Suzhou - Venice of the East

Publicerad: 2006-02-08 00.00  |  Senast ändrad: 2006-02-11 00.00

In the lower reaches of the Yangtze and on the shores of Lake Taihu lies the 2500-year-old city of Suzhou, the cradle of Wu culture.

The name 'Wu' often applied to refer to Suzhou, derived from the local tribes who named themselves 'Gou Wu' in the late Shang Dynasty about 11th century BC. Later, King Helu of Wu State in 514 BC built his capital here known as the 'Great City of Helu' and since then the city's site and scale have remained virtually unchanged, making Suzhou a rare city of historical and cultural renown in the world.

Situated on 30.47-32.02 degrees north latitude and 119.55-121.20 degrees east longitude and bordering on Shanghai in the east, Zhejiang Province in the south, Lake Taihu in the west and the Yangtze in the north, Suzhou enjoys a mild and humid climate and is easily accessible by water, land and air communications.

Talking about Suzhou, people would mention the old saying: 'Paradise in Heaven, Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth.' Since there can be places elsewhere compared to paradise, the saying does not specify the style of Suzhou lies in 'Softness', like the tone of Wu dialect, which also sums up the character in feminine beauty, tenderness, serenity, subtlety and elegance.

The natural scenery of hills and waters in Suzhou is as charming as a delicate beauty. Of the whole area, 10 per cent is cultivated fields, 30 per cent hills, and the rest covered with water. Streets and alleys in Suzhou extend side by side with canals. Small bridges and flowing waters, white walls and dark gray roof tiles match one another in tranquil elegance. As a poem describes, on arriving in Suzhou you behold: Houses are all pillowed on water's edge.' The gentle waters make the prominent urban scenery.

The poetic and picturesque Suzhou gardens are a typical demonstration of simple elegance, with intriguing scenes found in every season and in all weathers.

Endowed with abundant native produce, the rich and exquisite Suzhou cuisine sets a style of its own on this 'land of plenty '.

The traditional performing arts of Suzhou are best represented by the Kunqu Opera, Suzhou Opera and Ballad singing, reputed both in China and overseas for their minute acting and harmonic melody.

The folds here are honest, good-natured, friendly and hospitable a tradition from times of yore.

As a major tourist city of wide reputation, Suzhou lives up to all the expectations in food, hotel accommodations, transport, sightseeing, shopping and recreation.

A metropolis of industry and commerce in the south-eastern coast of China since ancient times, Suzhou has always been a hub for merchants, which as the Tang poet Bai Juyi described over a thousand years ago: '...has a population greater than Yangzhou Prefecture and more than half of the shops in Chang'an, the capital.' The Italian traveler Marco Polo praised Suzhou 600 years ago as a 'noble and great city'. The classic novel 'Dream of the Red Mansions' written 200 years ago sets the beginning of the story in Changmen, a prosperous area outside the city gate of Suzhou, depicted as a 'prime social congregation of the rich and cultured.'

Today's Suzhou is an open city with developed economy and frequent exchanges with the outside world. It has been officially declared part of 'the coastal economic open zone of the Yangtze Delta'. Comprehensive industrial system has taken shape, and there has been tremendous expansion in foreign trade and international economic co-operation. Currently, Suzhou has sister cities in Italy, Canada, Japan and the United States.

Recognized in the olden times as the 'most aspiring city of prosperity and civilization in the Southeast', Suzhou is favored by geographical, natural and human factors in its development. It is indeed a land of fertile resources and place of talents.

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Things to see:

Classic Gardens
Suzhou's magnificent collection of formerly private gardens, the finest surviving examples of the classic tradition, are small, exquisite jewels of landscaping art, often choked with visitors, making a slow, meditative tour difficult. Designed on different principles than those of the West, a Chinese garden fuses landscape painting and literary composition to create an art of its own in which nature is shaped but not tamed. These private classic gardens are Suzhou's most prized possessions. Among those worth visiting are the gardens listed below.

