Since gvdIAD mentioned a day trip to Suzhou upthread I've been looking up the place on the web and am quite interested. Shanghai to Suzhou is only 25-35 mins by train. Then I found this thread in the China forum which made me think a day trip by train wasn't a good idea.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...-purchase.html

But I jumped to the end of the thread and found that rail tickets for bullet trains (which serve between Shanghai and Suzhou) can now be booked online and it seems possible to get the hotel to book a ticket if they have a copy of your passport as ID.

I've checked the booking website 12306.cn where I found the timetable (I can recognise enough Chinese characters to know I want a train from 上海 to 苏州. ) A question to China experts is if they think this will work?

I'm not volunteering to lead but I wonder if anyone else is interested in a day trip to Suzhou on Friday and possibly getting lost together?

Some of lili's bus tours also sound interesting but information is a little sketchy, e.g. duration of the tour. Some may be quite short (if not stuck in traffic!) but some may be a whole-day tour.