by admin | June 10th, 2008
Tonight I finally published to the internet the web page I’ve been working on for Suzhou, China. You can click on the link in this blog post, or you can go to the blogroll and click on the link there.
The site has numerous written data on Suzhou, links to other works on Suzhou, numerous personal pictures that I took in my last visit there, and several very good YouTube videos on the area.
A little except from the site might serve to whet your appetite for more. I am quoting below from the introduction. If you follow the instructions on the “How to Best Enjoy This Site!” , you can listen to Chinese musical compositions playing in the background while you read about Suzhou on the site.
“Marco Polo was said to have called Suzhou the ‘Venice of the Orient’ because its canals are so reminiscent of Venice, Italy. The poet, Yang Chaoying, who lived during the Yuan Dynasty, said in one of his poems: ‘In heaven above there is a paradise, on earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou’.
The 2500 year old city old Suzhou is the cradle of ‘Wu’ culture. The name ‘Wu’, oftentimes used to refer to Suzhou, is derived from the local tribes, who called themselves “Gou Wu” during the 11th century BC reign of the Shang Dynasty.
For a few years (around 403-221 BC) Suzhou was the capital of the state of Wu. In the early sixth century the city flourished as a trading and silk center. To this day, there are numerous silk factories in the area . . . . .”
Check it out! I think you’ll enjoy it.
