Sūzhōu History

History

Dating back some 2500 years, Sūzhōu is one of the oldest towns in the Yangzi Basin. With the completion of the Grand Canal during the Sui dynasty, Sūzhōu found itself strategically located on a major trading route, and the city’s fortunes and size grew rapidly.

Sūzhōu flourished as a centre of shipping and grain storage, bustling with merchants and artisans. By the 12th century the town had attained its present dimensions. The city walls, a rectangle enclosed by moats, were pierced by six gates (north, south, two in the east and two in the west). Crisscrossing the city were six canals running north to south and 14 canals running east to west. Although the walls have largely disappeared and a fair proportion of the canals have been plugged, central Sūzhōu retains some of its ‘Renaissance’ character.

By the 14th century, Sūzhōu had established itself as China’s leading silk-producing city. Aristocrats, pleasure-seekers, famous scholars, actors and painters were drawn to the place, constructing villas and garden retreats for themselves as they came.

At the height of Sūzhōu’s development in the 16th century, the gardens, large and small, numbered more than 100. The town’s winning tourist formula – and its image as a ‘Garden City’ or a ‘Venice of the East’ – was created out of its medieval mix of woodblock guilds and embroidery societies, whitewashed housing, cobbled streets, tree-lined avenues and canals. Sūzhōu’s reputation was boosted by the reputation of its women as the most beautiful in China, largely thanks to the mellifluous local accent, and was sealed with the famous proverb ‘In heaven there is paradise, on earth Sūzhōu and Hángzhōu’.

Under the Ming and Qing, the silk industry continued to flourish, with large sheds housing thousands of workers in wretched conditions. Protests were common, with silk workers staging violent strikes as early as the 15th century. In 1860 Taiping troops took the town without a blow and in 1896 Sūzhōu was opened to foreign trade, with Japanese and other international concessions. Since 1949, most parts of the city, including the city walls have been largely demolished, and it’s uncertain how much of this once-beautiful city will remain in the future.