The Surging Wave Pavilion

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A large Taoist hall perpetually obscured by a curtain of joss smoke of devotes eager to placate the gods inside. It has a large market area, many small shops with a range of goods aimed mainly at either devotees or tourists. The temple was established in the 3rd century and broadened to its present size in the Song Dynasty, where it became a popular spot for travelling magicians and acrobats. The erstwhile performers have given way to a multitude of stalls selling meretricious worldly goods on which you can easily make your money disappear. The main Sanxing Dian hall was rebuilt in 1811 to hold Song Dynasty deity statues, later destroyed by Red Guards they occupied the hall during the cultural revolution. The present sculptures are modern reproductions. Of greater antiquity is a stone impressed with the footprints of a Taoist god, found in the Ming dynasty. The stone is genuine, but the origins of the feet less certain.