苏州是一座历史文化名城。苏州城始建于公元前514年，春秋时吴王阖闾命伍子胥相土尝水，在此建城。隋文帝开皇9年始称苏州。苏州古城坐落在水网之中，历经沧桑，城址基本未变，保存着宋代水陆平行、河街相邻的双棋盘格局的“小桥、流水”式古朴风貌。
　　苏州有丰富的文化遗产。园林、苏绣、评弹也许是苏州文化遗产有代表性的组成部分。
　　
　　“苏州园林甲天下”
　　
　　在中国，人们熟知"苏州园林甲天下”这句话。苏州现有园林60多个，它们是建筑、山水、花木、雕刻、书画的综合艺术品。苏州园林中以宅第园林为主，明清两朝宅第园林兴建最多，尤以明正德至清乾隆、嘉庆300年间为苏州古典园林造园艺术的顶峰时期。豪富以丽园奇石相炫，士宦以逍遥林泉为乐。苏州古典园林以文人写意山水园为主流，其艺术风格“首重境界，”就是要有诗情画意，无形之诗，无声之画，而以立体的园林来代替，达到叠石流泉，虽由人作，宛自天开，因此是综合的艺术，在世界文化中独树一帜。


　　在封建社会，老百姓与这些园林无缘。现在，它们都向公众开放。
　　水是苏州园林的灵魂。山水为全园骨架，“山水相依，山因水活，水随山转”的山水组合，往往为一园主景。尤以水为构成江南水乡清秀景色的布局中心，其形式有湖、池、溪、湾、涧、泉、瀑等。
　　中国近代知名学者叶圣陶这样评价苏州园林，“我觉得苏州园林是我国各地园林的标本。设计者和匠师们因地制宜，自出心裁，修建成功的园林当然各各不同。可是苏州各个园林在不同之中有个共同点，似乎设计者和匠师们一致追求的是：务必使游览者无论站在哪个点上，眼前总是一幅完美的图画。他们唯愿游览者得到‘如在画图中’的实感，而他们的成绩实现了他们的愿望。游览者来到园里，没有一个不心里想着口头说着‘如在图画中’的。”
　　1997年，联合国教科文组织把苏州四个园林列为世界文化遗产。其中之一为拙政园。
　　拙政园始建于明正德四年（1509），为明代弘治进士、御史王献臣弃官回乡后所建。拙政园占地面积52000平方米，全园分东、中、西、住宅四部分。住宅是典型的苏州民居，现布置为园林博物馆展厅。东部明快开朗，以平冈远山、松林草坪、竹坞曲水为主。中部为全园精华，面积18.5亩，水面占三分之一，布局以水为中心，有聚有分，聚处则浩淼旷荡，分处则迂回曲折，水与陆有重重交错，其间以平桥相通，长廊相接。


　　明代著名画家文征明，以翰墨自娱，优游林下。他与园主王献臣交往甚密。园建成后，王氏经常邀其宴饮、赏游，他对园中美景乐而忘返，拙政园成了他创作的蓝本。他曾数次为拙政园作画，其中比较有影响、流传至今的《文待诏拙政园图》集诗、书、画于一体，各全其美，相互映发，堪称巨构杰作。文征明所作的《王氏拙政园记》石刻，现位于倒影楼下拜文揖沈之斋。他的字疏朗清秀，风骨自在。《千字文》置西部水廊内，系文征明80岁时所作的蝇头小楷，书法高超。
　　解放后，在政府关心下，进行抢修，一代名园得到了保护，并于1952年正式对外开放中部、西部，1960年东部整修完毕，东、西、中三部分完整开放。1961年，拙政园被列入首批全国重点文物保护单位。该园林每年吸引成千上万名游客。　
　　
　　苏绣
　　
　　五彩缤纷、绚丽多彩的苏绣，被人们誉为中国艺术宝库中的一颗明珠。苏绣的发源地在苏州吴县一带，现已遍衍江苏省的无锡、常州、扬州、宿迁、东台等地。
　　江苏土地肥沃，气候温和，蚕桑发达，盛产丝绸，自古以来就是锦绣之乡。优越的地理环境，绚丽丰富的锦缎，五光十色的花线，为苏绣发展创造了有利条件。


　　早在二千多年前的春秋时期，吴国已将刺绣用于服饰。到了明代，江南已成为丝织手工业中心。在绘画艺术方面出现了以唐寅(伯虎）、沈周为代表的吴门画派，推动了刺绣的发展。刺绣艺人结合绘画作品进行再制作，所绣佳作栩栩如生，笔墨韵味淋漓尽致有“以针作画”、“巧夺天工”之称。自此，刺绣艺术在针法、色彩图案诸方面已形成独自的艺术风格，与书画艺术媲美争艳。
　　清光绪年间，刺绣艺术家沈云芝闻名苏州绣坛，她融西画肖神仿真的特点于刺绣之中，新创了“仿真绣”。她的作品《意大利皇后爱丽娜像》，曾作为国家礼品赠送给意大利，轰动了意国朝野；《耶稣像》1915年在美国举办的“巴拿马-太平洋国际博览会”上获一等大奖。
　　自二十世纪五十年代初以来，苏绣艺人创作开拓了新的广阔天地。苏州、南通、常州、无锡、扬州、东台等地先后建立了刺绣研究机构或工厂，使刺绣艺人安心专致研究和创作，对失传的技艺进行了挖掘、总结、提高、发展，使古老的苏绣艺术重放异彩。
　　现在，商店出售丰富多彩的苏绣产品。它们要么是精美绝伦的艺术品，要么是有使用价值的工艺品。
　　
　　苏州评弹
　　
　　苏州评弹是用苏州方言进行说唱表演的地方曲种，有400余年历史，是评话和弹词的合称。评弹艺术在江南一带有很大的观众/听众群。评弹同昆曲、苏剧合称为苏州“三枝花”。
　　苏州评弹以说为主，一般一人独演或一男一女两人合演。演员“说法现身”，一人多角，生、旦、净、末、丑都表演于一身，噱、弹、唱、演多种艺术相结合；同时注意表演技术，有“五到八技”，即心到、眼到、口到、手到、脚到；和擂鼓、吆喝、罗唣、吼叫、马嘶、鸟啼、狗吠、吹号等特殊口技。布景、道具、服装均出于一口。除一个或一对演员外，观众面对着一个空荡荡的舞台。生动的语言，细腻的表演，通俗易懂的故事深得群众喜爱。


　　说到精彩处，演员会唱一个段子，并用三弦伴奏。唱词与故事情节有关，富有诗意。
