OLD SUZHOU MARKET: SHANGTANGJIE

This is my favorite picture of ShangTang
(all photos by Cameron Ishee)

My host family took me to a famous street in Old Suzhou called ShangTang. We stayed there until it got dark, and then the whole place lit up in a dozen colors of light. It was beautiful, this slightly bewildering mix of the very old and very new that's everywhere in China.

This is my second favorite picture from ShangTang

I took this as the sun was setting, filtering through the trees and backlighting the rooftops.

If anyone has the slightest idea what this fruit thing is, please let me know! There are trees all over Suzhou that are dropping this red flower-like thing, and nobody's been able to tell me what it is!

This is the ceiling of a small ice cream shop tucked into a corner of ShangTangJie. People from all over the world come to write their wished on...well, really on anything. 

There were currencies from a dozen different countries, playing cards, tickets from busses, trains, planes and boats, and an overabundance of sticky notes. They are taped to the walls, shoved into the wickerwork of the chairs, left propped on the windowsill...and taped to the ceiling, stapled to each other in long, fluttering, downright kaleidoscopic chains that blow in front of the lights and make the room flicker and shimmer whenever the wind blows.

I didn't write a wish, for a fairly silly reason: I want some tangible reason to return to Suzhou. Aside from the abstract, emotional reasons that are hard to lay out and make sense of, I feel like I need to leave some specific thing conspicuously undone, as a kind of insurance that I will come back here. 

The canal that ShangTangJie is sort of based around seemed perpetually full of people in boats. They use these long, rectangular vessels to transport everything from trash to people. Swishing a tiller around in the back, like a paddle, is the most common way to propel the boats (after electricity), but when it comes to landing or pushing off, the...sailors (canal-ers? Is this sailing?) like to use long wooden poles, not unlike those used in the West in times gone by.

Carroll, this is a clue for you, as to your present that I'm bringing back :)

I.M. PEI'S FINAL MASTERPIECE: THE SUZHOU MUSEUM

Suzhou Museum
Photo by Kerun Ip, Pei Partnership Architects

Cameron's class recently visited the Suzhou Museum, built by I.M. Pei, the world-renowned architect whose ancestral roots are in Jiangsu Province. There is a fascinating story behind the design and construction of the museum. 

This project is eloquently described by the PBS series, American Masters, which aired a 2010 episode called I.M. Pei: Building China Modern.

I.M Pei has been called the most important living modern architect,  defining the landscapes of some of the world’s greatest cities.  A monumental figure in his field and a laureate of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, Pei is the senior statesman of modernism and last surviving link to such great early architects as Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe.   Entering into the twilight of his career and well into his eighties, Pei returns to his ancestral home of Suzhou, China to work on his most personal project to date.   He is commissioned to build a modern museum in the city’s oldest neighborhood which is populated by classical structures from the Ming and Qing dynasties.  For the architect who placed the pyramid at the Louvre, the test to integrate the new with the old is familiar but still difficult.  The enormous task is to help advance China architecturally without compromising its heritage.  In the end, what began as his greatest challenge and a labor of sentiment, says Pei, ultimately becomes “my biography.”

Suzhou Museum 
Photo by Kerun Ip, Pei Partnership Architects

~ Posted by Pam Hughes

A SURVEY AT THE SUZHOU ZOO

Cameron with young zoogoers in Suzhou, August 2012

Last year in Shanghai, Cameron's final school project involved exercising her conversation skills. She was supposed to talk with five Mandarin speakers and designed a brief survey exploring their attitudes toward dogs. Being Cameron, she ended up interviewing 50 people in a shopping mall, then analyzed demographic information for a class presentation and made conclusions based on age and gender.

This year in Suzhou, Cameron chose a similar project, with a twist. During her independent study for High Tech High, she had interviewed Chinese families visiting the San Diego Zoo about their perceptions of similarities and differences with Chinese zoos.

Cameron interviews Chinese tourists at San Diego Zoo in May 2012 

In Suzhou, she followed up with a 50-person survey at the Suzhou Zoo. 

Cameron with children at Suzhou Zoo, August 2012

Among other queries, Cameron asked visitors what, if anything, bothered them about animal care at the zoo. She found that very few visitors noticed things that Cameron perceived as deficiencies, such as an animal lacking water. 

Cameron interviews families at Suzhou Zoo, August 2012

She also took a tip from a student survey, designed by Dr. Chia Tan of the San Diego Zoo, measuring attitudes of primary school children in rural Guizhou Province, and asked each person to name their favorite animal. Interestingly, most people had difficulty naming a favorite animal, even while at the zoo, as if they hadn't ever considered it! 

Just one more cultural clue to aid Cameron in understanding the evolution of Chinese attitudes toward animal welfare, the influence of zoos on those attitudes, and the development of effective conservation education programs for Chinese children. 

~ Posted by Pam Hughes

SUZHOU GARDEN TOUR

Master of the Nets Window, Photo by Jerome Silbergeld

Cameron's group toured some of Suzhou's cultural sites, including two of its famous gardens: Master of the Nets Garden and Lingering Garden.


Only one acre, Master of the Nets is the smallest of Suzhou's historically significant gardens. A latticed window that resembles a fishing net gives it its name. Some of its features include "Shooting at Ducks Walkway", "Pavilion Where the Moon Meets the Wind", and "Chapel of Accumulated Emptiness". An online guide from the University of Washington can be found here: http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/3wangshy.htm#netwindow 

Master of the Nets Garden, Photo by Cultural-China.com

Cameron & friends at Master of the Nets Garden

The students also visited the 30-acre Lingering Garden, built in 1583 during the Ming Dynasty. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is one of the four most significant classical gardens in all of China. 

