After about 5 days in Shanghai, we took a 3-hour train ride to Souzhou. This small city is littered with beautiful and serene Chinese gardens, often found in the former residences of wealthy politicans and merchants. Today many of the gardens are open as tourist attractions, and we visited quite a few of them, accounting for many of the pictures here. Late in the day, we made our way to a large temple surrounded by more gardens and the beautiful tower you'll see below. There's also one strange shot of us horsing around with a friendly Chinese guy we met outside the temple. We didn't stay overnight in Suzhou, as we'd booked the voyage to our next destination, Hangzhou, on a sleeper boat--actually a barge that a tugboat slowly dragged down China's Grand Canal while we slept. The last two photos are a view of the canalside before sunset and a look at our humble accomodations.