN/

30 minutes seemed to be a long time but it contained a lot of flowery speech to set the mood, my mood was "BO-RING!" but I sat through about 20 minutes before I got up and "stretched my legs". It provided a lot of history of the area but you had to weed through a lot of "stuff" to get to it. This really was a full day excursion that we did in about 3 hours. There is a lot to see and I know when I go back with the family, we'll take a little more time to be sure we see everything.

Hanshan Temple was our second stop on the tour. It is a living temple, meaning monks are there worshipping and stuff so it was very tough to determine when I could or could not take photos. I don't want to take pictures and cause anyone to lose face so I don't have many photos here (I watched Kung Fu as a kid and I know what a monk can do when pushed). The Buddhas in this temple were very nice, although with the photos I took you might notice a very familiar looking symbol on the chest of the Buddha figure. It's not what you think but it's very close. The temple was originally built during the reign of Tianjian in the Liang Dynasty. The poem of “ Mooring to the Maple Bridge at Night ” by Zhang Ji of the Tang Dynasty is so oft-quoted and widely loved that the poetic rhyme and the bell-tolling sounds have made the Hanshan Temple famous at home and abroad. The poem doesn't translate well but is known throughout the country. My picture is taken by the stone with the poem.

The scenic area took you out to see one of the busy waterways. We watched as bricks were unloaded from the barge using a very old technique. This was just an area to walk around and see a few shops and stuff. Not a lot to tell from this, we didn't walk the entire area becuase it was getting late and the walk would've been too much. It was a nice area but like everything else here, you pay to play.

Check out the photos, just click on the link and you're off. It was a very tiring day, a lot of walking. I don't think I've walked this much in my life but it's part of what is done here. I kinda enjoy walking around and seeing things but I think my shoes are going to wear out very quickly. My feet are larger than the average Chinese so buying shoes in Suzhou is going to be challenging. I'll probably have to go to Shaghai to shop for shoes. Enjoy the photos.