Last Sunday we had a quick and fun day-trip to Tianping Mountain, a small city park and “mountain” trail (and monestary) on the West side of Suzhou. We rode the new, week-old subway from the SIP Technology and Culture Center (ie. the IMAX theater 10 minute walk from our apartment) to the last stop in the West (Mudu station). Trip took 40 minutes. From there we took a 5 minute taxi ride to Tianping Shan (Mudu is still a ghetto with too much “construction dust”, so better to taxi that instead of walk).
Although we left at 7AM, it was already about 30C by 9:30. But there was a lot of shade at the park. The trail was fun. I guess I had low expectations, but I really felt it was a well maintained place. Parts of the trail up were rocky and we had to scrabble over boulders. The path mostly clean of garbage. Our little hike took us about 1.5 hours.
At the base of the hill was a ghetto carnival. So after the hike kids ate shishcabab beef while bad techno music blared from broken speakers, Then they shot BB guns at balloons, fished for goldfish, ate cotten candy, and played around.
