Me & City (Suzhou, China)

The wirtten historical records indicte that the place of Suzhou has a history  of over 4000 years. Built in 514B.C. with a history of more than 2500 years, the city still stands at it’s original location.

Well preserved are its double chessboard layouts of “Water and land in parallel, canal and street in neighbor”, and it’s unique landscape of “small bridge, flowing water, white wall, black tile, cultural relics and classical gardens”. Now the old city of Suzhou has river course about 35 kilometers, 1,153 bridges, so it enjoys the good reputation of “East Venice”.

There are abundant humanity landscape and elegant scenery of lakes and hills. Currently there are 487 cultural relics under municipal and upper level protection, of which 15 are under state level protection, 101 are under provincial protection and 178 are under municipal protection. There are 13 different kinds of museums including famous Suzhou Museum, etc.

Over 60 classical gardens are well preserved, of which Humble Administrator’s garden and Lingering Garden enjoy equal popularity with Summer Palace and Summer Resort. Nine of these classical gardens are listed in the Catalog of World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, namely, Humble Administrator’s  Garden, Lingering  Garden, Master-of-Nets  Garden, Mountain Villa of Embracing Beauty, Garden of Surging Wave Pavilion, Lion Grove Garden, Garden of Nursery of Art, Garden of Couple’s Retreat and Garden of Retreat and Reflection.