SUZHOU, China - A silk embroidery is an endeavor of love.

To stitch a double-sided silk embroidery piece, an individual needs a couple decades of training, infinite patience and the ability to make infinitesimal stitches by eye. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to be able to do so with two needles at once, simultaneously stitching a reverse side.

And all done with thread the width of hair.

This is what Idaho travelers learned on Sunday at a visit to the National Embroidery Research Institute in Suzhou, where a handful of workers still master the local craft of silk embroidery passed down for1,000 years.

"And I was going to stay on the bus," Veronica Garnsey said, shaking her head. "I don't know what I expected. This is beyond belief."

The group members stood staring for long stretches at displayed embroideries, produced by workers who hold venerable titles like master and senior craftsmen. The subjects ranged from replicas of the Mona Lisa to etherial still lifes.

With a metallic glint from the silk, they looked like photographs, even a few inches away.

It killed some tour members that they couldn't take photographs, because of copyright infringement.

Pieces embroidered by masters, of which there are five among the 1.3 billion people in China, were double sided. That means there were identical embroideries on both sides, accomplished by stitching the back at the same time as the front.

"That one looks like I'm looking out a window," said Coeur d'Alene resident Elaine Stevens, pointing to an embroidery of boats by a waterfront community. "This is the most beautiful thing, art wise, I've ever seen."

The embroidery workers start learning the craft around 17, and continue honing their craft until about 50, when their eyes give out.

Until then, it's 8 hours a day, working on embroideries that take a year or longer.

"I'm gaining a whole new appreciation for this art," Nancy Vogel said on hearing this.

The group walked through the working area of half a dozen workers.

The interior was quiet, clean, each sewer's desk covered with a stretch of fabric quickly evolving beneath their nimble digits.

Drowned in sunshine from the paneled windows, the workers hunched closely to the patterns. As their fingers flickered across the fabric, making minute stitches, images manifest like something conjured. A half-bloomed flower. A slender leaf.

"You couldn't see well enough to do that," Deborah Seagle told her husband, Dale.

"I wouldn't be able to sit long enough to do that," he replied.

Unfortunately, few opted to steal away with a hand-crafted bounty to hang by their own windows. The most detailed works were produced by masters, with prices ranging from $1,200 to $750,000.

Maradon Parmentier beat her chest to still her heart after spending nearly $200 on two smaller pieces done by teachers, a low stratum of needle experts.

"I usually don't spend money on things like that," she said. "I got caught up in the moment."

A former embroidery teacher at University High School, she said she can appreciate the endless hours that are poured into these works, she said.

"And the amount of eye strain," she added. "What these masters are doing is incredibly difficult. It's so far beyond anything we teach students in the U.S. The whole concept of the double-sided embroidery - you can't do that with a machine. You just can't."

Deborah walked out only regretting that she lacked thousands of dollars to hang the works at home.

"I just have a whole new respect for ladies who spend their whole lives doing that," she said.

Sunday also included an optional side trip, a boat ride on the grand canal.

The long wood boats passed through ramshackle homes in the historical section of Suzhou.

Only several feet from the boat, the long run of cement houses were decrepit, with crumbling porches and laundry hung to dry just above the green waves.

"I'd love to live out on Lake Coeur d'Alene, but I don't want this waterfront living," Marilee Wallace commented.

But the residents, mostly senior citizens who prefer the traditional living style, didn't seem to have complaints

As the boat motored slowly by the homes, folks waved and took photos of the foreigners.

"It really has the feel of going through Venice," Sue Harrison said. "A little big older, a little bit more run down, the water a little murkier."

The boats stopped for a brief jaunt in a traditional marketplace by the canal, where vendors were cramped in alleyways.

Dodging beeping scooters and bikers in the narrow alleys, the group perused caged chickens, snakes in jars, live crabs and folks cooking eggs and fish in smoking cauldrons.

Maradon Parmentier said it was a rare chance to see China's interior as vendors tossed out deals.

"This is the kind of place you wouldn't find if you were traveling on your own," she said.

She added passing a man selling live fish, "But I wouldn't want to be hungry and come down here."

Tom Quinn found the experience a little humbling.

"It's a contrast between staying in a 5 star hotel, and people beheading chickens for lunch and people sitting hacking walnuts in half to make a living," he said. "It's changed my whole idea of the people."