The shape of the day
Suzhou is close enough to Shanghai to be done as a single day, but only if the day is organised around two sites rather than six. We leave Shanghai early, reach the old city by mid-morning, and give the Humble Administrator's Garden the time it deserves before moving on to Tiger Hill and finishing in the canal lanes of Pingjiang Road on foot.
The car stays with the group throughout and we are back in Shanghai in the evening. Train is an option on this route and often the faster one; ask us and we will build the day around the high-speed service instead of the road.
The Humble Administrator's Garden
Begun in 1509 by Wang Xianchen, a censor who had retired from office, the garden takes its name from a line of the third-century writer Pan Yue about planting trees and watering vegetables being, in effect, the politics of a poor man. The Wu school painter Wen Zhengming is said to have prepared the designs. The result is the largest classical garden surviving in Suzhou, seventy-eight mu - about 52,000 square metres - divided into eastern, central and western parts, with the central section, where water takes up a third of the area, recognised as the finest.
It was listed by the State Council among the first batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units in 1961 and, in December 1997, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the four Suzhou classical gardens entered together, alongside the Lingering Garden, the Master of the Nets Garden and the Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty. In 2007 the Suzhou gardens including the Humble Administrator's Garden, the Lingering Garden and Tiger Hill were graded 5A nationally. Admission is ticketed, at about CNY 80 for an adult, and is payable locally.
Lunch
A Suzhou lunch in the old city - the local kitchen is sweet and river-based, and the noodles are worth ordering.
Tiger Hill and the leaning tower
Tiger Hill is the small hill from which the pagoda is visible long before you reach the city, and it takes its name from a legend about the burial of the King of Wu, with the sword pool below said to be his tomb. Above that pool stands Yunyan Temple Pagoda, known by everyone as the Tiger Hill Pagoda. It was begun in 959, in the Xiande reign of the Later Zhou, and completed in 961 in the second year of the Northern Song, which makes it the earliest pagoda surviving in Jiangnan and one of the only stone-brick pagodas left there.
It is a seven-storey, eight-sided brick tower imitating timber construction, 47.70 metres high. A fire in 1638 destroyed the timber eaves and brought down the finial, and the tower has stood out of plumb ever since: the axis leans 2.34 metres off the base at its top, with a maximum inclination of 3 degrees 59 minutes, which is why it is called the leaning tower of China. It has been a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit since 1961. Admission is ticketed, at about CNY 70 for an adult, and is payable locally.
Pingjiang Road
The day ends on foot in the Pingjiang Road quarter, the canal-side residential grid on the east side of the old city, which is free to walk and is the clearest surviving statement of what a Jiangnan water town looked like inside a walled city. Boats, tea houses and the small stone bridges are all here, and your guide will point out which parts of the frontage are original and which are period reconstruction.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
