Dec. 31 - Beijing to Shanghai to Zhouzhuang to Suzhou

On New Year’s Eve, after a leisurely morning working on my paper and such, we went to the airport to catch our flight to Shanghai. At the airport, we were bussed from the terminal to our 747-400. When we were called to board, the rush was amazing, and it was just to get on a cramped bus! And then as soon as the bus doors opened at our destination, there was another mad rush to board the plane. I thought they were giving away free upgrades, from the way the people rushed and pushed.

At first, all the pushing and shoving really got to me. But then one day, I found myself waiting for people to go ahead of me. And then I found myself still waiting a few minutes later, and I realized that if I didn’t find the aggressive self in me, I was going to be waiting my turn for a long, long time. There is definitely a lesser sense of personal space. I get bumped into all the time, but no one cares. I guess when the country is that crowded, you’d spend half your day apologizing if you were so inclined. I’ve found myself being a little pushy now.

But that’s today. On New Year’s Eve, I was flying to Shanghai. When we landed, our guide met us and drove us to Zhouzhuang, almost two hours away. We passed through what our guide called “countryside;” I was struck by the dirty canals and the fact that crops were planted around the bases of those giant metal structures that hold up power lines. Night fell, and we continued on. I hate driving in the dark, because the scenery is just an indiscriminate mess of grays and blues. And then, out of nowhere, we would drive into a downtown area, that was surprisingly alive and bustling for the night of New Year’s Eve. Stores were open, and people were filling the streets, doing their shopping. I felt my first pangs of loneliness as I happened to glance into a restaurant and saw about 30 people who all seemed to know each other sitting down to dinner after someone gave a toast.

We arrived in Zhouzhuang, an ancient city that is laced with canals and stone bridges and has gondolas to ride on and everything. It was rather enchanting at night, with all the lights reflecting in the water, but we were tired. Also, our guide walked REALLY quickly and liked to push us through from site to site very quickly. So we soon got back in our van and drove onwards to Suzhou, which, according to our guide, has 6 million residents and is the third richest city in China and is famous for its silk and beautiful women.

Suzhou was equally alive as the small downtown areas we had driven through earlier. There were so many shops open and so much neon signage, I felt like I was in Vegas. We had dinner, checked into our hotel, and I settled in for what I hoped was a productive night of paper writing. Instead, as it was the first hotel with internet, I caught up on email and such. At midnight, I was startled by fireworks. They were loud. That’s because they were being set off from the parking lot in front of the hotel. (See pictures.)

And that was how I rang in 2007.

China Day 4