Why I Wrote Beautiful Su

I would never have written this book if someone had already done it, but such was not the case. I spent a great deal of time in Suzhou between 2001 and 2006, and every day brought more and more familiarity with the city, from its waterways and narrow, labyrinthine lanes and its famed classical gardens and historical landmarks.

During my earliest years in Suzhou, I served as a visiting English language teacher at No. 2 Senior Middle School (i.e., High School) and then at No. 26 Middle School. Both positions were arranged by Mr. Xu Lei, an Assistant Principal at No. 2 and Principal at No. 26. It was Xu Lei who insisted that for as many of my weekly appearances as possible, members of his English language teaching staff should accompany me on outings to local sites of interest. Thus it was that I became increasingly familiar with Suzhou's history, primarily through excursions to its World Heritage Gardens but as well through visits to other schools and even a boat tour around the canal that once stood as the city's defensive moat.

The more cultural and historical tidbits I acquired, the more I felt emboldened to explore on my own or seek out other sites with Ping Ping's (my Suzhounese wife's) assistance. I also became increasingly interested to learn about the city's history, but repeated trips to the local (Xinhua) book store and even the Foreign Languages Bookstore yielded little more than tourist-oriented picture books and an occasional, very spotty work purporting to tell that story, usually in badly mangled English. Searches on Amazon, Google, and the like turned up several books, each focusing on specific aspects of Suzhou's history: economic development during the Ming Dynasty, urban transformation in the late Qing and early Republican era, urban form over time, the role of connoisseurship among the literati scholar class of the Ming Dynasty. All were rather academic, and none provided the sort of end-to-end historical tale I had hoped to find.

By 2006 or 2007, I had pretty much made up my mind. I knew enough to know that Suzhou was a special city, renowned in China but virtually unknown to Westerners. A fascinating story was just waiting to be told, and Westerners needed to know that when they traveled to China, there was a marvelous cultural experience available to them just fifty miles--a thirty-minute high-speed train ride--from Shanghai. Thus began an eight-year period of intensive research and learning, more site visits, and lots of writing and rewriting. The more I learned, the more convinced I was that Suzhou's was a story worth telling, and a story worth hearing. The result is this book, Beautiful Su.

At this writing, Beautiful Su is still in preparation for final publication. Here's a look at the preliminary draft of the front and back cover.

My plan for this blog is to supplement the book's content - perhaps with content not included in the book, or new, updated, or corrected information as I learn it, or photos or links to other useful websites.  My goal remains unchanged: to tell a remarkable, cultural-rich story of a famous Chinese city in a way that engages a Western reading audience as thoroughly as the city itself has engaged me.