City guide · Jiangsu
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Before I ever reached the south, this is how I imagined it — a place with a story. Broken black tiles, weathered marks, leaning against a hill that is not very high, like something to lean on. And a dim yellow sunset, a sky that is not quite white. Very beautiful. — from 'Suzhou in June'
A traveller's note in the source guide
Walking the lanes of Tongli you are always seeing patched, flaking walls — the oldest houses here are several hundred years old, the render falling away, patches mouldering green. There is a lane you reach from the riverside through a gap only a metre and a half wide, and at night, with no street light, a closed-in helplessness comes over you. — from 'A Trip to Suzhou'
A traveller's note in the source guide
Fifteen canals cut Tongli into seven islets and forty-nine bridges stitch them back together. Every house stands on the water; every household has a boat. The Ming and Qing houses crowd the banks one after another, and the bridges of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing survive intact. It is the pattern the south is famous for, and it is what won the town its nickname, the little Venice of the east.
There is an old line that scenery is three parts landscape and seven parts dressing-up. Tongli is the reverse: nine parts scenery, one part dressing-up. What strikes you is not any one building but the weight of the place — you could grab a handful of the air and come away with a fistful of accumulated culture. Yu Qiuyu put it best in 'Cultural Travels': walking into Tongli produces the strange urge to find a room here and stay.
It is also, of its generation of water towns, the least performed. Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen are attractions now, commercialised accordingly. Tongli has been developed less and lives more: people are up at dawn and indoors at dusk. Respect that rhythm and you are rewarded with a town that feels inhabited rather than staged.
And it is the easiest of them to reach from Suzhou — 18 km, a bus every 20 minutes, about 45 minutes. Pair it with Zhouzhuang an hour away. Stay the night if you can, because the town empties after five and the mist comes up in the morning.
Tongli
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Fifteen canals divide the town into seven islets and forty-nine bridges join them again. Every house stands on the water, every household has a boat, and the bridges of four dynasties survive. It is the most complete version of the little-bridge-running-water-households pattern in the delta.
The old saying is that fine scenery is three parts landscape and seven parts presentation. Tongli inverts it. What you notice is not a single restored building but the accumulated weight of the place. Yu Qiuyu wrote that walking in produces the strange urge to find a room and settle.
The Retreat and Reflection Garden, built under the Guangxu emperor by a military intendant who came home and named it from the Zuo Zhuan — 'advance and think of loyalty, retire and think of your faults'. It is the only World Heritage garden among the Yangtze delta's water towns, and it is nine mu eight fen, laid out sideways because of the plot.
Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen are attractions now. Tongli has been opened up less and lives more — up at dawn, indoors at dusk. That is the whole reason to choose it, and the reason to respect the residents' rhythm rather than treating the lanes as a set.
Taiping, Jili and Changqing sit in the shape of the character for 'pin' where three canals meet, with a circular street formed naturally around them. Locals walk all three at weddings and on a sixty-sixth birthday, saying 'peace, good fortune, long celebration' as they go.
With the water scenery, the density of monuments and the intact Ming-Qing fabric, Tongli was called a natural film studio and a museum of Ming-Qing architecture, and it is one of China's ten great film locations. 'Family', 'Spring', 'Autumn' and 'Dream of the Red Chamber' were all shot in the garden.
Suggested routes
The garden first, then the halls, the bridges and the lanes. This is the standard day trip from Suzhou.
Arrive the evening before if you can and see the town at night. After breakfast go straight to the Retreat and Reflection Garden, the most famous private garden in the town and the one that sets it apart.
Then the Lize girls' school — founded by the garden's second owner, and now the sex-culture museum. West of it is Chongben Hall, one of the 'two halls', with carving that stops people in their tracks. Out of Chongben you are facing the three bridges. Cross them and you come to the other hall, Jiayin. Finish on the Ming-Qing street for local produce, and haggle.
Stops: Retreat and Reflection GardenLize girls' schoolChongben HallThree bridgesJiayin HallMing-Qing street
Day one takes the island and the lanes, day two the halls and the shopping. Slower, and it gets you two evenings.
After breakfast take the ferry from the landing to Luoxing Isle, a site where Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism share one island; the buildings are compact and the temple and garden are one. Then Chen Qubing's house — he was a modern poet and a founder of the Nanshe society.
