Jiangsu, China — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Jiangsu known for?

Jiangsu is China's province of water and gardens. Canals define it. The Grand Canal runs the length of it from north to south, and the Yangtze cuts across the south on its way to the Yellow Sea.

Suzhou earned the name Venice of the East for the canals that lace its old quarter, and its classical gardens are protected as a group. Nanjing, the provincial capital, holds a second reputation entirely, as a former imperial capital heavy with dynastic history.

Where is Jiangsu?

Jiangsu lies on the coast of East China, its long eastern edge fronting the Yellow Sea. It is a low, flat province. Plains cover most of it, and little of the land rises far above the sea, so water rather than hills does the shaping here.

The Yangtze enters from the southwest, near Nanjing, and runs east across the province to reach the sea, spreading into its delta as it goes. That river splits Jiangsu in two. South of it lies Jiangnan, the wealthier, garden-strung country around Suzhou and Lake Tai; north of it stretches the broader plain the Chinese call Subei. Shandong borders the province to the north and Anhui to the west. Zhejiang and the city of Shanghai lie to the south.

Running the other way, north to south, the Grand Canal crosses the whole province and cuts across every east-flowing river it meets, linking the towns strung along it. Lake Tai sits in the southern corner, shared with Zhejiang, and the canal skirts its eastern shore. Between the great river, the ancient canal, the lake and the sea, Jiangsu is as much waterway as land.

What is Jiangsu like?

The heart of Jiangsu's culture is the old land of Wu, in the south. Water shaped it. The classical gardens of Suzhou distil the local ideal, small walled worlds of rock, pond and pavilion built by scholars and merchants over centuries, and the finest of them are protected together as a single heritage group.

In the southern cities people still speak Wu Chinese, a group of southern varieties softer and more flowing to the ear than the northern Mandarin of the capital region. Kunqu opera, one of the oldest surviving forms of Chinese theatre, grew up around Suzhou. The cooking follows the same grain.

Huaiyang cuisine, named for the Huai River country and the canal city of Yangzhou, is prized across China for its knife-work and its light, fresh handling of river fish and freshwater produce. Nanjing carries a heavier, more courtly inheritance as a former imperial capital, its museums and tombs a counterweight to the garden towns downstream. Silk and embroidery were Suzhou trades for centuries.

Refinement over spectacle is the through-line.

What is the history of Jiangsu?

The south of the province was the core of the ancient state of Wu, and Suzhou was founded as its capital in 514 BCE. Nanjing's turn came later. It served as the capital of a string of southern dynasties, then again under the early Ming, and once more for the Republic of China in the twentieth century, a city that kept being chosen to rule from.

From the Sui and Tang onward the completion of the Grand Canal turned the whole province into a spine of trade between the rice-growing south and the capitals of the north, and its canal cities grew rich on that traffic. Shanghai was split off from Jiangsu to stand on its own in 1927.

What is the climate of Jiangsu?

Jiangsu splits into two climates along the Huai River. The south is humid and subtropical. Summers there are hot and wet under the East Asian monsoon, and Nanjing is known for a sticky, oppressive summer heat along the Yangtze, while winters turn cool and grey.

North of the Huai the seasons run colder and more continental, closer to the plains of Shandong than to the garden towns downstream. Rain falls more heavily toward the south, and all four seasons are clearly marked across the province.

How do you get to Jiangsu?

Many travellers reach Jiangsu through Shanghai, just across the southern border, and ride the high-speed line inland. Trains do the heavy lifting here. Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou and Nanjing sit in a row on the fast rail corridor, each an hour or two from the next and from Shanghai, so hopping between the canal cities takes very little time.

Nanjing has the province's main airport for those flying straight in. The Yangtze also carries river cruises up to the city and beyond.