We left Shanghai for Suzhou, and arrived partway through the day. It was a cold and rainy sort of day. We took the metro across town to the only thing that seemed like a reasonable indoor activity - the Suzhou Center of Arts and Science.
It is a beautiful, modern building right on the lake. There is an art gallery, a music conservatory, a recital hall, a movie theatre, and all sorts of other things. Including a couple of restaurants, which we were really glad to see because we were quite hungry.
We admired the art in the gallery, wandered the building, had supper, took photos from the shelter of the indoors, and watched "Frozen" in Chinese. Bea hadn't seen it yet, but I had. So it all worked out. There were no English subtitles, but Bea understood what was going on, and the music is just as fun when the words are in a different language.
Then, when we had a nice, quiet sort of evening, we took the metro back to the old fashioned hostel we were staying in. It was made up of several outbuildings in the traditional style, rooms off an open hallway that surrounds a courtyard with no roof, and a garden in the middle. Which was fun, and beautiful, and covered in snow, and unfortunately not well insulated or heated.....
The only source of warmth in the room... I named him "Peter the Heater" and he saved us from freezing in our sleep. Sadly, someone with very little understanding of how heat works had installed him... at the far end of the room, away from the door and the bathroom and the beds, and only about 4 inches below the ceiling.
We were stinking cold.
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