Sunday, April 5, 2009

Spring Has Arrived In Suzhou



I'm afraid that this blog entry is just to annoy my friends and family back in Canada. I know they are still suffering with winter weather, and I believe my teacher friends actually had a storm day last week with a snow storm.

Not so here in Suzhou. I was just out for a bike ride and a walk, and spring has definitely arrived here in China. I wore my spring jacket, and it was actually too warm. As I write this, I see that it is 19C in Suzhou and 3C in Halifax Nova Scotia. Can you see my smile? We get a lot of misty wet days, but the air is warm, and the sunny days like today are lovely.

I missed the famous Blossoms in Japan when I visited my daughter last year, but I am getting them in full force this year in China. Of course here it is even better, because so many of the parks and gardens are planned and carefully planted with flowering bushes and trees. Everywhere you look trees are bursting into bloom. Along most roads are short green hedges and I see that there are bright red flowers all through them. As you walk along the canals, the willows planted there are all leafing out in their long light green leaves, and so many of the trees have beautiful pink or white blossoms coming out. After a couple of rainy days, the past two sunny days have put spring into high gear and every day more and more colour appears.

Today as I walked around Suzhou, it was so pleasant to see all the people out walking and enjoying the lovely day. This weekend is a holiday, called Tomb Sweeping day. It is supposed to be a day when family graves were cleaned up after the winter, and loved ones were honoured by burning special pretend money, or in a greener world, they are I hear putting flowers on graves to avoid he polluting from burning paper. People have an additional day off work, and all the parks are full of people enjoying the weather. The open areas were full of families trying to fly kites, and the pathways along the water were crowded with people just out walking.

Don't worry, spring will be there soon in Canada . . . . . . . For now you will have to enjoy my pictures of spring in Suzhou.

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