What is it about?
Once known as the city of silk, Suzhou 苏州 has become the centre of wedding dress production, selling paradise on earth for one day, including copies of the last royal wedding dress, out of shops at the foot of mythic Tiger Hill. Suzhou is also the host of what is known as the Silicon Valley of the East. It has attracted millions of migrants searching for a better future; millions of tourists visit every year to experience the past, strolling through the gardens and courtyards of its Old Town. The contrasts could hardly be more apparent. Slow time, and fast time, and the time of the in-between, are woven into the city’s complex spatial fabric. This is a conversation by eight authors in eight frames on a city that connects them.
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Why is it important?
Published in a special Philosophy of the City journal issue, the article explores the city of Suzhou in China from eight different angles, discussing the importance of the canals, the historical city fabric and the ancient gardens, and exploring their relations to the hyper-modern parts of the city that stand for China's recent progress.
Perspectives
Writing the article was in many ways also a response to the pandemic conditions, which dispersed us, the authors of the article, throughout the world. The article presents a dialogue on a city that connects us. It discusses the extra-large (planetary urbanisation) and the small (the garden). It discusses the real and the imagined.
Dr. Claudia Westermann
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A conversation on a paradise on earth in eight frames, East Asian Journal of Philosophy, January 2022, sdvig press,
DOI: 10.19079/eajp.1.3.95.
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