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Forest of Lions Garden
(Shi Ji Lin Yuan)

Founded in 1336 by a Buddhist monk and last owned by relatives of renowned American architect I. M. Pei, this garden consists of four small lakes, a multitude of buildings, and random swirls of tortured rockeries that resemble the manes of lions. These rocks and rockeries, a standard feature of Chinese gardens, evoke the mountains of the natural world, just as the ponds evoke lakes or seas. The finest of the expressionistic rock slabs in the Forest of Lions Garden come from nearby Lake Tai (Tai Hu). Since the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907), connoisseurs have been selecting the best Tai Hu rocks for the gardens of emperors, high officials, and rich estate owners. During the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960-1126), rock appreciation reached such extremes that the expense in hauling stones from Lake Tai to the capital is said to have bankrupted the empire. Because the Forest of Lions Garden was designed to emphasize the role of mountains in nature, it is not surprising that it contains the largest rocks and most elaborate rockeries of any garden in Suzhou. The garden is located at 23 Yulin Lu. It's open daily from 7:30am to 5pm

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Lingering Garden
(Liu Yuan)

This garden is the setting for the finest Tai Hu rock in China, a 6m- (20-ft.-) high, 5-ton contorted castle of stone called Crown of Clouds Peak. Lingering Garden is also notable for its viewing pavilions, particularly its Mandarin Duck Hall, which is divided into two sides: an ornate southern chamber for men and a plain northern chamber for women. Suzhou's contemporary painters maintain a sales gallery in this garden, which is planted in osmanthus and willow. These varieties are not known for their brilliant flowerings, keeping with a traditional prejudice for plain, unshowy vegetation. Lingering Garden is located at 80 Liuyuan Lu. It's open daily from 8:30am to 5pm

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Humble Administrator's Garden
(Zhou Zheng Yuan)

Usually translated as "Humble Administrator's Garden," but also translatable as "Garden of the Stupid Officials," Zhou Zheng Garden, which dates from the 16th century, makes complex use of the element of water. The maze of connected pools and islands seems endless. The creation of multiple vistas and the dividing of spaces into distinct segments are the garden artist's means to expand the compressed spaces of the estate. As visitors stroll through a small garden, new spaces and vistas open up at every turn. The garden is located at 178 Dong Bei Jie. It's open daily from 7:30am to 5pm

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Master of the Nets Garden
(Wang Shi Yuan)

The most perfect of Suzhou's gardens, the Master of the Nets Garden is a masterpiece of landscape compression. Hidden at the end of a blind alley, its tiny grounds have been cleverly expanded by the placement of innumerable walls, screens, and pavilion halls, producing a maze that seems endless. The eastern sector of the garden is a cluster of three interlinked buildings, the residence of the former owner and his family. At the center of the garden is a pond, just 251 sq. m (about 2,700 sq. ft.), encircled by verandas, pavilions, and covered corridors, crossed by two arched stone bridges. Set back from this watery "mirror of heaven" with its proportionate rockeries and bamboo is a complex of halls and inner courtyards: a garden within a garden. The halls invite rest and meditation.

The most lavish hall, Dianchun Cottage, furnished in palace lanterns, dark chairs and tables, and hanging scrolls, served as the model for Mingxuan Garden, the Astor Chinese Garden Court and Ming Furniture Room constructed in 1980 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The original, owing to its setting, has a much more open feel than its museum version.

Master of the Nets Garden is located at 11 Kuotao Xiang, off Shiquan Jie. It's open daily from 8am to 4:30pm. In the summer, daily performances by traditional music and dance troupes are staged in the garden (7:30pm).

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Tiger Hill
(Hu Qiu Shan)

Suzhou's best park contains not only gardens in the classic style, but a famous pagoda and theme-park robotic figures as well. These modern additions have jazzed up the park and appeal to young children and their parents, it seems, but they are really just so much garish frosting. A new path from the entrance passes by a number of the park's historic sights, including Han Spring (used since A.D. 500, when it cured a monk of blindness) and several mythic rocks. At the very top of Tiger Hill is the remarkable leaning pagoda Yunyan Ta (Cloud Rock Pagoda), a seven-story work dating from A.D. 961, now safely shored up by modern engineering, although it still leans. Under the pagoda is the legendary grave of Suzhou's founder, He Lu, a 6th-century B.C. leader whose arsenal of 3,000 swords is also said to be buried in the park, protected by a white tiger. The artificial hill on which the pagoda stands was once an island. To one side is a stone tablet engraved by Qing emperor Qianlong, as well as the plain Great Hall Temple. Down below is a large bonzai garden with over 600 specimens and a big tree said to be over 500 years old.