Cross a small bridge to the Five Cranes gate tower, the most imposing brick gate tower surviving in the old houses and gardens here, with five cranes standing and circling. Then the poetic Chuanxin Lane, narrow and high-walled, where two people meeting must turn sideways. Out of the lane, Gengle Hall, the three bridges and Jiayin Hall. Dinner in a private house, then walk the night town.
Stops: Luoxing IsleChen Qubing's houseFive Cranes gate towerChuanxin LaneGengle HallThree bridgesJiayin Hall
Chongben Hall first; it connects to the three bridges, with a neat stone embankment guarding the old house. Then the history museum, which takes scholars, artefacts and documents as its subject and shows the town's historical face.
Then the Pearl Pagoda, developed from the story that is supposed to have originated here, and the Lize girls' school and the famous garden. Buy your produce on the Ming-Qing street, and finish at Shide Hall — the Cao family house, built under the Daoguang emperor, with real architectural quality and real relic value.
Stops: Chongben HallHistory museumPearl PagodaLize girls' schoolRetreat and Reflection GardenMing-Qing streetShide Hall
The classic pairing — an hour apart, and two halves of the same story.
Rise early for the Zhouzhuang dawn, then come across to Tongli. Start at the Retreat and Reflection Garden — the most famous private garden in the town, plain but quiet and elegant, in the late-Qing southern manner.
Then change register at the sex-culture museum, which is as much a lively lesson in biology as anything else. After that, Jiayin Hall and the three bridges, which are the treasure of Tongli's bridges; lunch; then Chongben Hall and the Songshi garden in the afternoon, and the Pearl Pagoda last — it carries the classical romanticism of the legend it was rebuilt from.
Stops: Retreat and Reflection GardenSex-culture museumJiayin HallThree bridgesChongben HallPearl Pagoda
Sights
World Heritage
Built by Ren Lansheng, a military intendant of Anhui, after he returned home, and named from a line in the Zuo Zhuan — 'advance and think of loyalty, retire and think of your faults'. It is the most famous private garden in Tongli and the only World Heritage garden among the water towns. It covers nine mu eight fen and, because the plot forced it, is built sideways: house to the west, garden to the east, which is what gives it its particular place among Suzhou's private gardens. The residence is in two halves: to the west three halls — sedan hall, tea hall and main hall — for weddings, funerals and receiving guests; to the east the inner quarters, two five-bay, five-storey buildings known as the Wanxiang towers, linked by a double east-west corridor, the horse-run gallery that is called the finest in the south. The gardens are the quiet beauty of the minor house, and 'Family', 'Spring', 'Autumn' and 'Dream of the Red Chamber' were all filmed here.
Tip Come at opening or late in the afternoon. It is small, and it reads very differently with three people in it than with three hundred.
The treasure
Taiping, Jili and Changqing. Taiping crosses the Dongliu and Qizi polder blocks and is a small, neat beam bridge. Jili crosses the Qizi and Liang polder blocks and sits between Taiping and Changqing — stand on its north side and look round at all three, the water clear as a mirror, the bridges like rainbows lying on the waves. Changqing is also called the Xie family bridge, or Guangli bridge. The three sit in the shape of the character for 'pin' over the meeting of three canals, so a circular street formed itself around them. Along the banks are dressed-stone embankments, silk trees and glossy privet reflected in the water, and flower-and-stone balustrades; boats come and go in pairs on the canal and people cross the bridges laughing.
Tip Nobody knows when the custom began, but the three bridges stand for good fortune and happiness in Tongli. Walk all three in order — you are not meant to pick one.
The carving
Facing south, built onto the water, looking across the river at Jiayin Hall to the east and joined to the three bridges on the west, with a tidy stone embankment guarding the old house. If Tongli is a museum of old architecture, Chongben is the finely carved piece in it — the craft and the depth of it make every visitor stop. Its owner was Qian Youqin, a Tongli man, who bought part of the Gu family's 'western house retreat' in the first year of the Republic and rebuilt it. The structure is notably sensible: firewalls separate the main hall from the tower, and on either side of the gate tower and the passage there are 'crab-eye light wells' — small courts that ventilate and light, drain water and stop fire.
Tip It is not large, but it is tight and precise — the compact one. Do it before Jiayin so the carving escalates rather than declines.
