We held the 2nd TAT special tour successfully yesterday. Special tour is unique as the Tourism Advanced Toastmasters, which try to explore too much secret of Suzhou. The theme of the 2nd special tour is the hiking to discover Suzhou natural beauties. 12 TAT members and 4 guests participated in it.

We gathered at the assigned meeting point at 10:00 am and started to go hiking from Caowu of Dongshan/东山曹坞 to ancient Luxiang village. 

As we know, Dongshan is one peninsula located at the lakeside of Taihu Lake and has different flowers bloom in different seasons. We were embraced in the fresh air and green eco-environment when we went through fruit and tea trees.

As a group team, one of our members got a lot of caring when he felt a little suffering from hiking too fast.

We were excited to reach the summit of the hill, where we could overlook the ink-and-wash downtown of Dongshan on one side and fantastic Taihu Lake on the other side. 

We were heading for ancient Luxiang village.

We arrived at Luxiang village thrillingly after 1 and half an hours' hiking.

We felt so hungry, what's more, the hand-made Dumpling was so alluring and tasty that we ate a lot of them. The most impression was we were in the former residence of Wang Ao, who was the primer minister in Ming Dynasty for our lunch, which would be our memorable experience in our life.

We moved to another big hall to enjoy our afternoon tea. Our secretary, Amy, suggested to introduce ourselves so as to know each other better. Each of us seemed to date back to the toastmasters meetings and started to deliver impromptu speeches smoothly.

Wang Ao was not only the primer minister but also the intelligent & straightforward scholar in Ming Dynasty and most of us were motivated by his touching stories.

Luxiang ancient village was over 1000 years old and local people are still living in the village, whose name was named after 6 lanes originally. The layout and buildings still keep original and local people live their own traditional lives, so we found some local tasty snacks even if we queued to buy some in long line.

The most exciting moment for us is to pick up the oranges. One local person was so friendly that he led us to his fields to pick up oranges. 

We cheered like children when we saw such full fruits on the trees. 





We harvested a lot including not only the oranges but also the friendship and more.