Wuxi Day 1: Mystery Meat.

Saturday 5 April, 2014 

¥10.00         Map
¥8.50           Breakfast
¥10.00         Bus 
¥22.00         Entry into Liyuan
¥15.00         Bracelet
¥75.00         Entry into Sanguo City + Water Park
¥20.00         Lunch (Mystery meat and (non)Stinky Tofu)
¥160.00       Calligraphy Poem
¥10.00        Archery
¥8.00          Taxi
¥6.00          Taxi
¥32.00        Dinner
¥65.00        Shopping (Belt + Pens)
¥6.50          Taxi

Total: ¥448.00 ($80.40)

Weekly Total: ¥2184.05 ($392.11)

Total Spend: ¥19590.75 ($3768.55 AUD)

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So these first four photos were taken at Li Yuan, and I must say, it has to be the most beautiful garden I have been to yet. <No disrepect HZ, I haven't been to the botanical gardens inside my own city yet!>

On the way there though we encountered a 毛病 (problem). Half way to our destination the bus driver yelled "I'm late! I'm going straight to the last stop!" so almost all the passengers got off. I wasn't sure whether this was common practice, but it was pretty suspicious since he stopped us off at a bus stop where there were many black, unregistered taxis waiting.  

Wuxi isn't a big city, but traffic and bad transport systems can make any small city seem like a whole county. It took us another hour to get to San Guo city, which should have been only 5km away.

- - -

San Guo City is a major tourist attraction in Wuxi. It's a huge complex which was originally created to film historical movies (almost like the Universal Studios of China). The most famous film made there goes by the same name (Romance of The Three Kingdoms) , and it is one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature (四大名著）。 

The book is set during the late Eastern Han Dynasty (184-220CE) and the Three Kingdoms period (220-280CE) so the architecture and surroundings all reflect this period.

Nowadays, it is no longer a filming studio and instead has been open to the public to explore. 

The sign welcoming you to the complex.

Entry into San Guo City.

It's a very popular tourist attraction as you can see.. here are all the people crowding up to see the demonstrations and performances on.

San Guo City is only a short stroll away from Water Margins City but we were dumb and decided to take the bus one stop away. It was the most crowded experience of my life.

I'm pretty sure the concoction of body odours infused into my soul. We were one smell.

We were so packed I counted 10+ people in 1m² space. Anyway I talked more about this in my other blog so I'll move on.

Traffic truly is the bane of my existence. We spent at least 45 minutes on each bus, so we wasted a lot of the day just on public transport. By the time we arrived at Water Margins it was already 5, and they were closing up at 6:00pm. Luckily these places don't kick you out, so technically you could stay all night there (if the security guards don't catch you). Everything was pretty much closed or closing up when we went, but luckily there was still some light so we could recreate some awesome kung fu scenes in the forests. 

This photo is for my cousins who all love scary looking baby toys.

Actually I must say, we were pretty lucky coming so late as we caught this 书法家 (Calligrapher) without a crowd. He was offering to write poems of our names for only 10 kuai, so of course I went for it.

After he wrote the poem, he offered to write it on a scroll for 220 yuan. I told him I had to think about it while my other friends got their poems written. He had an assistant, who was telling us that a poem on a piece of paper is worthless, but if we buy the scroll which has his stamp and symbol, suddenly that had a price. Apparently he is very famous (he had photos with celebrities and scrolls everywhere). I was very happy with my worthless poem anyway, but as we were finishing up she said they'd cut the price to 160 yuan since she saw we were filthy poor students. (maybe not those words)

I was happy to pay 160 yuan (around $30) for a personalised souvenir, so I ended up buying it.

The calligrapher transposing his poem onto the scroll.

Finally as the sun set, we quickly decided to take some jump shots in the forests. The first day was definitely rushed and tiring, but it was a great glimpse into Wuxi.