Tongli

On Saturday, for the first time after the corona crisis here in China, we did some sightseeing. Since we are unfortunately not allowed to travel to other cities yet, we chose Tongli, a water town here in Suzhou. Henry, a colleague of Simon's, also came with his family.

On site, Henry's 3-year-old daughter greeted us with the words: 'Do you like to jump?' Ellie, equipped with a pink sun hat and butterfly face mask, jumped around and sang various half English, half Chinese children's songs.

This time Henry's mother was also with us, who cannot be compared to a typical grandma at all. With the help of her selfie stick, she posed and took selfies everywhere. The oversized sunglasses were a must! Of course, Ellie also had to pose for grandma and mom, which was sometimes really funny.

Tongli itself is very beautifully laid out. You can take a boat tour on the canal and of course there are beautiful gardens again. It is not for nothing that Suzhou is called the Venice of the East because of Tongli. However, everything is very commercialized again. There are small shops everywhere where you can buy all sorts of things: food, specialties from Suzhou, Chinese clothes, toys, combs, teas, jewelry and much more.

Normally, when we are traveling, we go to one of the local restaurants to eat. However, since Henry's wife does not want to go to the restaurant out of fear of the virus, we brought our Swabian vesper ourselves - including homemade cake.

We really enjoyed it again and it was really good for us to finally see something other than the office, the apartment, and supermarkets!

But see for yourself ;-)