Between Suzhou and Shanghai on Lake Tai — where the Lingshan Giant Buddha rises 88 metres from a lotus pond and is one of the tallest bronze statues on earth, the Jichang Garden influenced the design of the Summer Palace in Beijing, and the slow-braised pork ribs (Wuxi paupai gu) are the sweetest in China
Wuxi (无锡) is a wealthy Jiangsu city on the northern shore of Lake Tai (Taihu) — China's third-largest freshwater lake and the source of the hairy crab season that dominates Shanghai and Jiangsu cuisine each October. Wuxi sits exactly between Suzhou and Shanghai on the ancient Grand Canal, and its prosperity comes from the same canal-based textile and silk trade that made Suzhou famous. The city's most extraordinary landmark is the Lingshan Scenic Area — a hillside complex where the Lingshan Giant Buddha (灵山大佛, 1997) stands 88 metres tall, cast in bronze, depicting Shakyamuni with his hand rai…
Wuxi's name ('no tin') refers to the ancient Chinese claim that the local tin mines were exhausted in the Han Dynasty — though the city's prosperity came not from mining but from silk weaving and Grand Canal trade. The Grand Canal passes through central Wuxi, and the city has been a major silk and cotton trading hub since the Tang Dynasty. In the Republican Era (1912–1949), Wuxi's industrialists built some of China's earliest cotton mills and became among the country's wealthiest entrepreneurs — the Rong family (荣毅仁's grandfather, Rong Zongjing) built the first Chinese cotton mill to compete…