The trip from Chengdu to Shanghai was our longest train ride yet, something like 36 hours long. We managed to trim a few hours off the trip by stopping in Suzhou and then taking a faster train (because, of course, the cross-country train is one of the slowest they've got) into the city the next day, and we got a day in Suzhou out of the deal as well.

Suzhou is famous for its many well-preserved classical gardens, and the lush early spring was a beautiful time to visit, full of flowers, bobbing peony buds, and fluttering leaves. We skipped the largest, most famous (and most expensive) garden so that we could see several smaller ones. We started with the Lion Grove Garden, a maze of stones, all worn and distorted into pillars of melting Swiss cheese by years of resting on a lake bottom, and then polished smooth here and there by the passage of many hands. The stones are cunningly assembled into winding paths that cross over and under each other, squeezing twists and tunnels into tiny corners and then suddenly opening to reveal pavilions, lakes, and waterfalls.

Other gardens are less, well, gimmicky, but no less beautiful, focusing instead on quiet, manicured courtyards, polished wooden halls, and naturalistic groves. Each area of a traditional garden is usually given a name that refers to both the specific aesthetics of the garden and to lines from poems and famous quotations. The only problem with this is that much of the wordplay, and the nuances of the characters chosen, is untranslatable, and is therefore completely lost on those who do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of Chinese literature and the ability to read characters. Perhaps inevitably, Greg and I spent most of the day guessing the titles for the courtyards we walked through and making up alternate ones.

Spending all day walking through gardens works up an appetite, so we also spent some time in the charming shopping districts of Suzhou looking for local specialties. The Jiangsu province is well-known for the sweet and tender flesh of xiao long xia, a small, lobster-like crustacean, similar to the crayfish. Beer seems to be a popular accompaniment to xiao long xia: many restaurants we passed around town had large window signs picturing bedewed beer bottles looming over bright red tails and legs akimbo. Our gigantic bowl of xiao long xia, which we ordered by pointing at a lobster-shaped cut-out window decal, certainly benefitted from a beer chaser, since they were served in a super-salty broth, rich with five-spice and loaded with chilies. The light tang of a beer, like the cilantro served on top, helped cut the sultry broth, and that combination of richness, spiciness, and freshness brought out the flavors of the sweet flesh.

We also ordered some twice-cooked pork, a dish of Sichuanese origin, which turned out to be completely superfluous in terms of volume of food needed, but essential in terms of deliciousness. The pork was fried to a melting crisp, and the peppers blistered and slicked with oil.

The tourists pouring in to see the gardens also flock to another of Suzhou's legacies, the many historic restaurants that line "Gourmet Street", and after an afternoon of more gardens, we joined them. This is another place that I would have liked to do more research, because while several of the restaurants had little plaques relating the history of the restaurants, they weren't very helpful in deciding which one to visit, and the milling crowds and neon signs didn't help either. We picked an unassuming-but-ancient noodle shop, where our bewildered staring at the menu prompted a friendly manager to pull out a ratty little notebook filled with mostly-nonsensical English dish titles. We picked some pork noodles, some dumplings, and something that turned out to be crispy duck: simple, comforting food, believably something that could have been served on that spot a hundred years ago or more.

After a full day of garden-viewing and two heavy meals, we hit the hostel early so we could wake up in time for our train into Shanghai. In the morning, the sun was bright and clear on the white plaster of the alley outside our hostel, and on the buns, breads, and boiled eggs that the street vendors were selling from entryways and alcoves. We browsed the street up and down, observing egg-filled crepes, stuffed breads, tea eggs, and a dozen kinds of dumplings and buns before settling on some steamed chicken buns and little fried scallion dumplings. Steamed buns are a breakfast I would eat any day — I actually woke up that morning craving congee, but I think the combination of the moist and savory filling and slightly sweet fluffy exterior could cure a pretty wide range of cravings, especially when accompanied by these little oily scallion dumplings. The freshly fried morsels develop a chewy edge on their thickish skins, yielding up their aromatic filling only after a satisfying crunch.