there was no way I could navigate the city
unaided.
Within an instant I was whisked from the
station with a fellow punter and driven to
meet one of the old and dusty tour buses,
which populate the busy roads with their
spluttering engines and sooty fumes. Inside,
sitting on the ripped, worn leather seats, the
heat was unbearable; rickety fans feebly
churned the hot, humid air around the coach
while we waited for the seats to fill with our
fellow sightseers. It felt like eternity; having
paid no attention to the guide's explicit timekeeping notifications, the latecomers would
clamber nonchalantly onto the bus without a
hint of haste or apology.
In between these frustrations we were
treated to some mediocre vistas around the
city, which perhaps, when they were not
overwhelmed by modern development, were
once spectacular. We toured the maze of
canals on a long boat and visited various
gardens, monuments and museums but the
real highlight reared itself at the end of it all.
Just when I thought we were on the final
stretch of road towards the train station to go
back to Shanghai the coach veered off into
the suburbs before parking itself outside a
huge, ugly warehouse in a dusty building
site. Beautified ladies in miniskirts shooed
our coachload into one of the 'VIP suites',
which resembled a run-down executives'
boardroom with fading paint on the walls and
a creaky air conditioning unit in one corner.
After refreshing ourselves with a cup of
lukewarm water from the dispenser, in
stepped an old geezer in mufti carrying a
tray of mundane-looking stones. He sat at
the head of the table and waffled on in
Chinese to the assembled tourists for a full
half hour, occasionally picking the stones up
in his hand and stroking them with apparent
delight. Being sold to is bad enough in the
UK but when you're sat in a musty, hot
warehouse after a long day of mediocre
sightseeing, there surely isn't anything
worse than a hefty pitch in Chinese about
some wares you care nothing for. Eventually
the office door opened and we were
released, or rather corralled, into a mall of
glass counters containing stones of every
shape, size and colour. Once a satisfactory
number of them had been purchased by the
hypnotised punters there was finally a call
for the coach back to the station. Suzhou is
not a place I will be hurrying back to.
C.V.
BELLE’S
CHRISTMAS
DIARY
Monday, December 23rd
Last minute preparations underway! My
Personal Handyman sets off for the frozen
north (Cambridgeshire) to pick up our girl
and bring her home tomorrow. I start on the
food, including Nigella’s turkey recipe –
immerse in bucket of brine with spices, and
leave in the fridge to marinate. Then sit and
talk to little Sis, who arrived two days ago
from the even more frozen north. Midnight:
in bed, eyes shut, become aware of a
deeper darkness – a power cut.
Tuesday 24th
Awake to a cold house with no hot water. We
bravely have a chilly wash-down.
Not much we feeble females can do until PH
gets home - the camping gas canisters are
hidden somewhere in the garage. Peel the
veg. for tomorrow.
PH and our girl arrive at 5pm, and the house
is soon awash with candlelight, heat from a
log fire and the smell of cooking from the
19