22 Facts About Suzhou

Suzhou, alternately romanized as Soochow, is a major prefecture level city in southern Jiangsu province, East China, – and outer suburbs of the two global hubs meet.

Administratively, Suzhou is a prefecture-level city with a population of 6, 715, 559 in the city proper, and a total resident population of 12, 748, 262 as of the 2020 census in its administrative area.

Suzhou is part of the Greater Shanghai built-up area, incorporating most of Changzhou, Wuxi and Suzhou urban districts plus Kunshan and Taicang, with a population of more than 38, 000, 000 residents as of 2020.

Since the 10th century, Suzhou has been an important center of China's industry and foreign trade.

Suzhou is famous for its classical gardens, date back to the 6th century BC, when the city was founded as the capital of the state of Wu.

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Suzhou is one of the top 50 major cities in the world by scientific research outputs as tracked by the Nature Index, and home to multiple major universities in China, including Soochow University, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Changshu Institute of Technology.

The Classical Gardens of Suzhou were added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1997 and 2000.

Suzhou is often dubbed the "Venice of the East" or "Venice of China".

Name "Suzhou" was first officially used for the city in AD 589 during the Sui dynasty.

Suzhou is the Hanyu Pinyin spelling of the Putonghua pronunciation of the name.

Suzhou served as the regional metropolis of industry and foreign commerce on the southeastern coast of China.

Zhu – who was to proclaim himself the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty – demolished the old city walls at the center of Suzhou's walled city and imposed crushing taxes on the city and prefecture's powerful families.

Suzhou has a four-season humid subtropical climate with hot, humid summers and cool, cloudy, damp winters with occasional snowfall.

Suzhou is famous for its over 60 Classical Gardens, collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Suzhou's economy is based primarily on its large manufacturing sector—China's first larges—including iron and steel, IT and electronic equipment, and textile products.

Suzhou is a highly developed economic region in China and is the economic centre, industrial, commercial and logistical hub city of Jiangsu province, as well as an important financial, cultural, artistic, educational and transportation centre.

Suzhou has a long history of reeling silkworms and has always been an important base for silk production in China.

Since the Song and Yuan dynasties, Suzhou has been one of the centres of silk weaving and dyeing in the country, and in the Ming dynasty, the area around Suzhou, Song was the scene of the "clothing of the world".

Suzhou is on the Shanghai-Nanjing corridor which carries three parallel railways.

In between Suzhou and Kunshan South railway station, Suzhou Industrial Park railway station is an important station for people visiting and living in the areas.

Suzhou is served by three airports, Sunan Shuofang International Airport, Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport (one hour drive), and Shanghai Pudong International Airport (two hours drive).

Suzhou has public bus routes that run into all parts of the city.