Day 10 Suzhou

Today is yet another day trip to Suzhou, but it first started off at an unfamiliar location - Tian Shan. It is one large island and several small islands, located within Lake Tai (太湖), the 3rd largest fresh-water lake in China. We drove pass the bridge connecting the islands, and I got to say the lake is very impressive. Not a lot of tourists there though, so I really enjoyed it.
We had lunch on the island. The food served are made from local ingredients from the lake - croakers,  freshwater snails and seaweeds. I was never a big fan of fish, but those croakers tasted so good! These fishes are only found in China, such a shame...croakers have no muddy smell like the majority of freshwater fish. The meat texture is like cod, but with more scent and flavor.

In the surrounding areas, we stopped by an ancient wall. The wall is small, but of great significance for me, because it's the wall of the capital of ancient Wu country-state. You would think the capital would at least have a larger wall, but I guess during 200 AD none of the wars were as massive as the wars today.

We then headed to Hanshan Temple, a extremely popular and elaborate Buddhist monastry. It has been built since 500 AD. The only impression I got was that the Buddha statue was in a shiny armor of gold (laugh). The donation box was placed in an awkward position, luring people to throw coins from another higher tower, so the roof was covered in money. There were many towers, one with a bell that, for a fee, allowed the visitors to ring. The whole place is full of tourists and I wonder if the monks actually enjoyed all that company. The exit was called "Door of emancipation", I thought that was really funny.
Outside there are vulture merchants just waiting to sell you overpriced stupid things. You can buy the exact same things for half the price somewhere else, and these can't even qualify as "souvenirs" as they're not related to the temple theme at all. We had to physically run away from them or really yell to them to make them go away.