　　苏州评弹书目划分为传统书、新编历史书、现代书。故事大多涉及战争、爱情、案例等。著名的书目有《三国》、《岳传》、《水浒》、《包公》、《七侠五义》、《珍珠塔》、《玉蜻蜓》、《白蛇传》、《西厢记》、《小刀会》、《谢瑶环》、《五亩地》等。故事有长有短。长的可连续说上一年半载，短的连演一周或两周。艺人在一天的结尾，总要留下悬念，让观众或听众继续看下去或听下去。
　　评弹用软软的苏州方言说、唱。除江苏、浙江一带，这种方言很难被其他地方的人听懂。因此，评弹只能成为地方曲艺，很难推广到全国。
　　一般认为，苏州评弹始于明末清初。20世纪初是评弹的黄金时代。其时，光苏州一地即有117家书场。
　　1951年前后，各地码头书场减少，评弹艺人聚集苏州开展生产自救，办起28家经济书场，加上原有20多家正常营业的书场，共50多家。文化大革命后，苏州市评弹团逐步改变了吃大锅饭的分配制度，市区恢复了苏州、和平等7家书场。在农村，苏州评弹有很大的听众群。
　　评弹是苏州的重要文化品牌，也是一种无形的旅游资源。苏州评弹正在申报世界文化遗产，这是继“百戏之祖”昆曲被列为世界人类口述和非物质遗产代表作之后，苏州申报“世界遗产”的又一项目。
　　
　　Cultural Gems of Suzhou
　　
　　By Fan Ning
　　Suzhou, a cultural city of great fame, has a long history. A settlement first emerged in present-day Suzhou in 514 B.C. when the king of the State of Wu ordered his prime minister to build a city. In 589 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Wendi of the Sui Dynasty, the city assumed the name Suzhou. In the ancient city, which sits on a network of waterways, streets run parallel to rivers, and bridges connect otherwise separate communities. Despite vicissitudes of the times, this layout has remained largely unchanged for Suzhou, for which the city is often dubbed as "Venice of the Orient."
　　Suzhou has a rich cultural heritage. Gardens, embroidery and music-accompanied storytelling are perhaps representative elements of this culture.
　　
　　"Best Gardens in the Country"
　　
　　Suzhou has long been known as having the "best gardens in the country." At present, gardens in the city number more than 60. A Suzhou garden is a work of art that integrates architecture, landscaping, sculpture, painting and calligraphy. Most of them were built in the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) to serve as private residences. "Rich people flaunt their wealth by building gardens of great beauty, and scholars and officials take pleasure by passing leisurely hours amid trees and waters (of gardens)." This line reflects the functions of gardens in Suzhou in a bygone era. In feudal society, ordinary people had no access to these gardens. Today, all of them are open to the public.
　　Water is the soul of gardens in Suzhou. Water-centered landscaping usually forms the central scenery of a garden. And water comes in the form of lake, pond, stream, spring and waterfall.
