Director's Notes

Yan Fei, director of the column group, remembers homesickness.

Representative works: Suzhou-Exquisite Suzhou in a leisurely Watertown, Dongguan Street in Yangzhou-Loyalty in a Millennium Prosperity, Shexian Ancient City-Huizhou Confucianism and Jia in Dreams, etc.

Just ask who will do it, not how much work it will take.

-Yan Fei

Youyou ancient city Linglong Gusu

Just ask who will do it, not how much work it will take. The simple words of Suzhou craftsmen reveal the secrets of exquisite Suzhou.

When I mention Suzhou, the first thing I think of is an exquisite city, decorated with exquisite silk and exquisite gardens. Indeed, when you come to Suzhou and see the ancient city of Suzhou with small bridges and flowing water, you can immediately feel the smart beauty of this water city. Living in such a city, Suzhou people are rich and comfortable. They sing Pingtan and Kunqu Opera in Wunong soft language, and they also sing Suzhou people's tender feelings.

However, Suzhou in written materials is a different scene. Suzhou's GDP ranking is second only to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chongqing, ranking sixth in the country, and it is a prefecture-level city with the strongest economic strength. Historically, there have been 50 top scholars and nearly 4,000 scholars here. After the founding of New China, Suzhou produced more than 100 academicians of the two academies.

It is hard to imagine why a place with such strong economic and cultural strength can still show such elegant and indifferent temperament. If we find the reason, maybe we can find the theme of this program.

When we went to Suzhou to shoot, it was golden autumn in October. The trees in the ancient city of Suzhou gradually turned yellow and red, making the original exquisite streets and gardens more colorful. Walking in the ancient city, we can't help but sigh the generosity of nature to this land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River. But Mr. Xu, who has been engaged in the study of ancient cities for many years, tells us that Suzhou's prosperity is not only a gift from nature, but created by Suzhou people with hard-working hands.

The location of Suzhou ancient city is not suitable for human survival. Only the ancestors of wuyue, with tattoos and strong bodies, can survive here. However, the ancestors did not give in. They invited Wu Zixu to build a city, gradually sort out the local water system, and turn a swamp into a fertile field for drought and flood. At this time, Suzhou people still didn't stop. They took advantage of the warm climate and abundant water resources to plant rice and wheat in turn, and planted mulberry trees and sericulture beside the fields to develop silk weaving industry, making the land more and more fertile.

Seeing this history, my thoughts suddenly became clear and I never stopped. Isn't the spirit of striving for perfection and building a better life the best interpretation of Suzhou's character?

The private gardens built by reclusive officials in Suzhou are not easy to show, but they persistently make every space extremely beautiful, and finally form Suzhou gardens representing oriental aesthetics.

This pursuit of life has influenced the present. Suzhou people "don't drink when they don't eat", so they must enjoy certain seasonal ingredients in different seasons. Suzhou people's courtyards are exquisite, no matter how big or small, they will create the beauty of mountains and rivers between square inches. Life in Suzhou is no longer the same.

The literati bred in the ancient city have greater pursuits. Fan Zhongyan is not satisfied with the prosperity of one place, but by holding official schools, everyone in the world can study. Wang, the old headmaster of Zhenhua Girls' Middle School, gave up the superior conditions abroad to find a way out for the majority of women, and trained a large number of talents such as He and writers, the first female doctor of physics in China. The Excellence of Suzhou literati has trained a large number of talents for the country.

Suzhou ancient city is an immigrant city, where Sichuan Shujin craftsmen and Hebei silk reeling craftsmen made Song Jin and silk reeling, which created the peak of China's ancient silk skills. With the joint efforts of scholars and craftsmen from all over the world, the prosperity of Suzhou ancient city has become a classic of China culture. The development of Suzhou ancient city for more than 2,500 years is like a microcosm of the development of China traditional culture, bearing the crystallization of China traditional wisdom.

Editor | Zhao Ruixuan