Old meets new in historical yet modern cities

Perhaps best known for its classical gardens and winding ancient canals, Suzhou is a city of wealth, opulence and beauty. This “land of rice and fish” as it is often called, is so precious that the city’s government has developed a whole new business district to preserve its 2,500-year-old city center.

The Suzhou New District stands west of downtown, bordering Taihu Lake and surrounded by several scenic spots and temples.

Everything is slick, electric and dazzling here. The perfectly sculpted gardens that line the straight roads sit at the feet of dazzling buildings covered in LED lighting and animated films — one even depicts a pod of dolphins breaching the blue ocean.

It is here that Suzhou has been developing its high-tech industry since the central government established the new district in 1992.

It is also one of China’s first industrial parks to open to attract investment from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation countries.

At the Suzhou New District’s exhibition hall for urban design, the grand scale of the project is laid out in spectacular style, with a 220-degree video display encircling a tennis-court-sized model of the district, again decorated with thousands of colorful LED lights.

Taking a step back from Suzhou’s shiny high-tech future, a visit to the new district’s western area celebrates the delicate intricacy of embroidery on an epic scale.

More than 8,000 embroidery artists live and work in the district, where every shop, front room or lounge reveals an embroidery workshop, displaying artwork toiled over painstakingly for months at a time.

At the embroidery workshop of Liang Xuefang, her 80-year-old mother hunches over a fine scrim, where she threads a floral scene with such fine detail that she must be guided by pure instinct rather than her vision.

Embroidery has flourished in this area for the best part of 2,000 years, and according to Eric Wang, a local tourism officer, the future looks bright thanks to growing overseas interest in the artwork.

To facilitate that trade, Taicang Port — the biggest port at the mouth of the Yangzte River and a countylevel city of Suzhou — has seen booming business in recent years as a result of the government push for opening-up.

A key part for any international trading hub’s opening-up is the speeding-up of customs clearance and quarantine procedures. According to a key official at the port, it is now able to carry out customs clearance 30 percent faster than just a few years ago. Yangzhou

Yangzhou has historically been one of the wealthiest cities in China.

That wealth is nowhere more evident than in the opulent houses and gardens of the city’s many salt merchants who traded there during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

It is said that the salt merchants of Yangzhou became so wealthy that one such trader commissioned a chamber pot made of gold, which was so tall he needed a ladder to use it.

The reason the city was chosen as the administrative center for many merchant businesses is because of its location on the north bank of the Yangzte River, where it meets the Grand Canal and travels north — China’s most important trading route for salt and grain.

Today, the Yangzhou section of the scenic Grand Canal is a wonder to behold.

The Old Course of the Shaobo Ming (1368-1644) and Qing Dynasties Canal reveals a waterway now disused by commercial traffic, but which has become a scenic cluster of ancient wharves and embankments perfect for tourism.

No longer do merchants and traders ply the stone streets that line the water’s edge, or ferry cargo back and forth down Shaobo’s narrow lanes and alleys.

Today, the area is left for visitors to enjoy and to preserve the memory of the importance the Grand Canal has played in Yangzhou’s rise throughout history. The author is an editor at China Daily and his email is owenfishwick@chinadaily.com.cn