Old Buildings and a Garden and Stuff

I couldn't think of anything witty or interesting for a title. I mentioned previously that I was in Suzhou. It's about an hour outside of Shanghai by bus and has quite interesting things to look at/take photos of. There is a Chinese saying that goes "Above there is heaven [or paradise], below is Suzhou". There are a couple of rather nice preserved old school high walled gardens that you generally see in Chinese films that house aristocrats/bureaucrats.

I went to a couple of them, but the one that is generally somewhat famous is called 'The Humble Administrator's Garden'. It's considered one of the finest in southern China. The footprint of the whole place is quite big, some 50'000m² (I may have googled that) and it's a bit less than 500 years old. It was cut up and divided at various times over the years, but was pretty much sewn back together after the civil war. Anyway. It's an interesting place to wander around. I happened to go the week before Chinese New Year (新年快乐, by the way), so it was pretty quiet, and there was still a little snow lying around so it was very picturesque. Well, sort of. It was nice as there were so few people around, as it probably gets heaving in the summer, but since it is still winter there are just about no pretty colours. It's all a bit grey. Which is good for me, as you aren't really missing out with black and white.

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Next to where I was standing there is pavilion where you can sit and look across the rather large pond/small lake thing, and see the pagoda in the background. Annoyingly there were people sitting there doing just that so, I stood to the left and got pretty much the same view. 

 A lot of effort goes in to these things, they are very interestingly sculpted gardens and lots of different pavilions so you can sit and enjoy the different scenery from different view points.

 There is something special about this corridor, something to do with the length of it and the square holes in the wall, and looking through it. I wasn't quite paying attention at this point when it was explained to me, but revel in it's wonder if you will.

I'm slightly annoyed about this photo for a couple of reasons. I cut the bottom of it off, because I was trying to take it quickly, but mostly because I stood there for ages trying to frame in a nice way, and there was not a single person walking around. As soon as I wanted to take the picture, these people started walking past. Well not these people, but just a bloody great long trail of them and not one cottoned on to the fact that I wasn't quite interested in taking pictures of them. I didn't really have the patience to wait any longer either. It's intentionally off centre though - I feel I should point that out... 

As is the next one.

 This is just the other side of it. I have been meaning to find out why they have doorways like this.

I will try and head back when the weather is better because I imagine the colours would be quite impressive. Particularly for these.

It was a nice day, and I liked the look of this thing. 

 I would have liked to have been closer to catch this kid running. But as you can probably guess from the slightly off angle I was in a hurry to take this (actually, these are usually slightly skewed).

 Like so. I was trying to get the doorway and the open window and make it look cool and interesting, but I probably should have moved back.

I just like the way there is still snow on the ground. Stupid people wouldn't get out of my way, and well I have a no doctoring pictures policy (bar that one from Bristol. Shhh).