The gauze-hat hall
Built in the eleventh year of the Republic, 1922, for an owner named Liu Bingnan. The main building is called the gauze-hat hall, built in imitation Ming style: tall, wide, solemn. Carving covers it — the eight-horses picture on both sides of the five-frame beam, wind-cold peonies at the beam ends, and on the underside of the beam the motifs for 'as you wish' and 'certainly placed high'; even a rock the size of a fist carries a lotus seed pod, for sons. Rarer still: the gauze-hat wings, the bracket-arms, carry eight vivid scenes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms — 'Meeting at Gucheng', 'Three Heroes Against Lü Bu', 'Three Visits to the Thatched Cottage', 'Borrowing Arrows with Straw Boats'.
Tip Bring your eyes upstairs. The bracket-arms are above head height and almost everybody misses them.
The narrow one
Tongli has many lanes, long, thin and twisting, as southern towns do. Southern houses all have high walls and the lanes were all left narrow, which makes the walls seem higher still — and the one with the most feeling is Chuanxin. It is extraordinarily narrow: one person fits. Two people meeting in it must both turn sideways to pass. Gu Changwei filmed the most beautiful near-miss in 'Love Comes to Tongli' here.
Tip Go in daylight the first time. The source guide is honest that at night, with no street light, the lane can feel closed-in and unsettling.
Out on the lake
A site where Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism share one ground, east of the town, an island floating on the lake — a few minutes by boat, with the wide water of Tongli Lake and its fishing sails all the way. What you see ahead is the Luoxing temple, famous for its rain-and-mist views, like a fairyland floating on green water. On the island now: the City God hall, the Wenchang pavilion, the Doumu pavilion, a dry-land boat, a zigzag bridge, a wandering temple, a lotus pool and a fish pool, laid out compactly so that temple and garden are one. At sunset you can look back from the island over the lights of the lakeside houses.
Tip The most charming thing about Luoxing is the rain. It is bleak, then rounded, then like weeping, then high and fierce — and the reed bank and the willows are worth walking whatever the weather.
Ming, with a lotus pool
Built by Zhu Xiang, a Ming scholar who never took office, listed in 1981 as one of the eight sights of Tongli in the provincial Taihu scenic zone and in July 1986 as a Wujiang-level protected site. A service lane on the west of the house runs straight through to the back garden, where a lotus pool is edged with lake rocks at varying heights, quiet and unusual. South of the pool is the mandarin-duck hall, three bays wide, bright and clean, facing the Huanxiu pavilion across the water — one high, one low, set as a pair. Over a three-bend bridge from the courtyard is the Huanxiu pavilion, built across the water in an unusual shape; round the rockery and down from it is the osmanthus hall, in its own courtyard with two old trees, one gold osmanthus and one silver, still fragrant every autumn after all their weather.
Tip Come in autumn if you can — the two old osmanthus in the hall's courtyard are the reason the room is named what it is.
Change of register
The school was founded by Ren Chuanxin, the second owner of the Retreat and Reflection Garden, and it opened the way for girls' education in Wujiang. In the grounds stands a memorial shaped like an arrow rising from the earth, built by the teachers and students to mark their shame at Yuan Shikai's sell-out of the country. The building is now China's sex-culture museum — said to be the largest folk sex-culture museum on the mainland and the first to be sited inside a scenic area — with sections on sex in landscape, sex in worship, sex in Chinese characters, and sex in literature and art.
Tip It is a genuine change of pace after two gardens, and the source guide is right that it is as much a lively lesson in biology as a curiosity.
The legend
Also called the Censor's old archway, it was developed and restored from the anecdotes and surviving remains of the 'Pearl Pagoda' story, which is widely told through the south and which is supposed to have originated here — Fang Qing's reading tower and the embroidery tower of Miss Chen Cui'e once stood on the site. The restoration makes full use of the water-town character of Tongli and reinstates the place names from the story, which gives it a character different from the other sights, and more of the classical romantic and legendary about it.
Tip It is the most romantic thing in town and the least photographed. Save it for late afternoon.
The poet
On Sanyuan River in Tongli, off the little flagstone Sanyuan Street, a short way west. Chen Qubing was a modern poet and one of the founders of the Nanshe society. The main buildings are the Haoge Hall, the Baichi Tower, the Lvyu Qingya Hall, a study and the family shrine. Haoge Hall is three bays wide; when it was finished in 1920 Chen happened to be reading Bai Juyi's 'Song of Singing Aloud' and named the new house for it. It was where he received guests. Baichi Tower, one storey over another and quite plain, was where he kept his books and wrote — his 'Baichi Tower Collectanea' is named for it. Lvyu Qingya Hall, the hall-tower, faces east with five bays above and five below and two wing-rooms, thirteen rooms in all; over the lintel are five large characters written by the modern calligrapher Yang Qianli.
