Rugao, Jiangsu, China

Rugao, Jiangsu, China

This is my third day in Rugao. Weather a bit cool, about 25C and clear sky, no haze. 

Yesterday spent whole day on tour of city area and the main place of interest was a huge mansion of a Ming Dynasty gentry, Mo Pi Jiang and his consort Dong Xiaowan. It was as big as Chinese Garden and with the houses and ponds still intact. would post some of the pics to show the architecture on my return. 

Friday was a big rush, leaving office at 10.10am for Changi, depart at about 1pm, arrived about 5.30pm. Then waited at Pudong Airport in Shanghai for 1 and a half hour for our coach to Rugao. It took another 3 and half hour travelling in the day. The highway was new and smooth flowing and did not travel at high speed. Had a couple of stops along the way. Coach was new and comfortable. 

Reach Rugao almost midnight. First big problem was struggling with the local Sim card. It did not work. The phone did not support the card and affected several of us. Finally confirmed the problem and had to rent a temp hp costing 10rmb per day this morning. 

Rugao is a small city, probably 4th or 5th tier, about 1440 sq km, twice Reddot but only 1.4m people. It is a booming little city and the high rise is taking over the city scape. The residential homes were low rise semi Ds or detached and low rise condos. My, anytime better than ours and the roads were clean and nicely landscaped, quite like Reddot but cleaner in many places. 

The people are well dressed, looking very well off and modern. But they are locals and were quite surprised that we could converse in Mandarin. Our Indian colleagues were celebrities and sought after for photo taking as novelties. 

Oh, the lunch for the tour was unbelievable. About 14 courses in a restaurant private room. Cost, 38 rmb or about $8 per head. We were speechless as they kept pushing out the dishes non stop. And the dishes were good, very good, with green tea. 

We had another great feast for dinner. When they served the cold dish, 8 plates, including cold steam prawns, cold beef, cold pork jelly etc etc, we were stoned. Definitely could not finish, the cold dish alone. And they served another 15 or so dishes, more prawns, crabs, big fish, pork leg, chicken etc etc, we gave up by the 4/5 dish. There were 6/7 of us per table. 

Help came when another 6 late arrivals came to join us. Even then so much food were left unfinished. 

Cost 600rmb per table. That is the cost of living here. Unspoilt by commercialism in a small ancient city with all the modern facilities. The shopping malls were no different from ours. I did not bring my shaver, thought it would be provided by the hotel and had to get a new Philips shaver, the cheapest at 119rmb. 

In the evening there was a stage performance out our hotel next to a shopping mall to promote the opening of a gym. The stationary bikes for for the gym were the latest models, nver seen before. And the performers, all young people not different from our Orchard Rd kids. The drummer of the life band was a 12 year old boy and whacking the drums like a pop artiste. 


Posted by Chua Chin Leng 

Sunday, 24th September, 2017