Tomb Sweeping

This past Friday was national Tomb Sweeping Holiday in China. The idea is to go, very solemnly, with your family to the graves of your forebears and sweep their tomb. Whenever I press for more details (ceremonial food, rituals, etc.) I'm met with a short dumbfounded reply paramount to - "Nothing interesting happens on this day, we hate to do this, but we have to. Trust me I'd rather be sleeping/shopping/playing video games." I suggested the use of a vacuum, instead of a broom, to better remove the dirt from the grave; my suggestion was also met with dumbfounded glances.

With my long weekend I took a trip to the canal city of Suzou. It's called 'Venice of the East' because it has so many canals, but Venice it ain't. A little dirty and dingy, and far too scared by China's last few decades of urban advancement at the sake of historical preservation, Suzou is now a city with pockets of intense beauty, scattered around the dreary gray which palls every city in China.

Having been a great resort city for the wealthy in the Ming and Qing dynasties (read that as the last two dynasties before everything went to hell in a hand basket), Suzou is famous for its excellent and diverse Chinese Gardens. These gardens, in opposition to English or western gardens, are smaller contained spaces which marry water and crazy rock formations to flowers and pagodas. The Chinese word for landscape is literally 'mountain' and 'water' together, so these gardens are mini-representations of the landscape.

Being just small enough to explore on foot, we trekked around until the point of exhaustion, scouting between the different gardens, museums and temples. It was nice to be out of Shanghai for a weekend, and the timing couldn't have been better to come to Suzou - the cherry blossoms were all in full bloom.