Tip The Baichi Tower is the quiet one. Chen wrote his collected works there, and the name of the book is the name of the room.
What the town keeps
The history museum takes scholars, artefacts and documents as its three subjects and shows the historical face of the town: the scholars' hall collects fourteen figures from the Song onwards, forty-two presented scholars and one top-place graduate; the artefacts hall shows more than a hundred excavated and handed-down pieces; the documents hall covers the events from the Taiping years to the liberation of Tongli. The Old Styles Garden, east of the park bridge in Nanhao Lane, is in three parts — beds, wood carving and curios — of which the best known are a Xuande-period bronze incense burner, a Kangxi blue-and-white general's jar and a Qianlong gilded buddha. The Wang Shao'ao memorial was originally Liugeng Hall, entered by three service lanes east, west and centre, and was the early home of Wang Shao'ao, one of the founders of the China Association for Promoting Democracy.
Tip Forty-two presented scholars and one top-place graduate from a town this size is the statistic that explains the density of big houses.
Outside the ticket
Xiaodian Lake forest park, north-east of Tuncun community, borders Zhouzhuang to the east and Tongli to the west, with the wide water of Chenghu Lake to the north. Nearly 4,000 mu of it, now planted in metasequoia, pond cypress, moso bamboo, early bamboo, ginkgo, white-fleshed loquat, flowers and nursery stock; the woodland is dense and quiet, and orioles, egrets and hares have moved in. The ground is flat, ditches and ponds run in a grid, paths cross it and the surrounding lakes and fields keep it pleasant. The Jingsi Garden takes its name from 'quiet thought reaches far': nine-bend corridors, water and hill, pavilions and towers, a waterside boathouse, rockeries, and the famous sites of the Crane Pavilion bridge, the Small Drooping Rainbow, the Jingsi hall, the Tianxiang study, the Pangshan thatched hall, the Su-style brick carving, the penjing garden and the inscribed-stone corridors. Its 600-odd square metre strange-rock hall holds a great many Lingbi rocks, among them 'Qingyun Peak', a Guinness record holder.
Tip The forest park is the thing to do if you have seen enough old houses — it is flat, shaded and full of birds, and it is a fifteen-minute bus ride.
Food
Pork knuckle braised in dark soy until it is red and gleaming: soft, sticky, sweet, and somehow not greasy, with a finish that goes on. Tongli serves it when entertaining, and people from the surrounding villages come in to buy it. It is the dish the town is known for.
The birds are raised loose in the countryside around Tongli on grass, insects and rice, then stewed with dried bamboo shoots and wild fungi. The broth is clean and the meat is tender. Order it if you want something that is not red-braised.
A representative of rice culture: translucent, slippery and springy. Bring water to the boil, add the wine lees and soft white sugar, bring it back to the boil, drop in the dumplings, and when they all float they are done; thicken with a little starch just before they come out.
Egg white beaten with rice flour and shrimp, then fried: bright in colour, crisp and fragrant, and better still served in a small dish with tomato alongside. Order it in advance — the kitchen needs several stages and time for it.
From the middle cut of a five or six catty black carp or grass carp, boned but with the skin left on, rolled around shreds of ham, chicken and mushroom with yellow wine and spring onion, then steamed. Fine-fleshed, faintly fragrant, unlike anything else here.
Fried shredded eel with shredded ham, chicken and shrimp, a little ginger, crisp fat and garlic, and boiling lard poured over the top at the table. Pepper is scattered over it as it comes out, and the smell arrives before the dish does.
The top of Tongli's local produce, from the northwest shallows, known locally as chicken-head rice and called the ginseng of the water. The Compendium of Materia Medica lists it for damp blockage, back and knee pain, and for strengthening the essence and the will. Soak half a day, simmer until soft, and add red dates, lotus seed or longan.
Said to be made by pounding brome grass juice into glutinous rice until the dough turns emerald, wrapping it around red-bean or jujube paste, and steaming it on a reed leaf. Sold around the Qingming festival.
The climate is mild and damp, the creeks are dense, so the town is rich in river fish and aquatic plants. White fish, perch, mandarin fish and turtle are the famous ones; water bamboo, celery, water shield, water caltrop, lotus root and arrowhead are all local and all worth ordering.
