Why I love China: Walking around Suzhou

 Welcome to Suzhou~

Suzhou is a relatively "small" town..for Chinese standards. For us that means it still has about 4 million citizens. It's about 45 minutes away from Shanghai by train, and since my Friend Jenny was teaching English there for 3 months, I went to visit two times in total during my 1 month stay in Shanghai.

Suzhou is often called one of the prettiest towns in China. There's even two famous sayings about this place: 

生在蘇州, 活在杭州, 吃在廣州, 死在柳州

Be born in Suzhou, live in Hangzhou, eat in Guangzhou, die in Liuzhou.

Which means that Suzhou is the best place in China to grow up at.

And the most famous one:

上有天堂，下有蘇杭

Heaven above, Suzhou and Hangzhou below.

Which says that Suzhou and Hangzhou (another city not far from Shanghai) are like heaven on earth.

Well, Suzhou is certainly beautiful enough to deserve that title.

They still use bamboo for construction works.

See that small, temple-like looking building?

That's a bus stop.

The train station looks beautiful as well, with a river right next to it.

Before you stroll through the small, pretty alleys, make sure you eat enough.

It's easy to forget about time while walking, but your tummy probably won't forget :P

This was some really, really~ delicious fried chicken and vegetables we had.

I really love eating lotus roots, it's such a nice texture.

And the meal was so delicious, we completely forget that the bird flu was happening at that time in Shanghai and that we were not supposed to eat chicken..oops.

Now, onto the pretty alleys:

In China, no matter where you go there will always be some people who sell delicious street food.

In Shanghai it was mostly Stinky Tofu...but here in Suzhou, they sold lots of interesting looking snacks and sweets.

And they were only 2 Yuan each (about  0,24€)

Look at how cute those tiny pigs are :D

We tried the fotrune fish, but it was just quite...sticky. Not much flavour T^T

This probably does not look too delicous, but it's actually sweetened sticky rice which you really need to try if you get a chance to.

I think this was osmanthus cake, which I already had in Shanghai. It's usually yummy, but it can get a little dry if it's kept in outside for too long.

Let me talk about this bun:
SO.SO YUMMY.
It was very soft, kind of spongy and super sweet.
I think the filling was Taro, and it tasted great :D

They also sold lemonade and other drinks, in cute Eiffel tower bottles:

Even the Coco sign was adjusted to fit the traditional feel of the alleys.

All the stores and restaurants put so much work into decorating everything.

Would you like a drink at Buddha Bar?

That's it for today. I still have lots~ of photos I took at a super cute café in Suzhou, but I shall upload them another day, otherwise this post will get too long. 

Hope you enjoyed this post ^-^

Did any of you ever go to Suzhou? Which places did you visit?

And most importantly, which ones of the snacks would you have tried? :D