Searching for Old Suzhou

This article is a rebuttal against all the negative reviews of Suzhou as a destination for independent travelers. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.



I’m not here to mask Suzhou’s problems, which also plague most tourist attractions in China, only amplified ten-fold here by the enormous popularity of its UNESCO-World-Heritage-worthy classical gardens. There is an ugly side to Suzhou, best characterized by an infestation of dishonest merchants and schemers preying on unsuspecting visitors, boulevards of foot-massage parlours and KTVs, and extreme overcrowding at its major sights even in the offseason. But there is also an authentic side to this 2500-year-old city of ancient canals and garden villas, often found only a couple blocks from the main tourist routes.



Having limited time we constrained ourselves mostly to sights within the boundary of the moated city, a checkerboard of squared quarters partitioned by the archaic system of canals that gave rise to the nickname “Venice of the East.” In two afternoons we visited three World Heritage garden villas, as well as two intact surviving neighborhoods of waterfront houses built alongside these still navigable canals.



Our route was straightforward -- cheap lunch at the famous Tongdexing noodle house, stroll through the pedestrianized city centre of Guanqian Street, walk east to Pingjiang Road, follow the canal northward for a leisurely 1.5 km until the end of the canal, and end with dinner at the excellent, 100-year-old mansion-restaurant of Wumen Renjia. Featured along this path of willow-lined waterways are three of the best classical gardens anywhere in China, starting with the Couple’s Retreat Garden.



Located on the eastern edge of Suzhou’s old town by the Outer Canal, the Couple’s Retreat Garden is unfortunately underrated and often overlooked by tourists due to its seclusion ... unless they’re going to the nearby Suzhou Zoo. But for us it was the most worthwhile detour to discover this quietly hidden gem, uniquely shielded by canals on three sides and still possessing its own piers on the waterway. This is not only one of the prettiest small gardens, but arguably the most romantic -- after all, this was built as a private haven by a couple deeply in love.



Behind these idyllic courtyards and mansions is the story of a heartbroken scholar who moved to Suzhou at the lowest point of his life, and a chance meeting with the female poet who would become his wife. This was the intimate villa where the lovely couple spent 8 blissful years of their lives together, before the talented scholar was called again into Imperial service and his frail wife eventually died of weariness. The pavilion where the elegant lady entertained her husband with her Guqin zither still stands, as do the carved plaques of poetic calligraphy written together by the couple.



But what separated this garden from the rest was its incredible serenity from the absence of visitors -- we saw less than 5 during our afternoon visit, none of them foreign aside from us. Compare this with the armies of thousands at the Humble Administrator’s Garden, and you’ll see why this was easily our favorite spot in Suzhou. Even though it may be slightly off the main tourist route, I highly recommend this place for anyone who wants to experience a more peaceful Suzhou garden, with or without a lover.



We continued our stroll up the 800-year-old cobblestone path of Pingjiang Road, flanked by the picturesque canal and quaint Bohemian shops selling anything from humorous matchboxes to the most extravagant in teaware. Squeezed between the posh design hotels and riverside teahouses were authentic side alleys still inhabited by the friendly locals, often seen whistling by on their electric scooters and disappearing back into their own quarters.



At the northern end of Pingjiang Road sat the most famous of Suzhou’s classical garden villas -- the enormous and extremely popular Humble Administrator’s Garden. Even on a gloomy, rain-drenched weekday afternoon in the offseason, it was still difficult to get a moment of solitude away from the megaphone speakers of the domestic tour guides.



This of course doesn’t detract from the magnificence of the garden -- IMHO it is among the best along with Beijing’s Summer Palace -- though you simply can’t expect the same tranquility found at the Couple’s Retreat Garden.



Even more congested was a small villa just to the south, also ranked among the so-called Four Famous Gardens of Suzhou. In fact its unique model of garden design was so highly regarded in China that the Qing Dynasty emperors ordered two copies to grace their own Imperial palaces, one in Beijing and another in Chengde. This is the legendary Lions’s Grove, the grandest rock garden ever built.



Unlike Japanese rock gardens designed mainly for visual enjoyment from a distance, the Chinese variety is much more hands-on in the sense that you’re expected to climb, with hands and hiking poles if you wish, these artificial mountains and explore all of their intriguing grottoes and mysterious tunnels. And here was the absolute pinnacle in the ancient art of building artificial mountains, a whopping 1500 square metres of these outlandish rock mazes.



To give a slight idea of how much fun this was, I actually got lost inside one of these labyrinths looking for an exit route, not realizing that there were nine crisscrossing footpaths meticulously engineered into the seemingly haphazard pile of rocks! This is one place I would like to revisit in the future, in better weather and with more time to fully explore every nook of its collection of fascinating mazes.



We spent most of the next day on a self-guided culinary tour to the crab-farming villages on Yangcheng Lake, but we did return in time for an afternoon stroll within the postcard-perfect scenery of the refurbished, somewhat cheesy side of Shantang Street. To the east of the perfect stone arch of Tonggui Bridge was the cobblestone street infamously known as a tourist trap full of souvenir stores and silk retailers, always packed with busloads of multi-national tourists.



Except most casual tourists tragically miss the authentic side of Shantang Street, located just one block over to the west of Tonggui Bridge. When the government originally redeveloped the eastern side of the bridge as an admission-charging theme park (which soon became free due to a lack of patrons), the west side remained untouched as one of the last waterfront neighborhoods in 21st Century Suzhou.



There are no overpriced teahouses or tacky museums to lure in unsuspecting tourists, only a genuinely local wet market supplying all of life’s necessities from live grass carps thrashing on the pavement to every unimaginable hand-crafted bamboo utensil. While the chaotic swarms of grocery-shopping housewives and swerving scooters serve to bewilder and turn back most foreigners, a serene and charming side awaits another few minutes’ walk away, beyond yet another Qing Dynasty arched bridge.



This is the authentic side of Suzhou that I feared was gone forever, an ancient neighborhood of peasant residences built around this 1200-year-old canal, one of the few remaining from the dozens that used to interweave throughout the city and function as the main thoroughfares, much like the canals of Venice. It's now difficult to look at these dilapidated houses and visually imagine this exact section of the canal as the inspiration for the replica of Suzhou inside Beijing’s Summer Palace.



Unlike Pingjiang Road where the prime real estate was mostly snatched up by upscale restaurants and shops, here it's the neighborhood barber, furniture carpenters or simply residential homes, likely continuously occupied by the original families for countless generations. If you absolutely don't have time to travel to Tongli or Xitang but want a taste of an ancient waterfront town, this kilometer-long stretch of Shantang Street's canal between Tonggui Bridge and Tiger Hill would be an excellent alternative.



At the end I was satisfied with finding our own favorite corners of Old Suzhou, though they're rapidly being reduced to small pockets of authenticity among ever-present tourist traps in this sprawling metropolis of ugly apartments and hi-tech factories. And who knows what Shantang Street may look like in another 10 years?