Served in the tea houses, and the point is the sitting rather than the tea. The Li family's version is distinct in three ways — how the leaf is made, how it is brewed and how the session is run — and it comes with small dishes: fried river snails in bean sauce, the three whites of Taihu, the zhuangyuan knuckle, three-colour shrimp cakes, lotus-root shreds, bamboo-shoot shreds, euryale-steamed pork, and rice cooked over a wood fire.
Where to eat
The tea, and the dishes
Grandmother's tea as a proper sitting, with the small dishes that go with it: river snails in bean sauce, the three whites of Taihu, zhuangyuan knuckle, three-colour shrimp cakes, lotus-root shreds, bamboo-shoot shreds, euryale-steamed pork and wood-fired rice. A pot to drink there is ¥80; a bag of fifteen pots' worth, simply packed, is ¥300.
Best value
Fair prices and good flavours. Order the zhuangyuan knuckle, the white water fish, the free-range chicken, the plain-cut chicken, the dough drops, water caltrop with soybeans and the white rice shrimp. About ¥44 a head.
The local answer
The source guide is blunt about this: there are a lot of restaurants and the quality is uneven, and the ones along the river are generally the weakest. The family inns cook too — generous portions, better flavour, fair prices — and several of them are recommended for their food as much as for their rooms.
Snacks
For snacks, the century-old names are Yilong sauce garden, Guxiangcun and the Nanyuan tea house. Guxiangcun food hall sells different things as the seasons turn, and is worth a stop on the way out for something to take home.
Festivals and nights
Fri, Sat, Sun
On Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings the town runs a night programme, with the distinctive southern strings and bamboo music performed by the three bridges. Under the night the town sheds the noise of the day and starts showing what it actually is. It is the one thing you cannot do on a Tuesday.
Tip We are always walking, and we forget to stop. Book a room inside the gate, and the night programme is included in the price of being here.
Dragon Boat Festival
Tongli has wide water, and this is the liveliest event of the year. Besides the drum team in the bow keeping time, the old, the young and the women all have to go ashore to watch — only the able-bodied stay on board, and that lightening of the boat speeds it up without anyone planning to.
Tip Get on the bank early. The bridges fill an hour before the first race.
23rd of the sixth month
A Tongli speciality that is really an annual fire-fighting competition. The man holding the nozzle sometimes aims it at the sky on purpose and drenches the part of the crowd that did not bring an umbrella — everyone ends up soaked and nobody minds.
Tip Bring a raincoat or stand well back. Getting soaked is part of the joke.
30th of the seventh month
The thirtieth day of the seventh lunar month is the birthday of the Bodhisattva Dizang, and at dusk every household lights candles and incense at its own door or in its courtyard, sticking the sticks one by one into the ground — 'the dog's ritual'. Then the floating lanterns go out, which happens nowhere in the Wujiang area except Tongli. A boat ahead carries monks playing Buddhist music; the boat behind lights the wicks in the oiled-paper lanterns and sets them one by one on the water. Within an hour every canal in the town is flickering, like the sky's stars fallen into the river.
Tip This is the single best night of the year to be in Tongli. Sleep here — the last boats go late.
Third and fourth months
The Zhu Tian gathering is a folk observance for Zhu Youjian, the last Ming emperor, started after the fall of the dynasty by loyalists as a religious form of resistance. In Tongli it is mostly old women — locally called 'squeezing the old ladies on the twenty-eighth of the third month' — and it consists of sitting on rush stools and eating vegetarian food, which is said to bring health and lift all taboos. The Immortals' meeting on the fourteenth of the fourth month is a wider regional event with a local flavour: stilt-walkers, a river boat act, the mussel-shell spirit, a small procession, and behind them a group of penitents in crime skirts.
Tip These are local observances rather than performances. Watch from the edge of the crowd and do not block the procession.
Autumn
Mid-autumn matters here: every household sets out an offering and eats mooncakes, along with other fruits — water caltrop, lotus root, tangerines. At midnight the incense offering is carried into the courtyard and burned, and only then does the family sit down to mooncakes and moon. Earlier in the year, the eighth and ninth days of the eighth month are the harvest fair, when women married that year go home to their parents before the autumn work begins, and traders from the surrounding towns fill Beiguan and Xinzhen Street with peep shows, boxing, clay figurine stalls and travelling circuses.
