Wandering

I was looking for the historical district along the canal when I took a wrong turn down a street full of bridal dress shops, and in between the bridal dress shops, bridal accessory shops. And in between bridal dress and bridal accessory shops, alleys with racks of bridal dresses and tables of accessories.

I soon realised I was on the wrong track and turned back and retraced my steps. It always seems like such a waste of time, to retrace steps, but the road had ended and there wasn’t another way out.

The road I then chose passed the Calm Garden: it seemed like I was on the right track. After my meagre lunch of cold boiled beef and garlic macerated cucumber, (40 kuai with a half litre of beer) I was looking at the street stalls for a tasty snack.  I paid the same for lunch as I did for a coffee that morning.

Aside: English menu means different things to different people. I thought it was the regular menu translated into English, but when I saw the delicious looking things other diners were ordering, I figured it was a menu the proprietor thought would appeal to western tastes. Why travel to China if you don’t like Chinese food? Anyway, lesson learned.  Next time the Chinese menu and I’ll point to the pictures.

Wandering through the village, I noticed fewer bridal shops and more stores selling fabric and notions. Fewer food stalls and more stalls selling ingredients. Vegetables piled up on the street, meat in various stages of butchery, pens of chickens clucking in alarm in full view of the processing table, with a rotisserie nearby, turning feathers into golden crispy skin. Can’t get fresher than that.

As I wandered deeper into the villa the stalls surrendered to the rubbish houses, little buildings intended to but failing to contain the refuse of life in the back alleys. Across the street, on the street were coin operated washing machines, laundry drying on lines stretched in front of buildings.

Deeper still, through a window a woman fits a garment to her dress makers’ dummy. Piles of fabric scraps feature in and around the rubbish houses. And soon the rubbish houses are just piles outside houses.  The houses are little better than those to house rubbish.

I walk past a garden, fenced off by bamboo lattice, watered by a hose coming from the Calm Garden on the other side of a high brick wall. Not vegetables or market garden, but ornamental plants, grown for the tourist attraction.

The streets are still getting smaller. Not wanting to turn back, I press on. Surely these alleys must eventually open to a main street.

The path goes under a bridge, which for a moment I think is the highway my bus took getting here. Then I notice the power lines indicating a train track. I didn’t realise there was a train track. I keep walking forwards.

I’m in a wasteland between the train track and the inaccessible highway. Its not totally desolate: there are cars under covers as I walk for kilometres with a rising dread. This place isn’t on my tourist map.

I could still go back if I had to, though the squalor, re-interrupting these peoples lives with my strange presence, or I could go forward into the unknown.  I wouldn’t get myself in this situation in most places in the world: with no phone, no internet, no effective map, no language of value, but I trust China and Chinese people.

A man stops ahead of me on a scooter. I ask him where we are. He asks me where am I going? I wish I had enough Chinese to tell him I’m on an adventure, to see the sights, to see how people live in Suzhou. Instead I tell him I don’t know. I point to the historical district on the map. He will take me there in his car. I’m relieved and grateful of his offer, and, despite my trust of Chinese people, slightly fearful I could be kidnapped, raped and murdered. Its hard to avoid those kinds of warnings from the modern world, but I wish there were a way to just trust. People are inherently good.

As my saviour talked away, I had to apologise that I didn’t understand, my Chinese is terrible, despite my perfect Beijing accent. I told him I was Australian and he apologised for not speaking English. We’re in China, I reassured him, not Australia. I gave him the card I had asked the hotel concierge to write out for me to get me to Tiger Hill on the bus, and he knew where to drop me off.

He asked if I was alone, and I told him I was. I imagine he was asking if I was scared, or lecturing me for wandering by myself on the back alleys of Suzhou, but maybe he was complementing me on my bravery and resourcefulness.

We got to the bus stop and he made sure I knew how to catch the bus to take me home. I said, “thank you, friend”, he said he didn’t want thank. I got out and he drove on with his life.

Had he looked in his rear view mirror, he might have felt like the farmer who saves his animal from the bog, only to see it run straight back in, for instead of turning back towards the bus station, I continued on my journey to find the historical district.