★ Tourist location: Shantang Street, Suzhou

Du Xunhe, a poet in the late Tang Dynasty, once described Suzhou in "Sending People to Visit Wu":"When you come to Suzhou to meet, people sleep on the river. The ancient palace has little idle land and many water ports and bridges." Qilishantang is one of the oldest streets in Suzhou, and it also truly reflects the life of people in the Zhenhe River in this poem.

When we arrived at Qilishantang, it was already dusk, so we could have dinner and take a night tour. Suzhou people pay attention to seasonal fresh vegetables when eating. They eat vegetables in spring and chicken feathers in summer, small vegetables in autumn, and large vegetables in winter must be frosted to taste delicious. Sugar-style cuisine has always been about "tasting fresh in spring, light in summer, flavor in autumn, and nourishing in winter." However, another characteristic of Suzhou's local cuisine is that it is sweet. All braised dishes must be added with sugar. Suzhou's pasta food is also a unique one. There are many popular noodle shops hidden in the alleys. We picked a room that looked clean and sanitary and ordered shrimp noodles in clear soup. We didn't expect that there were quite a lot of shrimp. After drinking the noodle soup, we could still catch several shrimp from the bottom of the bowl.

You can actually visit Jiangnan Weaving Mansion at night. Although the door is not big, it is very deep. There are weaving tools at the door, and there is also a fragment of "Kangxi's Southern Tour". "Kangxi's Southern Tour" is a palace painting created by Wang Hui, a native of Changshu, Suzhou, and his disciple Yang Jin. The whole work has twelve volumes. Each volume of the painting uses Kangxi as the protagonist of the painting, describing the places and events that Kangxi passed through during his southern tour. Show them truthfully. What is shown here is the part of Suzhou Duan Weaving Mansion in Volume 7. This is embroidered using a combination of ancient paintings and traditional Chinese paintings. It mainly uses flat embroidery and random embroidery. The whole work has changeable stitches, strong three-dimensional feeling, and exquisite stitches, but it is actually double-sided embroidery. The work mainly expresses the mountains and rivers, houses, city walls, shops, etc. from Wuxi to Suzhou in the south of the Yangtze River. The pictures run from Huishan and Xishan in Wuxi to Hushuguan, Mudu, Fengqiao, Hanshan Temple in Suzhou in the east, Qilishan Tang, Huqiu, etc., as well as large-scale city gates, show the prosperity of Suzhou City. Numerous rivers and bridges reflect the characteristics of Jiangnan water towns.

Walking in, I saw the display and sale of silk products. In a flash, I didn't see the two female companions I was with. I guess they went to some counter to see silk.

Suzhou is the hometown of silk, which is light and flexible. The sites of the New and Old Stone Age preserved in the Taihu Lake Basin bear witness to the long history of Suzhou silk. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, Suzhou had become the country's silk center, and reached its peak during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Most of the silk fabrics exclusive to the royal family were made by Suzhou weavers. Among them, Song brocade and Kesi silk are the highest representatives of Suzhou's silk weaving technology.

Song brocade is known as the "crown of brocade". It is gorgeous in color, exquisite in pattern, and soft in texture. It was selected for the 2014 APEC Summit to make costumes for leaders attending. Kesi is known as the "saint in weaving". It uses pure silk thread and is woven by hand through broken wefts to form a pattern boundary, as if it is a double-sided silk fabric with a carved effect. It consumes a lot of man-hours. The ancients used "one inch of Kesi silk, one inch of gold" to describe its preciousness.

Wearing a qipao made of silk fabric, it is even more charming. Any woman with a certain figure has a special liking for qipao. When I was a girl, I favored qipao very much. At that time, there were tailors specializing in making cheongsam in Huqiu, Suzhou, and their craftsmanship was quite good. As we get older, the external beauty has gradually shifted to the pursuit of internal beauty, so a few cheongsam have mostly accumulated dust in the wardrobe. It was made with my figure stuck at that time, but now it doesn't fit so well. At that time, silk qipao was really my favorite!

The Old Photo Collection is also open. If you have time, you might as well take a look at these old photos about Suzhou. They have authentic Suzhou flavor. Fortunately, Suzhou's Laocheng District is quite well preserved. Even if you walk through these small alleys now, you can still find the former dream water town.

The popularity of Internet celebrities checking in places is extremely high, and the few huge glow sticks erected are already crowded. We walked over curiously, and it turned out that this was a cruise ship terminal. I didn't expect that the business of the cruise ship at night would be so good. Most of the ancients visited mountains and ponds by boat. However, the night view at that time was definitely not as beautiful as it is today. However, even if you only hang a few red lanterns, Shantang Street can give you the feeling that "a person in a boat is a fairy".

The street is not wide, and there are many shops on both sides, selling a wide range of goods, with silk costumes and specialty snacks being the most popular. After all, there is heaven above and Suzhou and Hangzhou below. Both cities are famous for their silk. All women rarely do not have a silk dream. I used to be very keen on some silk products, including silk scarves, tops, skirts, cheongsam, pajamas, bedding, etc. In addition to their lack of durability, silk products are top-notch in other aspects, especially their excellent skin-friendliness. Therefore, silk fabrics are most suitable for close-fitting clothes. But now I seem to be less and less particular about material life, so when my female companions are keen on shopping, I pay more attention to looking at the street scene and the surrounding crowd. Shantang Street at night is a little more lively than during the day. It seems that there are a group of people everywhere you go. When you reach the bridge, you can't stay for a while longer. Tourists behind you keep pouring in, and they can only continue to move forward with the crowd.

The lights on both sides of the strait are shining, witnessing the prosperity of this ancient street. You know, today is Monday, not the weekend yet. This traffic is already amazing. It is indeed the most worthwhile night scene in Suzhou. The brilliant lights and the noisy crowd always felt that something was missing. In my impression, the ancient streets of ancient towns are the most fascinating ones that require walking on the bluestone streets and listening to the echo of footsteps in the dead of night. No wonder many people have abandoned star-rated hotels and stubbornly stayed in inns in ancient towns and ancient streets, probably in the middle of the night, to measure the tranquility of ancient towns and ancient streets with their footsteps?

The Suzhou Chamber of Commerce Museum is also open. Tourists will usually go in and take a walk when they come here, or take a perfunctory walk, or carefully wait in front of various materials to taste them.

Liu Ming and Hua Yin,

The red clouds gradually dissipated,

The smoke is light and the rain is beautiful.

The road to meeting on the magpie bridge is long,

Looking forward, fascinated by the galaxy.

The sky and summer colors,

Love is so strong that I can't part,

Same as last year.

Light frost cuts the moon to remember this night,

Only a line of clear tears remained.

--Transfer "Magpie Bridge Fairy"