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Photo: 钉钉, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This gate is renowned for its unique structure as a combined water and land gate. It was built as a gate in a city wall built in 514 BCE, but the present structure is from a 14th century rebuild. The remaining wall is 300 m long and 5 m high. Visiting Pan Men includes access to a large and rather lovely garden with ponds and pavilions (feed the koi for ¥2), a boat ride, the city water and land gate, and an original foot bridge over the grand canal.
Pan Gate, Panmen, or Panmen Gate is a historical landmark in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. It consists of a section of the old Suzhou City Wall that includes two separate gates, one opening to a road for pedestrian and vehicular traffic and another opening to a canal for waterborne vessels. It is thus sometimes known as Suzhou's Land and Water Gate. Pan Gate at the southwest corner of the city's central historic district, with the water gate connecting the city's inner canals and former defensive moat with the nearby Grand Canal.
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Canglang Pavilion, Canglang Ting 沧浪亭
One of the oldest of Suzhou's wonderful collection of private or "scholar's" gardens. More densely forested than other gardens, so ideal for hot days when you want to escape the sun. This garden is best viewed from within its many pavilions, with windows framing different views.
Wang Shi Yuan 网师园
Founded in 1140, and rebuilt in 1770 by the bureaucrat Song Zongyuan. The enclosed complex of house and garden is one of the smallest, most beautiful, and most perfectly proportioned in Suzhou. Don't let the small size deceive you, this garden has enough to occupy you for half a day or more. On certain evenings there are demonstrations of many traditional performing arts.
Yi Yuan 怡园
Very small garden in the heart of downtown. Good place to have a cup of green tea. Usually visited by lots of local elderly people.
Dinghui Si
A temple on the site of a Tang Dynasty temple. Little more than two huge 300-year-old Ginkgo trees and some stone pillar bases remain from the original complex after it was demolished and a factory built atop in 1949.
Huanxiu Shanzhuang 环秀山庄
Mainly a rock and water garden.
双塔
A pair of brick Northern Song Dynasty pagodas stand sentinel over the stark remains of an Arhat Temple from the same era. Mostly intact stone pillars, gracefully carved with floral designs, at the corners of the foundation, give a sense the invisible halls size and a stone etching at the rear of the garden helps you fill in the rest. The temple was damaged in the Qing dynasty and abandoned totally at the onset of China's republic. The grounds are peaceful but feel like a stone graveyard with fragments of carvings displayed around the outer wall or used as stands for bonsai plants.