Tip If you are here at mid-autumn, buy mooncakes from a shop on Ming-Qing street rather than a supermarket, and eat them after midnight the way the town does.
Shopping
A small shortcake whose layers are as thin as a cicada's wing, shaped like a kidney and a bit like the sole of a sock, which is where the name comes from. Fresh and crisp, sweet with a salt edge.
Said to have been made specially for new guests and for a son-in-law coming to the house: good wishes kneaded into small pale-red cakes, meaning that the coming year will be red-hot and rise another storey.
A traditional Suzhou-style tea cake of the town and one every country housewife here can make. Fragrant, dark green and glossy, fine-textured, sweet and sticky.
Lotus root clears heat and is used for hot conditions; it is sweet and juicy and particularly good for thirst in fever, and for bleeding. Suitable for the old, the young and the infirm, and specifically for high fever, those spitting blood, high blood pressure, liver complaints, poor appetite, iron-deficiency anaemia and malnutrition.
Askin of rice flour kneaded with 'min cake' herb, filled with bean paste and walnut, then steamed — a kind of green rice ball, dark green, glossy, fine-grained, oily without being greasy, fragrant and slippery, and distinctly of the southern countryside. Under the Qing it was listed as tribute and sent to the Empress Dowager Cixi.
Richly glutinous, sweet and nourishing, with walnut, candied date and pine nut in it. It is taken to harmonise the spleen and stomach and to settle cough and wheezing, and is used for asthma, bronchitis and tuberculosis.
A spring pastry, like a small mooncake, raised with clear wine lees and so sold for a single season, best around Qingming. They come with meat or without, in rose, red-bean and mint. Eat them hot: sweet, rich, soft and chewy, glossy, bright, with the flavours kept separate.
On the second day of the second lunar month the countryside around Tongli eats back-supporting cake, and the story is that it stops your back hurting through a year of farm work. It is a flat oval of glutinous rice flour, slightly hollowed in the middle, shaped like a waist.
Silk fans, some painted while you watch and some already painted, from a few dozen yuan. And Su embroidery, very finely done — in some shops the owner's wife is still at her frame. There are Tongli views and there are animals, and it is all embroidered and sold by the same people.
The busiest commercial street in town, found east of the Zhongchuan bridge. As the name says, the whole street is in Ming-Qing style, and it keeps the southern pattern of an upper and a lower street running parallel. It sells euryale seed, min cake, the zhuangyuan knuckle, Su embroidery and silk, along with other folk crafts, hand-painted pictures, fans and silk.
Where to stay
The only real choice
Coming to a water town and not sleeping in a Jiangnan inn is missing half of it. Tongli has a great many inns and almost all of them are inside the old town, minutes from the sights, so in the low season there is nothing to worry about — just arrive and choose. At weekends and in high season book online first so you do not end up settling for whatever is left.
Budget, over the water
'Across the water the green camphor points at the winding lane; at the door the blue water carries the painted boats.' Sit at the small wooden window over the canal and what you see when you look up is the Taiping bridge itself — blue water below and painted boats sculling, weathered wall opposite, a long quiet lane beyond. Minutes from the main sights.
350-year-old magistrate's yamen
An inn by the three bridges, converted from a prefect's yamen more than 350 years old. Two big trees in the main court — osmanthus on the left, michelia on the right. Apart from the bathroom, which is modern, everything feels like another century.
Central
Very central — minutes from every sight. The decoration is classical and the furniture is Ming and Qing. The kitchen does generous, good food at fair prices, which is a further reason to stay.
On the water, by the gate
About 200 m from the scenic-area gate and built along the canal, so you can watch the water from your room. Two courtyards: the first for farmhouse meals and tea, the second for the rooms.
The splurge
There were several of these in Lijiang before the Tongli one was built. Pure Jiangnan classical garden architecture, and the rooms have names: Orchid Still Room, A Pool of Ripples, Sleeping on Cloud and Water, Both Ways, and so on.
Mid-range
A Ming-Qing styled main building with interiors that work both ways, and furniture and lighting designed and made for it, which gives the place a genuine old-south, real-water-town feel. Rooms are complete and the service is full: they will do your sight tickets and fix a guide for you.
Getting around
Two tourist coaches include the return fare and your first ticket; the ordinary long-distance services are far cheaper if you do not need the bundled ticket.
