Four Years of Living, Learning, Teaching, and Becoming Half-Chinese in Suzhou, China
| Home Page ABOUT THE BOOK Why a Memoir? Meaning of the Title Book Format What/Where Is Suzhou? Why Suzhou Is So Fitting for This Book Where Can I Buy The Book? SELECTED PREVIEWS Chapter 5: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Chapter 20: A Precious Belt Chapter 29: A City Shuts Down UPDATES SINCE 2006 Our Story Suzhou's Story EXTRA PHOTOS Related to the Book Suzhou 2001-2006 Suzhou Since 2006 ABOUT: The Author My Next Book My SuzhouPlus Website |
 
 WHY SUZHOU IS SO FITTING FOR THIS BOOK
To Westerners, Suzhou is a spot on a map, a city less than an hour's train or car ride from Shanghai's city limits. For Chinese people, however, Suzhou is a concept bordering on an ideal. Think Paris or Vienna, but multiply that idealized perception of cultured grace by a factor of ten, or perhaps one hundred, and you have a sense of Suzhou's place in the Chinese psyche. Mention Suzhou to people anywhere in China and you will hear the adage, "Xiang you tian tang, xia you su hang" recited back to you in a response so automatic as to seem Pavlovian. In English, they will tell you, the saying means, "In the sky there is heaven, but here on earth we have Suzhou and Hangzhou." Mention that your wife is Suzhounese to people, especially men, anywhere in China and they will inform you that "the most beautiful women in China are from Suzhou." If you are accompanied by a Suzhou native, people throughout China will ask your partner to speak a little in Suzhou dialect, not because they understand it but because they so enjoy the smooth, lilting sound of that speech, the most adored in the country. Some people may even remind you that the Suzhou area is so agriculturally bountiful, it was once commonly called "the land of rice and fish" with the same implication as the Bible's reference to "a land of milk and honey." These present-day reactions offer a sense of Suzhou's standing, but the reasons run far deeper and more historically. Suzhou was for many centuries the intellectual and cultural center of China. A hugely disproportionate share of imperial scholars came from the city, and it became a commonplace for intellectuals and government officials to retire there regardless of their geographic origins. Suzhou not only gave birth to its famed garden design style, it was home to numerous cultural achievements, ranging from the hugely influential Wu School of Painting and a similar school of artistic calligraphy to Kunqu Opera (arguably the origin of what Westerners know as Peking Opera) and a style of ballad singing called Pingtan. Couple this with poetry and essay writing, silk and jade craftsmanship, culinary arts, fashion styles, courtyard houses lining and overhanging the gently-flowing canals, and an overall atmosphere of wealth and personal intellectual cultivation and you have the basis for the idealized Chinese perception of Suzhou as heaven on earth. Yet for all its tradition and charm, the old city is disappearing under waves of industrialization, Westernization, and massive urban renewal and expansion. Formerly a quiet commercial center renowned for its heritage, Suzhou had become one of China’s major manufacturing centers, vaulting from nowhere to fourth place among all Chinese cities in per capita economic production (GDP). Changes that took fifty years in the United States are being compacted into just a few years in Suzhou. The city is undergoing a poignant struggle to maintain its traditions while integrating new wealth, technology, and cultural influences from the West, reflecting the intellectual and cultural soul of China at war with itself. CHINA, HEART AND SOUL hopefully captures a sense of that struggle, seen through my own widening understanding and appreciation of the city and its place in Chinese history. This book focuses on the changing lives of ordinary Chinese people, not artists or government officials or political activists or business magnates. It describes the events of daily life in China just as Suzhou’s citizens experience them. Perhaps best of all, Suzhou is not Beijing or Shanghai, the usual loci for Westerners writing about China. Today's Suzhou perfectly encapsulates the industrialized and globalized “new China”—a modest-sized city that exploded into a major manufacturing center. Where Beijing is China’s Washington, D.C. and Shanghai its New York City, Suzhou is Minneapolis with a touch of Boston’s history, Charlotte’s business dynamism, and Savannah’s grace and charm. |