Today We went to Tiger Hill. It was a big hill with a Pagoda on top. When we got there it looked a long way up so we decided to take a horse and cart half way. This was very relaxing as the horse just ambled along by the river side so we could relax and take photos. When we got to the end of the horse ride there was quite a lot of steps to do, but I managed it in a few stages.The Tomb of King He Lu: In 496 BC during the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC - 476 BC), He Lu, King of the Wu perished during the war fought against the Yue. His son buried him within the hill and three days after the funeral a white tiger came and sat upon the grave as though guarding it. From that time on it has been known as Tiger Hill.We came to a deep pool next, called the Sword pool.King He Lu was a zealous collector of rare swords and it is said that he tested them upon this stone. The crevice thus made in the rock is the only evidence of the existence of these swords, as it is believed that they were buried beneath the Sword Pool as funerary objects.The stone was huge and had a large worn cut running through the centre, it looked like it could have been made by a sword but why you would want to cut a stone with your swords I don't know as I would imagine that would blunt them...We reached the pagoda at the top after taking loads of photographs, it wasn't so cold today so I managed to work the camera. There was bamboo growing everywhere looking very beautiful and Paul, who has done some of the translations and voiceovers for the audio CD tours, said that the positioning of the bamboo and everything else there was very specific and determined by feng shui. At one point we had to step over two strange holes in the stone ground, they had crosses of metal over them and allowed you to see down into the well beyond.Lu Yu was an authority on the art of tea and wrote the first ever book on the subject entitled 'The Treatise of Tea'. As an old man, he lived on Tiger Hill and it was here that he wrote the final part of his book. Lu Yu excavated the well and declared that the water from it was the third best in all China. Consequent upon the research and teaching of Lu Yu tea growing and consumption came to be important factors in the daily life of the citizens of Suzhou.Well we couldn't go without going to the tea room - photo of the word 'tea' and its Chinese symbol were taken for Morn the ultimate tea drinker - although my hate of tea was a problem as they didn't serve anything else. We were given cups of this wonderful green tea that is meant to be so important, but it smelled like water, and tasted mostly like water, yes I did try a sip! It had loads of leaves floating in it but if you waited they sank to the bottom. We had fun for a while as it is allowed to spit the leaves if you drink them by mistake. Chinese culture allows you to spit quite a lot, if you are in a restaurant you are given a spitting plate and when you get bones/stalks/etc in your food you can spit them onto this plate. Well it was impossible to drink the tea without getting some leaves so Paul spent a good while spitting green leaves.When we got back home we were all pretty chilly so we warmed up watching a movie while Kelly cooked dinner. Our first home cooked Chinese food. She made a lovely selection of veggies and other dishes but still can't seem to grasp the concept of vegetarian! There was shouting form the kitchen along the lines of 'they don't eat meat' 'ok what about chicken?' 'they don't eat meat' 'well fish then?' which seems like it will be a problem for the rest of our time here, vegetarian just doesn't exist.