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On the bank of Lake Taihu, Suzhou is some 199km east of
Shanghai. Over 2,500 -year-old, the
waterside towns and rivers spanned over with
bridges in and around Suzhou are the same
age as the city. During the Tang Dynasty,
the Grand Canal connected Suzhou to the rest
of empire. Since then, water physically and
culturally defines Suzhou.
Suzhou was an
centre of silk production and remains so to
nowadays. The Suzhou Silk Museum is a
good place to learn more about silk
production. The classical gardens in Suzhou
have been inscribed on the World Cultural
Heritage List and these gardens are not the
arrays of closely ordered flowers to which
westerners are accustomed to, they look like
miniature parks in the western sense. The
water villages in the suburbs, such as Zhou
Zhuang and Tongli, are also well known in
the world. |
