It’s been almost two weeks now since I’ve been in Suzhou and I have to say Suzhou is a beautiful place. It’s hard to believe that mostly everything around here where I live and work (Suzhou Industrial Park, S.I.P.) was farmland probably less than fifteen years ago. Everything has been placed here to create an urban feel, I mean everything including all the trees. This area was marshy rice fields before China and Singapore got together on this huge joint venture to bring just about any kind of manufacturing plants you can think of to produce here. Every day on the bus to work I see huge buildings that house companies like mine to mass produce whatever product they make. Bosch, Samsung, fuji film and tons of others that I couldn’t begin to tell you the names of.
Every morning the streets are overflowing with cars, busses, bicycles, scooters (e-bikes) and people all on their way to work. Three lane roads quickly funnel into intersections of madness with most people not concerned with the color of the traffic lights, even the ones on bikes. Horns seem to be the most important part of a vehicle and a flash of headlights means this is my lane, here I come. Amongst all of that there are people sweeping leaves off the roads with their twig brooms. All of the hedges are kept immaculately trimmed all by hand held hedge clippers. Trucks with water tanks watering all of the flowers are not an uncommon sight or I have also seen people with gas powered sump pumps taking water out of the canals to water the trees.
There is a huge lake called JinJi lake that is the center piece of the area and of course it’s man made. Every night all of the bridges are lit up with neon lights and from the side I live on I can see a ferris wheel that I believe is claimed to be the biggest in the world. I haven’t been there yet but is in a park aptly named ferris wheel park. On certain nights they project a lazer show on to the ferris wheel, it’s quite a sight. The odd thing is many nights around the lake the restaurants and outlet stores are nearly empty. It’s like a grand show for a few people. There are countless high rise hotels which I hear are mostly empty while new ones are still going up. It’s build it and they will come I guess. But, that’s not always a bad thing. It’s nice to have dinner in a quiet empty restaurant after a long day at work and the noisy commute.
Every morning the streets are overflowing with cars, busses, bicycles, scooters (e-bikes) and people all on their way to work. Three lane roads quickly funnel into intersections of madness with most people not concerned with the color of the traffic lights, even the ones on bikes. Horns seem to be the most important part of a vehicle and a flash of headlights means this is my lane, here I come. Amongst all of that there are people sweeping leaves off the roads with their twig brooms. All of the hedges are kept immaculately trimmed all by hand held hedge clippers. Trucks with water tanks watering all of the flowers are not an uncommon sight or I have also seen people with gas powered sump pumps taking water out of the canals to water the trees.
There is a huge lake called JinJi lake that is the center piece of the area and of course it’s man made. Every night all of the bridges are lit up with neon lights and from the side I live on I can see a ferris wheel that I believe is claimed to be the biggest in the world. I haven’t been there yet but is in a park aptly named ferris wheel park. On certain nights they project a lazer show on to the ferris wheel, it’s quite a sight. The odd thing is many nights around the lake the restaurants and outlet stores are nearly empty. It’s like a grand show for a few people. There are countless high rise hotels which I hear are mostly empty while new ones are still going up. It’s build it and they will come I guess. But, that’s not always a bad thing. It’s nice to have dinner in a quiet empty restaurant after a long day at work and the noisy commute.
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