　　Ye Shentao, a well-known contemporary Chinese scholar, said, "Gardens in Suzhou are specimens of gardens elsewhere in China. Gardens in the city are different from one another, but they have one thing in common. It seems that designers sought to achieve this: wherever a viewer stands in a garden, he or she should invariably see a perfect picture. When a tourist visits a Suzhou garden these days, he or she would think or say, ‘I seem to be in a picture.‘ This shows that the designers have achieved their goal."
　　Four gardens in the city were listed as World Cultural Heritage sites by UNESCO in 1997. One of them is Zhuozheng Garden, a representative of Suzhou-style gardens.
　　Zhuozheng Garden or the "garden of the humble administrator," was built in 1509 by a scholar-cum-official named Wang Xianchen. It covers 52,000 square meters in area and can be divided into eastern, central and western parts besides a residential quarter. The central part covering more than one hectare is where the essence of the garden lies. A pond occupies one-third of the area, with buildings of different styles scattered around the pond and connected by covered corridors and flat bridges. The residential quarter is a cluster of typical Suzhou residential houses, which now serves as a museum with garden-related exhibits.
　　Wen Zhengming, a scholar and painter of great fame of the Ming Dynasty, was a good friend of the garden‘s first owner, Wang Xianchen. He loved the garden so much that he did an album of paintings of the garden, which has been passed down to the present. Wen also wrote an article about the garden and had it engraved in stone. The stone tablet, which bears about 1,000 tiny characters of the article in Wen‘s own handwriting, still stands in the garden and is a great attraction today.
　　As cultural assets, gardens in Suzhou have been well kept. And they attract millions of tourists every year.
　　Suzhou Embroidery
　　Suzhou embroidery features rich color and meticulous workmanship, and is known as a "bright pearl" in China‘s art treasure-house. Suzhou embroidery originated in Suzhou‘s Wuxian area but has now spread to Wuxi, Changzhou, Yangzhou and Dongtai of Jiangsu province. Blessed by a warm climate and fertile land, Jiangsu has long had a developed silk industry. An abundance of silk fabrics and colorful silk threads has created a good condition for the development of Suzhou embroidery.
　　As long as 2,000 years ago, during the Spring and Autumn period, people in the State of Wu began using embroidery on their clothes. During the Ming Dynasty, southern Jiangsu had become the center of the country‘s silk handicraft industry. Embroidery craftsmen made embroidered pictures after paintings done by well-known artists. Pictures of this kind were so good that craftsmen began being known as "doing pictures with a needle."
　　In the last years of the 19th century, Sun Yunzhi, an accomplished embroidery artist, incorporating features of Western portraiture, created a new embroidering method called "Imitation Embroidery." She embroidered a picture of the queen of Italy, which caused quite a sensation in that country when it was presented to the Italian court as a state gift. "Jesus," an embroidery picture done by Sun, won a grand prize at an international fair held in 1915 in the United States.
　　Embroidery research institutes and factories have been established in Suzhou, Nantong, Yangzhou and other cities. Today, embroidery pieces are easily available in shops either as works of art or as articles with a use value.
　　
　　Storytelling
　　
　　Music-accompanied storytelling, or pingtan, is a performing art that has a popular appeal in southeast China. It is one of the three performing arts that originated in Suzhou, the other two being kunqu opera and Suzhou opera.
　　Pingtan is performed by one person or by a man-woman pair. Storytelling lies at the center of performance. The storyteller, aside from narrating, plays the roles of all characters in a story, be they a general, a scholar, a young woman or a clown. He or she needs to be a master of vocal mimicry: being able to imitate drum beat, shouting, mumbling, horse neighing, bird twittering, dog barking and other sounds. And out of his or her mouth come the setting, stage property and costume of characters. The audience faces an empty stage except for the storyteller(s).
　　A storyteller plays sanxuan, a three-stringed plucked instrument, to accompany his or her singing, which is an integral part of storytelling. Verses sung at irregular intervals have more or less a poetical flavor.
　　Stories told by pingtan artists fall within three categories: traditional tales, new historical tales and modern stories. Stories, most of them are about war, love, crime/justice, can be short or long. A short one lasts a week or so, whereas a long one can last a year. The storyteller invariably leaves suspense at the end of each episode to have the audience hooked.
　　A storyteller uses the gentle Suzhou dialect to tell stories. This dialect is hardly understandable outside southeast China. And that is why pingtan has remained a local performing art and cannot hope to spread.
　　Pingtan is generally believed to date back to the last years of the Ming period and the early years of the Qing. The art had its heyday in the early 20th century when there were a total of 117 pingtan theaters in Suzhou alone. Today, professional storytellers stage regular performances at seven pingtan theaters in downtown Suzhou. In rural areas, pingtan has a great following among peasants.
　　Suzhou has applied to UNESCO to have pingtan listed as a World Cultural Heritage art form.