Introduction
Museums record stories, connect the past with the future, and store precious memories of a city’s history. In Suzhou, the “city of a hundred museums”, the splendid culture and art, and millenniums of countless changes are all preserved in various originally designed museums. You can visit them to discover the secrets hidden in this simple and elegant city and appreciate the beauty of ancient and modern art.
Suzhou Museum
The New Suzhou Museum was designed by the world-renowned modernist architect I.M. Pei, who devoted more enthusiasm to the design of the museum than any of his previous works, to infuse his love for his homeland, Chinese culture and geometry into a building, and to make it the greatest “exhibit” of all.
The white walls, gray tiles, flying eaves, and the flowing water outside the lobby glass all display the essence of the classical Suzhou gardens. In addition, “Wu Treasures”, “Wu Pagodas”, “Wu Elegance”, “Wu Paintings and Calligraphy” are the permanent exhibition halls, together with more than 40,000 pieces of precious cultural relics to comprehensively show the cultural history of Suzhou.
Changshu Museum
Changshu Museum sits in the east side of Yu Mountain in Changshu and is a national level-1 museum in China. The museum has a rich collection of treasures and is renowned at home and abroad. At present, it has various collections ranging from Songze and Liangzhu cultures to modern and contemporary exhibits. The museum features nine categories of collection including paintings and calligraphy from the Ming and Qing dynasties, ceramics, jade artifacts, antique books, seals and inscriptions, which all have high historical, cultural, archaeological and artistic values.
Suzhou Museum of Inscribed Stone Tablets
Chinese inscription culture has a history of over 2,000 years. A stone erected on the ground as a permanent monument or sign with words engraved on it is called inscription. As time passes by, inscriptions have become not only a medium for recording and dissemination, but also a poetic creation by literati. Suzhou Museum of Inscribed Stone Tablets is a professional museum dedicated to the collection, study, display and reproduction of ancient inscriptions. The most interesting is the “Four Great Song Stone Tablets”, and the famous Pingjiang Map that is the world’s oldest city map carved in stone tablet and illustrates Suzhou’s double-chessboard layout of dense grid of roads and canals.
Suzhou Silk Museum
Situated on the shore of Taihu Lake, Suzhou is a famous city of silk, and Suzhou Silk Museum is the first Chinese museum specialized in silk. The exterior of the museum is white to present the color of silk, and strands of “silk” pour down at the center of the square to let people feel the traditional charm of silk in a very modernistic environment. The museum not only has silk relics from the past on display, but also has a real-life display of mulberry cultivation and silkworm breeding, traditional loom operation and real-world application of modern silk weaving technology.
Picture from: Fun in Suzhou
Suzhou Museum of Opera and Theater
Suzhou Museum of Opera and Theater houses China Kunqu Museum and Suzhou Pingtan Museum of China. Formerly known as the Quanjin Club House, the museum features one of the most exquisite ancient theatres in Suzhou. Its magnificent and exquisite architecture not only reflects the essence of ancient Chinese architecture, but also scientifically and ingeniously uses acoustics to produce an excellent sound effect. You may find a quiet place and watch a subtle and glamorous Kunqu opera, or enjoy Pingtan performed in the gentle Suzhou dialect, it’s really a spiritual delight.