Cloud-capped Peak at Lingering Garden

Distinguishing features include elegant buildings, hundreds of calligraphy-carved steles and a tall pillar of limestone, known as Cloud-capped Peak. 

Lingering Garden, Suzhou (Photo by China5000Year.blogspot.com)

The man-made mountains and lakes are meant to resemble a scrolled classical Chinese landscape painting. A brief description of Lingering Garden can be found here: http://www.7wonders.org/wonders/asia/china/suzhou/the-lingering-garden.aspx

Students in front of Cloud-capped Peak (Photo by Claire Balani)

~ Posted by Pam Hughes

ANCIENT ART OF KUNQU

If you've studied Chinese culture at all, you've probably heard of Beijing Opera. (You know what I'm talking about! That thing where the actors paint their faces, put on extremely elaborate headdresses, and sing in REALLY high-pitched voices. Feel free to Google, Bing, or Baidu it, it's pretty interesting).  

Beijing Opera

Beijing Opera is a few hundred years old, making it kind of like a drop in the river that is Chinese history. However, its parent art, Kunqu, is older still. (Brief history at: http://www.kunqusociety.org/kunqu/history/)

Kunqu actress Hu Zhifeng

Kunqu actor Yu Zhenfei


Kunqu is native to Jiangsu Province, where I'm living right now. 

From Wikipedia: Jiangsu Province
 The name comes from jiang, (city of Jiangning), and su, (city of Suzhou)

Last week, we had a culture class on Kunqu, taught by a professional actress.

She let me try on a piece of her headdress! 

It's shaped like a phoenix, which is kind of a traditional feminine symbol (the way dragons are masculine). 

Funny story: I was at a restaurant with my host family, and my host sister told me that the building we were in was roughly 250 years old. I laughed, and told her that all of America was roughly 250 years old. Situations like these are pretty common when one is in a country with one of the longest recorded histories!

CHINESE CHICKLET CHOP COOKIES

We baked cookies!!!!! This is a story. This is going to be broken into two parts, the buying stuff and the baking stuff parts.

BUYING:

By "we", I mean myself along with six other NSLI-Y kids. On Saturday, several of us (Vanessa, Elliot, Margaret, and Ida) met up outside the school and then took the bus to buy things like vanilla extract from the western grocery where I bought my bread-making things (speaking of which, I need to make more bread). 

But this is easier said then done. We got horrendously lost, and ended up hanging out by The Pants. We called another student (David) who lives by The Pants, and he and his host brother came and helped us out. We wandered around the SIP [Suzhou Industrial Park] for a little bit, before stumbling on the grocery.

I thought we were miles away from where we were. I was actually trying to get to an entirely different (and not as good) market because I had given up all hope of finding the grocery and the other market seemed closer. I practically had a spiritual moment when I decided to go another block down to see if any of the stores sold something cold to drink, and found THE store. 

Seriously, this store might as well have been the holy grail. I had literally given up.

Anyways, we bought stuff (BASIL!!!!! I HAVE BEEN TO SO MANY CHINESE GROCERY STORES, SO MANY SPICE STORES, SO MANY DIFFERENT PLACES, AND ONLY TWO PEOPLE HAD EVEN HEARD OF BASIL. I WAS CONVINCED THAT BASIL DOES NOT EXIST IN CHINA. BUT IT DOES!!!!!! :) :) :) ), and made our way back to my house. Amy joined up with us, making seven. 

BAKING:

One important thing to know about Ida is that when it comes to cooking, she is in charge. I am pretty much convinced that if you left her alone in a classroom for a few hours, she'd find a way to bake the desks in to an edible, scale model of the Great Wall or something. 

There was plenty of unit conversions and guesstimating (ha! Gmail agrees with me, "guesstimating" is a real word!), but it was all fun. We made the first batch using Hershey's chocolate chips (THAT I COULD EAT. I CHECKED IT ABOUT SEVEN TIMES, AND ALL SEVEN TIMES THE LABEL SAID IT WAS OKAY:) :) It was really tasty too, I've been missing chocolate) on an improvised cookie sheet.  

I took one of the many aluminum bread pans (they only sold them in packs of six, and I only need one), and cut lengthwise down the corners. Then I flattened out the sides. It was basically the same as a cookie sheet without corners. 

Then David, Ida, and Elliot had to go, so four of us made the second batch using the Skippers I'd brought from the States [nut-free M&Ms].

 It was wonderful to get a long, interrupted chance to talk to these people, about all kinds of things. I really do hope I'll do a better job of staying in contact with these people than I did last year when this all is over (SCARY THOUGHT, I AM AVOIDING IT)

My host grandmother tastes her first chocolate chip cookie!

SUZHOU ZOO

Entrance to Suzhou Zoo

I went to the zoo!!!!!!!! 


Unfortunately, the earliest time school ever ends is 2 pm, it is an hour long trip from the school to the zoo (assuming that you don't get lost as thoroughly as Elliot and I did), and the zoo kicks everybody out at 5 pm, so I only got to thoroughly see about a third of it before I had to leave. 

Suzhou Zoo May 2012, Photo by Hang Xinwei, Xinhuanet

Long story short: :(  (sadface). 


Not as badly as I was warned that it would suck, but it is rather terrible. I was really, really close to spitting a hunk of phlem in one man's face, and the bears were particularly sad. 

Bear at Suzhou Zoo, April 2012,
Photo courtesy of McLain Family Blog at http://mclainsabroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/suzhou-zoo.html

But I got pictures! And I'm trying to see all the terrible things as potential.