Xizhongshi Street Art Deco Buildings

Unfortunately, Suzhou doesn’t share the architectural diversity of its nearby and much better-known mega-city, Shanghai. However, the former still houses plenty of good examples of China’s historical strata, that can be excavated through an appreciation of architecture - it’s just about knowing where to look.

Aside from the Customs Building by Central Park, in the shiny modern heart of SIP, itself modeled on the riverfront architecture of Shanghai known as The Bund, there aren’t too many remnants from the European influences of the early 20th Century in Suzhou. However, Xizhongshi street has somehow preserved plenty of great pre-communist era deco and modernist facades on its storefronts.

The street runs west to east from the Changmen gatehouse perched on the western outskirts of the old walled city. From the gatehouse you can either follow the more touristy Bei Ma Tou (North Wharf), with its cleaned up 1930s buildings, many of which have been turned into cafes and restaurants or spruced up for the purpose of providing social media photo-shoot backdrops, or, alternatively, you can follow the less inviting but more ‘lived-in’ Xizhongshi street that leads you deeper into the Old Town. If indeed you take the path less traveled, you’ll begin to see immediately that, although most of the businesses that line this street are your typical, prosaic locals-only fare, a quick glance up to the second storey will reveal the rich history of the neighborhood. A wide range of beautiful windows and rooftop flourishes reveal the once heavily European-influenced past of Eastern China.

Since the establishing of the PRC in 1949, the remnants of this past have been all but eradicated in favor of Suzhou’s own ‘Time Honored Brands’ and the classical garden sightseeing industry. With that in mind, and the current trend for rampant modernization, it may be wise to visit this street before all traces of an alternative history are removed, and what remains is either I sanitized theme park version of Suzhou’s architectural history or something altogether glitzier and more modern.