Humble Administrator's Garden

If you're ever in Suzhou, it's a must to see this site.  It's billed as one of the top gardens in China, listed in the same breathe as some of the royal gardens in Beijing.  Anyway, as the grandparents are garden aficionados we had to make this a priority for their trip.  After sitting in traffic for an hour, we finally made it to the exterior of the building. 

While we were waiting in traffic, I witnessed a horrific sight.

A woman ran in front of our car while we were sitting still and a scooter hit her at full speed.  I immediately grabbed the kids and told them to look away because it sounded brutal.  As I watched, it appeared as though the woman who was actually hit was semi-OK, meaning she was squatting holding her face in her hands and obviously crying in pain.  The woman on the scooter was sprawled on the ground, convulsing with a blank look in her eyes.  The thing that pissed me off was that everyone just stood around looking at them.  Someone call the police!!!  My Chinese is so limited that I can't even tell the driver that (although I figured it out now).

Thankfully, we were close to the garden which meant traffic was really bad and the police were there to make sure that people kept moving and didn't park on the sidewalk.  They were next to her within a minute or two.  Also, as we were just out of the car, an ambulance passed us.  They were on the scene in less than 5 minutes.  So, she got just about the quickest response by trained people as you could get anywhere.

Not to make this about me, but one thing to relay is the utter sense of helplessness in this scenario.  I'm no doctor, of course, but it also wouldn't help to try to lead by jumping out and directing people in a language they don't understand.  So all of my contempt at others just staring is compounded by my own reality in the sense that that is all I ended up doing too.  That and praying for them both, which is probably rare in China, so maybe that's the best thing we could have done.

Anyway, clouded by the events above, we entered the garden and took a few shots.  It was very crowded and we probably had 30 people take our pictures, make comments, etc.  It's getting old.  I wish my black friend in one of the previous blogs had been with us because we could have walked 100 feet from him and no one would have seen us!  *Sigh*  I miss you Tony!

Below are a few pictures:

My favorite view in the garden.  The pagoda way down at the far end is actually outside of it, but the garden was designed so that it would appear this way.

A typical scene when we're out in force.  This is a rare one now with Reid even in it as he realizes that we won't make him, he typically declines not to pose.  Note the lack of a smile though.

Now this is a photo op he can smile for.  He is pretending to poop down an abandoned well.  Classy.