Suzhou is the natural base — a shuttle from the railway station square every 20 minutes. Tourist coaches also run from Nanjing, Changzhou, Wuxi, Zhenjiang and Yangzhou, all of them including the return fare and the first ticket.
Hangzhou's north station runs three departures; Ningbo has weekend tourist coaches. There is also a boat from Zhouzhuang, which is the pleasant way to link the two towns.
The old town is small enough to walk, and the source guide says so plainly. Everything else is a matter of taste rather than necessity.
Boats are charged by the boat, not by the head, which makes them cheap for a group and dear for one. Hand-sculled wooden boats take about forty minutes to circle the old town, run day and night, and you can share one in daylight or charter it — the boatman will teach you the scull if you ask.
Driving is simple — almost every route ends at the Wujiang and Tongli exit of the Suzhou–Jiaxing–Hangzhou expressway.
Tips
The day session runs to 17:30 but every sight inside it shuts by 17:15, and none of them open at night. A four o'clock arrival from Suzhou means you get the streets and nothing else.
The joint ticket is valid for two days only if you take your accommodation proof to the ticket centre or the visitor centre at the garden and have it stamped. It costs nothing and doubles the ticket.
There are a lot of restaurants and the standard is uneven; the riverside ones are generally the weakest. The family inns cook generous, good, fairly priced food. Order the shrimp cakes ahead — several stages, and time.
The crushed-stone paths along the water grow moss. They are genuinely slippery, and a wet cobble in a narrow lane is how ankles get turned.
Most guesthouses do not supply a comb, a towel or a toothbrush. Pack them, and do not expect the front desk to have spares.
Sellers will let you taste from the loose trays, and it is excellent; the bag they hand you when you pay may taste different at home. Ask them to seal the loose ones instead — every snack shop in town will vacuum-seal for you. And eat them quickly: the shelf life is short.
Practical
Tongli rewards a night and a morning rather than a long day. Buy the ticket, get it stamped, and let the town be quiet around you.
| Tickets | Joint ticket ¥100, eleven sights, valid two days with a stamp from your accommodation proof. Free: children under 1.2 m, over-70s, serving soldiers, officers, national press-card holders. Half price: students at non-adult institutions, over-60s |
|---|---|
| What the ticket covers | Retreat and Reflection Garden, Chongben Hall, Jiayin Hall, Gengle Hall, Pearl Pagoda, Luoxing Isle, Songshi garden, history museum, Chen Qubing's house, Old Styles Garden, Wang Shao'ao memorial |
| Hours | Day 07:30–17:30, every sight closed by 17:15 and none open at night; night session 18:30–21:30 on a separate ticket |
| Getting there | 18 km from Suzhou — shuttle from the railway station square every 20 minutes, ¥8, about 45 minutes; 80 km from Shanghai |
| Boats | Three-bridges trip ¥70 a boat for six; lake speedboat ¥80 for six; lake scenic trip ¥200 for forty; hand-sculled circuit about 40 minutes; Luoxing free shuttle every 20 minutes or speedboat ¥10 |
| Local transport | Pedicab ¥5 to board, ¥15 for a circuit; battery cart ¥2 town entrance to garden, ¥4 garden to Luoxing ferry, ¥20 direct from the garden |
| Festival calendar | Zhu Tian gathering 3rd month 28th day; Immortals' meeting 4th month 14th day; dragon boats 5th month 5th day; water-gate contest 6th month 23rd day; ground incense and floating lanterns 7th month 30th day; harvest fair 8th month 7th–8th day; mid-autumn 8th month 15th day. Night Tongli on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings |
| Services | Post office, 2 Zhuxing Street, Tongli — 0512-95580, postcode 215217; postal savings at the same address; Tongli health centre, Yingyan East Road — 0512-63339019; town site www.tongli.net/china |
Background
Tongli is easy to remember and pleasant to say, and it was arrived at by subtraction. The town was once called Futu — rich land. Early in the Tang that was thought too ostentatious and it was changed to Tongli, 'copper mile'. Under the Song the old name was taken apart instead: the two characters of Futu stacked, the top dot removed, the middle stroke broken, and the result read 'Tongli' — which is the name still used today.
The Qing Jiaqing-era 'Gazetteer of Tongli' records that from the Song, Yuan and Ming onwards it was already a major town of Wu, and that because it could only be reached by boat it rarely suffered the ravages of war — which made it exactly the place rich gentry and merchants chose when they wanted to ride a disturbance out in comfort. You can read the whole history of the place in that sequence of names: a preference for keeping wealth quiet, and a very long memory.
