"Suzhou has it all" Suzhou by yirutang

I was born in suzhou, jiangsu, China and lived there for most of my life time (18 years). I love my hometown very much and believe in its specialty.

Suzhou is a city of more than 2500 years of history and remains on its very original city site thanks to the city river that runs around it.

Suzhou is almost another term for "Jian Nan". "Jiang Nan" literally means south of Yangzi river, but actually means a very limited area of southern Jiangsu province and Nothern Zhejiang province. It is the most proseperous area in china since Song dynasty. Suzhou and Hangzhou is its heart. Now, Shanghai is the leader city and is better known to the world than Suzhou and Hangzhou.

Suzhou representing the "Wu" cluture has brewed a very delicate and somewhat feminist culture which shows in its unitque architecture, cusine, dialect, crafts, paintings, operas and "personality". Suzhou has it all, it is a very well rounded and complete culture entity. More importantly, the city and its culture is still vivid even today and I hope it will continue to flow far into the furture, into 3000, 4000 years.

A single street or a house in suzhou can have a long story to tell since Suzhou is so old and always be prosperous . I am trying to limit my list to reasonable long to fit for most tourism needs. Unlike the my other posts, many pictures I put on this post are collected from the internet instead of taken by myself. I've never taken serious photos for my hometown which is a pity. If I have chance to take digital pictures in suzhou, I will replace them with my own photos.

• Pros:It reprensents one important stream of chinese culture. The city is among the very few cities in China today that preserves some unique characteristics.
• Cons:Being a polular tourist spot, many places are overcrowed.