The second stop on my travels during the mid-autumn festival was Suzhou. The ancient city is renowned for its beautiful stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens. Because the trains from Shanghai were so packed the earliest we could get there was mid-afternoon by which time a lot of the gardens were beginning to close (my friend even tried to bribe a guard to get in one but he wasn’t having any of it!). Instead we contented ourselves with wandering around the tree-lined streets in search of somewhere nice to eat. After some delicious hot-pot the night before we spent the morning exploring the Master of the Nets Garden (top) and Blue Wave Pavilion (above and below). The former is considered among the finest gardens in China…