Ministry in Australia

the Chinese Emperor. It had plenty of pagodas and beautiful gardens, quite unspoilt by tourism, we felt. The hotel was quite basic, rooms without en suite, the only one we stayed in China, and on the morning we left there was no hot water. The food at the hotel was so plain, that we ate there only once.

One day we were tired from walking in the rain and we had to find some shelter to sit down. We came by a make-shift restaurant in the open air under a tarpaulin. The only English speaking person was called and we ordered fried tomatoes and eggs. Next thing a couple of bowls of soup appeared in front of us. We were just about to tuck in, when the waiter realised that she had made a mistake and made attempts to take away the bowls. As we were really hungry after smelling the delicious soup, we held on to the bowls and protested by shaking our heads vigorously. Luckily, we were allowed to eat the soup, and the fried tomatoes and eggs as well.

To walk the streets which had a 2,500 years old history, created a feeling of awe and wonder. What would life have been like in those early days on Tiger Hill under King He Lu, the founder of Suzhou? How many people would have lived then in the city?

Still pondering these questions we were suddenly propelled into the 21st century. At the next cross road were traffic lights which told us how many more seconds before the lights would change. Whoa! Will we ever get that in Australia in the next century?

The Grand Canal, built in the 6th century to connect the fertile grain producing southern region with the imperial capitals in the more arid north, went as far as Beijing. It was an engineering feat surpassing even that of the Great Wall. We caught an ordinary river boat to Wuxi on the canal, which took us six hours. The price for the trip was not even one Yuan, about 80c. There were, of course, no tourists on the boat, and we big noses were an object of curiosity. Here I regretted most that none of us could speak Chinese. I would have loved to talk to the ordinary folk on the boat about their thoughts and daily lives.

The water of the canal was filthy. Some people were tipping out their night potties, and a few meters further away, they were washing their dishes. Traffic was quite heavy, mainly barges pulling long boats of agricultural products, and of course hundreds of smaller sampans. What do you do with a small child when you live on a barge? You just put on a firm brace on the child, attach a rope to it with a loop at the end which fits around another long rope running along the centre of the barge from front to back, and the child can safely roam around the whole barge.

Leaving the boat at Wuxi, we had to use our umbrellas, as it was raining quite heavily. We scrambled on a bus with our bags to take us to the Wuxi Hotel, recommended by the Lonely Planet book on China, but the hotel had closed owing to renovations. According to the China book, there was the Taihu Hotel about 20 minutes walk from the terminus. We thought we would have no trouble getting a taxi or pedicab. They had always been

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