The students were on holiday when I arrived in China and their second semester started up February 18th. Many went home for the holidays but to my luck Lloyd was back in Suzhou from the 10th-13th then had to go away. So for those 3 days I got to go out and visit some amazing places, the first one being the Chinese garden. The second day I got to visit Shantang street.

We took a little boat ride which they use to use as the main transportation. It was very nice to view the streets from the water and see how they use the paddles to move. 

After that we had lunch at one of the many resturants that lined the canals.

They have a very special rice that grows only in Suzhou and underwater. It’s really expensive though because each peice of rice has its own shell. I did get to try some in a shrimp and rice dish we ordered. We also had pork with a type of vegetable, it was covered in a type of sauce making it look really dark, but it was so good. We also got soup to warm up and the vegetable in it was almost like a chia seed when you put it in liquid. There was an invisible soft outer layer around the vegetable. One thing that I wasn’t a fan of was in the soup there were very very small full fish. So I could see the eyes and it was a little disturbing but I didn’t want to be rude so I ate it trying not to think about it.

Later in the day we had a snack which was deepfried tofu with a special sauce and some spices on it. The only weird thing is there was white tofu but also one with a black crust… which was mold. It was really smelly but tasted alright.