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Large freshwater lake in Jiangsu, China
Photo: 螺钉, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Lake Tai (太湖, Tài Hú, literally "Grand Lake") is a large and scenic lake in China, on the border of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. The lake area gets many visitors from the nearby major cities — Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing — as well from as the ones around the lake. It provides the main somewhat rural getaway for East China.
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This is a park on a peninsula north of Wuxi, popular with tourists (especially Chinese) all year but especially in the spring, when it has a fine display of cherry blossoms.
San Xian Dao
These are three islands (san shan dao means "three hills islands") in the lake near Wuxi. They were once a hideout for bandits but are now a national park. Attractions include temples and statues of both Buddha and Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism; one statue is 88 m (289 feet) tall.
Any of the cities around the lake are well-connected by highway to all the main cities of East China; all are easily reached by bus.
Read in the guideThere are good roads all around the lake, multi-lane divided highways in some areas and plain two-lane blacktop in others. The main cities are all also on high-speed rail lines; see the previous section.
Read in the guideChoose an airport to see hotels, stations, taxi ranks and car rental desks around it.
Wuxi · International · WUX
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Suzhou (苏州; Sou-tseu in Wu, Sūzhōu in Mandarin, old romanization "Soochow".) is a city in Jiangsu province, famed for its beautiful gardens and traditional waterside architecture. A group of gardens form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Wujiang (吴江 Wújiāng) is a small city (1.5 million) located about 20 km south of downtown Suzhou on the shore of Lake Tai. Administratively, it is a county-level city within the prefecture-level city Suzhou.
Wuxi (无锡; Vu-sik in Wu, Wúxī in Mandarin) is an industrial city roughly halfway between Shanghai and Nanjing, a bit north of Suzhou. With rich natural and cultural heritage, Wuxi is a major destination for Chinese domestic tourists, but is still largely undiscovered by Westerners.
Huzhou (湖州) is a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang province, located on the southwest side of Lake Tai, a bit north of Hangzhou.
Yixing, Jiangsu Province, is a county-level city with a population of 1.1 million (2020). Yixing City is an international eco-tourism city in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, and a regional central city at the junction of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui.
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