A tweet has taken me to Suzhou, a Chinese city some 100 kilometers east of Shanghai, on the Yangtze river. Both the city and it’s surroundings are beautiful and very interesting.
Suzhou (simplified Chinese: 苏州; pinyin: Sūzhōu; Suzhou dialect: [səu tsøʏ]), previously transliterated as Su-chou, Suchow, and Soochow, is a major city located in the southeast of Jiangsu Province in Eastern China, located adjacent to Shanghai Municipality. The city situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Taihu Lake and is a part of the Yangtze River Delta region. Administratively, it is a prefecture-level city.
Built in 514 BCE, Suzhou has over 2,500 years of rich history, and relics of the past are maintained to this day. The city’s stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens have contributed to its status as one of the top tourist attractions within China. Since the Song Dynasty (960-1279), it has also been an important centre for China’s silk industry. It is occasionally dubbed the “Venice of the East” or “Venice of China”
More on Wikipedia
Some cool views of Suzhou
For all of you who enjoy traveling virtually through pictures, here’s selection of some of them I ran across while wandering through Suzhou on Google Earth.
Suzhou canals
by liweilin
They call this the Imperial canal, though it looks all the opposite.
by Henk van Es
Temples and monuments in and around the city
by jm__xie
Fisherman’s garden?
A bit of the modern metropolis
by yocobel
by TonyMa
Suzhou’s “Disneyland”
by ch-w
by ch-w
by Chukyu_To
Lake Taihu
Nearby lake Taihu is the largest of the many lakes surrounding the city, and it’s about 70km wide.
by chenxiaosong
by 宋祥龙
Other interesting surroundings
If there are some mistakes in the names or something, please notify me. Hope you enjoyed this virtual tour as much as I did. I’ll probably visit Suzhou again through Google Earth (who knows maybe in person too, some day). If I find other cool posts, there might even be a part 2 of this article.
