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About Author
David W. Ferguson，graduated in Law from Edinburgh University in Scotland. After a long career as a management consultant he set up an independent media production company in 2003. He first came to China with his wife, who is Chinese, in 2006, and since then he has spent most of his time in China. Initially he worked as a business and investment advisor and he has worked extensively for Chinese and Western media, covering major events as diverse as the Sichuan earthquake, the Beijing Olympic Games, and World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
He is Golf Correspondent for CIPG's web-based news and information service, China.org. This is his third book on China for Foreign Languages Press-he has previously written Nantong Tales-Pioneers from "China's First Modern City", a book exploring the economic development of Nantong through the life stories of a number of contemporary Nantong entrepreneurs, and From "Made in Guangdong" to "Created in Guangdong'： an exploration of the industrial, economic and social transformation strategy currently under way in the province of Guangdong.
Table of Contents
In Red Embroidered Shoes
Old Suzhou
Arts and Crafts
Suzhou Cuisine
Around Suzhou
New Suzhou
Putting Away My Red
Embroidered Shoes
Appendix
Sample Pages Preview
In the Steles Museum of Suzhou there is a splendid stone stele about two meters high. It is a map called "The Pingjiang Map", which dates back to the year 1229. It is the largest stone city map in China. It is a map of the old city of Suzhou within the confines of the main moat and the walls that surrounded the city at the time, showing a city criss-crossed with a grid of narrow lanes and waterways.
Place a copy of the Pingjiang Map alongside a modern map of Suzhou, and you will be astonished to see how little the old city has changed since 1229. Most of the streets and the lanes and waterways are still there, still as they were 800 years ago. Many of the street names have even been conserved.
But the Pingjiang Map tells only half of the story- or to be more accurate, only one third. Because the story of Suzhou dates back not 800 years, but 2,500.
And if a map could be found of that first city plan, laid out in 514 BC by Prime Minister Wu Zixu at the order of his master Helü, King of Wu, then it is quite likely that it too would be Utt（e different from the others.
Suzhou has a long and distinguished history. A mark of its sophistication can be inferred from an old fling Dynasty saying: You could walk the streets of Suzhou after rainfall in your red embroidered shoes, and they would stay clean. The meanest streets of Suzhou were paved in stone when the main streets of other Chinese cities were still mud tracks.
Suzhou lies in Jiangsu Province to the west of Shanghai. The whole area,south of the Yangtze River Delta, is dotted with lakes and lined with rivers. Suzhou is a water city. For many centuries boats were the main means of transport. The city was built on a network of waterways, with its houses fronting onto narrowlanes and opening at the rear directly onto the canals.
