Suzhou, the cradle of
Wu culture, is one of the oldest towns in the
Yangtze Basin. By the
Spring and Autumn period of the Zhou, local Baiyue tribes named the
Gou Wu are recorded living in the area which would become the modern city of Suzhou. These tribes formed villages on the edges of the hills above the wetlands surrounding
Lake Tai.
Sima Qian's
Records of the Grand Historian records traditional accounts that the
Zhou lord
Taibo established the
state of Wu at nearby Wuxi during the 11th centuryBC, civilizing the local people and improving their agriculture and mastery of irrigation. The Wu court later moved to Gusu within the area of modern Suzhou. In 514BC, King Helü of Wu relocated his court nearby and called the settlement Helü City after himself. His minister
Wu Zixu was closely involved with its planning and it was this site that grew into present-day Suzhou. The height of his tower on Gusu Hill (
Gusutai) passed into Chinese legend. In 496BC, King Helü was buried at
Tiger Hill. In 473BC, Wu was defeated and annexed by
Yue, a kingdom to its southeast; Yue was annexed in turn by
Chu in 306BC. Remnants of the ancient kingdom include pieces of its 2,500-year-old city wall and the gate through it at
Pan Gate. The city was originally laid out according to a
symbolic three-by-three grid of nine squares, with the royal palace occupying the central position. During the
Warring States period, Suzhou was the seat of Wu
County (, Wú xiàn) and
Commandery(,
Wú jùn). Following the
Qin Empire's conquest of the area in 222BC, it was made the capital of
Kuaiji Commandery, including lands stretching from the south bank of the
Yangtze to the unconquered interior of
Minyue in southern Zhejiang. Amid the
collapse of the Qin, Kuaiji's governor Yin Tong attempted to organize his own rebellion only to be betrayed and executed by
Xiang Liang and his nephew
Xiang Yu, who launched their own rebellion from the city. When the
Grand Canal was completed, Suzhou found itself strategically located on a major trade route, serving as the regional metropolis of industry and foreign commerce on the southeastern coast of China. During the
Tang dynasty, the great poet
Bai Juyi constructed the Shantang Canal (better known as "
Shantang Street") to connect the city with Tiger Hill for tourists. In AD1035, the
Suzhou Confucian Temple was founded by famed poet and writer
Fan Zhongyan. It became a venue for the
imperial civil examinations and then developed into the modern
Suzhou High School in the 1910s. " in
Du Halde's 1736
Description of China, based on accounts by
Jesuit missionaries After February 1130, riots and unrest disrupted Suzhou. After 1229, Suzhou prefecture became a commercial center of cities. In 1356, Suzhou became the site of a capital of
Zhang Shicheng, King of
Wu. In 1367, Zhang's rival
Zhu Yuanzhang took the city after a 10-month siege. Zhu who was soon to proclaim himself the first emperor of the
Ming dynasty demolished the old city walls at the center of Suzhou's walled city and imposed crushing taxes on the city and prefecture's powerful families. Despite the heavy taxation and the forced exile of some prominent citizens' south, Suzhou was soon prosperous again. During the early Ming, Suzhou Prefecture supervised the Yangtze
shoals which later became
Shanghai's
Chongming Island. For centuries the city, with its surroundings as an economic base, represented an extraordinary source of tax revenue. When the shipwrecked Korean official
Choe Bu had a chance to see much of Eastern China from Zhejiang to Liaoning on his way home in 1488, he described Suzhou in his travel report as exceeding every other city. Under the Ming dynasty, Suzhou was a prosperous center commercial area;
scholar-officials constructed
the area's most famous private gardens during this period in a "
Jiangnan style" copied at the time by
Shanghai's
Yu Garden. It was upgraded to a prefecture Fu at Suzhou. The rebels captured the prefecture in 1860. Many of its former buildings and gardens were "almost... a heap of ruins" by the time of their recovery by
Charles Gordon's
Ever-Victorious Army in November 1863. Nonetheless, by 1880, its population was estimated to have recovered to about 500,000, which remained stable for the next few decades. In the late 19th century, the town was particularly known for its wide range of
silks and its Chinese-language publishing industry. The town was first opened to direct foreign trades by the
Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the
First Sino-Japanese War and by the
most favored nation clauses of earlier
unequal treaties with the
Great Powers. The new expatriates opened a European-and-Chinese school in 1900 and the
Suzhou railway station, connecting it with
Shanghai, opened on 16 July 1906. Just prior to
World War I, there were 7000 silk looms in operation, as well as a cotton mill and a large trade in rice. As late as the early 20th century, much of the city consisted of islands connected by rivers, creeks, and canals to the surrounding countryside. Prior to their demolition, the city walls ran in a circuit of about with four large suburbs lying outside. The
Japanese invaded in 1937, and many gardens were again devastated by the end of the war. In the early 1950s, restoration was done on the
Humble Administrator's Garden and the
Lingering Garden. ==Administrative divisions==