Seeing the Sights in Suzhou and Xi'an

Travel, at its best, is the chance to experience something new.

My wife and I thoroughly realized this when, after our recent weekend trips to Suzhou and Xi’an, we found ourselves not thinking back to the magnificent gardens or Terracotta Army these cities are known for, but our more simple experiences. In Suzhou, we had a boat ride and long walk along ancient canals and we spent hours circumnavigating the city walls of Xi’an on bike. A month later, we still find ourselves thinking and talking about these views of the cities ---the ones we’d never expected to see--- and not the grand sights that originally led us there.

Suzhou’s gardens are indisputably among the best in China, ranging from intricate and intimate to majestic and grand, each resplendent with rockeries and greens, bonsai and bamboo, and pavilions full of dark wood and rich with reds, greens and grays. On top of this we visited amid Spring’s blooming flowers and rare clear days. Xi’an’s necropolis for China’s first emperor is as tremendous as you might imagine anything that can be called a “city of the dead” to be. Legions of carefully crafted soldiers, buried in their labyrinths a quarter millennia before the birth of Christ. So how could these fail to impress?

Suzhou’s canals, by contrast to the gardens, were almost simple and unadorned. Green willow trees bowed over and dropped thin vines into the water, while the occasional plum or Asian maples added color. There were a few pavilions and benches along the walls, in quiet, natural browns. Xi’an’s city walls were hardly a sight to themselves, but more so provided the chance to circle the city, looking down on parks big and small, enormous intersections and winding lanes, rows of neo-historic buildings. Can any of this compare to the splendor of the premier sights of the cities?

No, ---but that’s the point.

These secondary sights were, my wife and I finally understood, the parts of the trip that we had not really anticipated and so were enchantingly unimagined. They were parts of the cities that we had not seen featured in scores of pictures, posters and paintings. Sure, they had their place on the map and in the guidebook, but they still retained a sense of surprise and novelty for us.

By contrast, we had seen so many images, replicas and even videos of the Terracotta warriors that, once we had pushed our way through the crowds and laid in wait for a premium middle spot on the balcony overlooking them, we still found our view inferior to what the professionals had already achieved. Certainly, there is a spectacular quality to the army that can only be appreciated in person, but in terms of a rich and vivid appreciation of detail, one is far better off with National Geographic.

I suspect this will be a challenge for travelers of this generation, those growing up with mega-screens showing HD video of “Planet Earth.” They will be saturated with stunning images of everywhere, each taken in its best seasons, on its best days, and only showing its best angles. Always, of course, without the crowds, hawkers or mosquitoes. How can their own travels compare?

Comparison is not the point.

Culturally, we always understood this. We go to foreign countries because they are fascinatingly different than our own. We go to see, eat, hear and smell something we cannot find at home. An experience T.V. or Imax cannot provide. Now we realize that the same must be for the sights we seek, recognizing that we can and will get our best views of the major and magnificent at home.

In the future, I think we’ll give a nod to appreciating the scale and significance of the central sights in a city, but move on, finding a sight that is as unknown to our eyes as the food, scent or sound of a new place. Maybe this means walking the little lanes, taking a bus instead of the subway, or going to a park that no one has recommended. I see myself using the guidebook less and just looking at a map a bit more, searching for the sight to which I respond, “Oh, I didn’t know that was here!”