In what’s becoming an alarmingly regular occurrence, I’m back in China for work again. It seems to be the rainy season here, and the Saturday I arrived I experienced this torrential downpour as I wandered around the Jing-an temple in Shanghai.

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Sunday afternoon it cleared up a bit, and I went to see another temple, Jade Buddha temple. Walking back from there I found a bit of the city I actually quite liked, north of where I was staying in Zhongshan Park. There’s a river and a park and a university. It’s quite peaceful and not too crowded.

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I was back in Suzhou as usual, for a rather stressful week of work. Friday afternoon the others left for the airport and I made an immediate start to my impromptu holiday by visiting the Hanshan temple. I’m definitely a sucker for the temple plus garden plus old building combo that the Chinese like to call a “scenic area”. This wasn’t the best I’ve been to, but it was a fun place to spend a few hours. Unfortunately I failed to make it to the top of the pagoda because on the second level the old guard shooed me out as it was closing time. :-(

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