Suzhou Ancient City (Pingjiang Historical District)

Author: Yuan Yixin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Suzhou's ancient city is a regional capital, leveraging its water-town characteristics! It is a model of a chessboard layout and can be considered one of the living specimens of ancient Chinese city walls. Pingjiang Historical Street is the most well-preserved area within Suzhou's ancient city to date, with its city canal, walls, waterways, small bridges, old residential buildings, archways, ancient wells, ancient trees, gardens, guild halls, and temples forming a vivid three-dimensional scroll that takes you back in history and tradition. Suzhou, the capital of the Wu Kingdom during the Spring and Autumn Period, is a masterful achievement in Chinese urban construction history. For over 2,500 years, despite suffering from repeated wars, Suzhou's ancient city has remained unchanged in its location and layout for millennia. It is not only a marvel in the history of world urban development but also Suzhou's greatest historical and cultural heritage. In 1986, the State Council explicitly required Suzhou to protect the ancient city's landscape and outstanding historical and cultural heritage while strengthening the renovation of old city infrastructure, actively developing new districts, promoting small towns, and gradually building Suzhou into a modern city with beautiful environments and distinctive water-town characteristics. Suzhou has always regarded the protection of its ancient city's landscape as a historical mission, giving it high priority. Even amidst rapid economic development, Suzhou's ancient city has maintained its "parallel land and water" road-water layout, its "gray, black, and white" urban color scheme, and its "refined, delicate, exquisite, and beautiful" architectural features. With small bridges over flowing water and white walls with black tiles, it forms a distinctive urban identity. It can be said that Suzhou, this ancient city itself, is a vast treasure trove of cultural relics. Located in the eastern part of Suzhou's ancient city, Pingjiang Historical Street is the most well-preserved area to date. It not only contains the World Heritage site of (Cou Garden) and numerous municipal protected cultural relics but alsos over 50 controlled-protected ancient buildings in Suzhou. Comparing the Song Dynasty's "Pingjiang Map" and the late Ming Dynasty's "Overall Map of Waterways within Suzhou Prefecture," one can see that Pingjiang Historical Street has largely maintained the city grid layout since the Tang and Song dynasties, with some street names, river channels, and bridge names corresponding directly to those on the "Pingjiang Map." The urban landscape woven together by city canals, waterways, small bridges, old residential buildings, archways, ancient wells, gardens, guild halls, and temples preserves the characteristics, style, and charm of old Suzhou. The book "Pingjiang Historical Street" systematically introduces the cultural background, historical evolution, road networks, waterways, cultural relics, architectural arts, and folk customs of this street. These solidified arts take readers back to the long river of history, evoking a sense of nostalgia for the past and fostering emotional resonance across time and space. We sincerely hope that Pingjiang Historical Street will (emerge with new vitality) while being protected, becoming a precious legacy for contemporary and future generations to sustainably utilize.