The most remarkable site at the foot of the Tiger Hill pagoda is a natural ledge, the Ten Thousand People Rock, where according to legend a rebel delivered an oratory so fiery that the rocks lined up to listen. A deep stone cleavage, the Pool of Swords (Jianchi), runs along one side of it, reputedly the remnants of a pit dug by order of the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang) 2,000 years ago in a search for the 3,000 swords.

Tiger Hill is located 3km (2 miles) northwest of the city at 8 Huqiu Shan. It's open daily from 8am to 6pm

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Water Gates & Canals
Suzhou is not only the city of gardens, but of canals. Panmen Gate, at 2 Dong Da Lu, once operated as a water gate and fortress when the Grand Canal was the most important route linking Suzhou to the rest of China. Built in A.D. 1351, Panmen is the only major piece of the Suzhou city wall to survive. It's open daily from 8am to 5pm. Nearby is a large arched bridge, Wumen Qiao, over the Grand Canal--the finest place to view the ever-changing traffic--and a small arched bridge over a feeder canal that connects to Panmen. Panmen also has excellent vistas of the old city, including a view of Ruiguang Ta, a 37m (122-ft.) pagoda built in A.D. 1119. The Panmen gatekeepers now levy an admission, which includes a ticket to an uninteresting, recently restored royal mansion and a new, uninspiring amusement park adjacent.

The Panmen District and the southern streets of old Suzhou are excellent places to walk at one's leisure. Traditional shop houses predominate, the streets are narrow and shaded by trees. Shops include galleries, and there are bridges and lanes where one can watch the canal traffic, an endless stream of barges propelled by hand-held poles as well as motors. Near Panmen, the old city moat widens and the water traffic thickens.

Uptown, the Suzhou is laced by narrow canals. The backs of the white houses still open to the water and quite a bit of commerce is conducted here. The gondoliers of Suzhou evoke little of the romance of vanished dynasties, but they do reveal the rough-edged world of handwork that hundreds of millions of Chinese do each day. And there is something beautiful still in the canal scene of Suzhou when the arched bridges and simple stucco houses and floating barges line up just right.

Silk Factories--Suzhou is synonymous not only with gardens and canals, but also with silk. Its silk fabrics have been among the most prized in China for centuries, and the art of silk embroidery is still practiced at the highest levels. More than any other product, it was silk that made Suzhou a city of importance in China. When the Song Dynasty rulers moved the political capital to nearby Hangzhou, Suzhou became China's cultural capital.

The Museum of Suzhou Embroidery, 262 Jingde Lu, is both a factory and sales outlet that contains the most accomplished silk embroideries you'll find in China. The artists working upstairs stitch by hand, depending only on natural light, without magnifying lenses or other aids. Thinning the filaments of silk thread down to almost invisible lines, they work 2-hour stretches and take 10-minute tea breaks. The embroidery factory also produces double-sided embroideries on a canvas of thin silk gauze, a technique developed here in which two different figures, front and reverse, are stitched using two needles simultaneously--what the factory guide calls "a secret technique." The finished embroidery is mounted in a mahogany frame carved in Ming- or Qing-Dynasty style. The museum is open daily from 9am to 5pm; admission is free.

A less commercial display of Suzhou's silk industry is offered by the wonderful Suzhou No. 1 Silk Mill, 94 Nan Men Lu, open daily from 9am to 6pm with free admission. This is the site of a 60-year-old silk factory where you can still see the old looms in operation. The complete history of silk and the process of its manufacture are explained by English-speaking guides. There's an extensive sales rooms with silk clothing and souvenirs.

Av:  horsemandk