The town's three distinguishing features are usually given as many Ming-Qing buildings, many water-town bridges, and many notable people. Water surrounds it on all four sides; inside, fifteen rivers divide it into seven islets, and forty-nine bridges connect them. Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing bridges all survive intact, among them the Sibin bridge built in the Southern Song and the Fuguan bridge of the Yuan Zhizheng era. In the first-tier protection zone, seven out of ten buildings are Ming or Qing, and four hundred years of sites, objects, remains and customs are still there — deep courtyards and small gardens everywhere you look.
Generation after generation of Tongli people studied hard, and education was taken seriously, and the result is in the record: from the fourth year of the Southern Song Chunyou era to the end of the Qing, the town produced one top-place graduate, forty-two presented scholars and ninety-three military and civil graduates. The little East Brook bridge is called the study bridge, and its couplet — 'a pool of moonlight holds the shadow of the compass, both banks of reading voices answer the songs of the honours board' — records the habit and explains the houses.
People usually compare Tongli with Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen, and the honest answer in the source guide is that those two are now pure attractions and commercialised accordingly, while Tongli has been opened up less and lives more. The rhythm is still agricultural: out at sunrise, in at sunset. That is the whole of the difference, and it is also the instruction — visitors who respect the residents' way of life are the ones who get the quiet town they came for.
The other thing worth knowing is that this fabric is why the cameras come. With the water scenery, the concentration of monuments and the intact Ming-Qing building stock, Tongli was called a natural studio, the little Venice of the east and a museum of Ming-Qing architecture, and it is counted one of China's ten great film locations. Gu Changwei's 'Love Comes to Tongli' was built around a near-miss in Chuanxin Lane; 'Family', 'Spring', 'Autumn' and 'Dream of the Red Chamber' were all shot in the Retreat and Reflection Garden. Half the reason the town looks familiar is that you have already seen it on a screen.
The questions visitors ask us most about Tongli, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Spring, when the drizzle is continuous. The mist, the light smoke and the evening haze are the three things this town does better than anywhere else. Tongli works in every season, but on weekends and holidays the 09:00–11:00 slot is the crush at the gates — come later in the day instead.
Yes, if you get it stamped. The ¥100 joint ticket covers eleven sights and is valid for two days once you take your accommodation proof to the ticket centre or the visitor centre at the garden for a stamp. Students and over-60s pay half; under-1.2 m children, over-70s, serving soldiers, officers and national press-card holders go free. An innkeeper can often buy it cheaper than the ticket office can sell it.
The shuttle from the square at Suzhou railway station runs every 20 minutes, costs ¥8 and takes about 45 minutes. Wu Zhong coach station runs tourist coaches every 20 minutes from 06:40 to 17:15. Driving takes about 40 minutes: the Suzhou–Jiaxing–Hangzhou expressway, off at the Wujiang and Tongli exit.
It is less developed and more lived in. Zhouzhuang and Wuzhen are essentially attractions now, with the commercialisation that comes with that. Tongli has been opened up less, and keeps a working rhythm — up at dawn, indoors at dusk. Visitors who respect that, rather than treating the lanes as a stage set, get a quieter and more genuine town.
No, though the town is small enough that walking is fine. Pedicabs are ¥5 to board and ¥15 for a circuit; battery carts link the garden, the town entrance and the Luoxing Isle ferry; and boats are charged by the boat rather than the head. Different transport gives you different views, so choose by mood.
Very. In the low season just arrive and pick an inn — there are a great many of them and almost all are inside the old town, minutes from the sights. At weekends and in high season book online or by phone. If you are worried about finding your inn after dark, call ahead: many owners will meet you at the coach station.
The zhuangyuan pork knuckle first, braised in dark soy until it is red and gleaming, soft, sweet and not greasy. Then cake-battered shrimp, the three-shred fish roll, sizzling eel paste, and in autumn the euryale seed — the local 'chicken-head rice', called the ginseng of the water. Eat at your inn rather than at the riverside restaurants.
Earlier than the gate times suggest. The day session runs 07:30–17:30, but every individual sight inside it shuts by 17:15 and none of them open at night. There is a separate night session, 18:30–21:30, which is a different ticket. Arrive before two in the afternoon or you will lose the gardens.
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