Suzhou Special:Suzhou: Blending the ancient and modern

David Ferguson talks with a local resident as he prepared his latest book, In Red Embroidered Shoes: Sipping the Essence of Suzhou. [Photos Provided to China Daily]

China was never on the radar for Scottish management consultant David Ferguson until he married a Chinese woman, then decided to move to China to look for a change after business setbacks in 2006.

Six years later, writer and editor Ferguson has three books about China under his belt. His most recent offering, In Red Embroidered Shoes: Sipping the Essence of Suzhou, will be launched during the upcoming London Book Fair.

The book is part of the "Cities of China" series, a bilingual project on some of the nation's smaller cities by Foreign Languages Press.

"I have tried to provide readers with a flavor of Suzhou, something to whet their appetite and encourage them to find out more for themselves, preferably by coming to visit in person," the 56-year-old said. "Those who do will not be disappointed."

Last November, Ferguson set off for his three-week visit to Suzhou in Jiangsu province, an ancient city just to the west of Shanghai.

He said as a Scot, he could readily identify with many aspects of the city - a small place living in the shadow of a bigger and more illustrious neighbor, but with a long and proud history of its own that encompasses political significance, military distinction and notable achievements in an enormous range of fields.

He described his visit as "something of a butterfly flight" - "random fluttering in no particular direction, and sporadic stops to settle on a particular flower and take a sip".

"Not a single day passed without some unexpected gem presenting itself for inspection," he said.

He visited historical museums and held a priceless Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) vase in his trembling fingers; was shown around the only private classical garden to be created in the city since the fall of the last Qing emperor; interviewed one of the leading Kunqu Opera artists; had dinner with the entrepreneur who created the Yangcheng Lake crab farming industry and talked with university students.

For Ferguson, the best attraction of the city is that it has "the best of both sides of China" - with quiet, modest and timeless old Suzhou providing a genuine feel of what Chinese cities were like hundreds of years ago, and the modern, daring and vibrant new Suzhou represented by the Suzhou Industrial Park, a joint venture development zone between China and Singapore that dates back to the early 1990s.

"The two sides are not in conflict with each other," he said. "The city manages to blend them and so they complement each other."

Presenting real China

After unsuccessfully trying his hand at business when he first moved to China, Ferguson was offered a job as a journalist with web-based news provider China.org in 2008.

"I had reservations about working in the media," he said. "In the West, the media in China has a negative reputation."

To redress the imbalance, he decided to take the job with China.org. He was the first foreign journalist working with the Chinese media sent to report on the aftermath five days after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 that killed nearly 70,000.

"I will never forget the courage and resilience of the survivors, the determination and stamina of the relief workers, and the remarkable degree of organization in the response of the authorities," he remembered.

He moved to Foreign Languages Press in 2010. His first two books are also parts of the "Cities of China" series: one features Nantong in Jiangsu province - the first modern city built and developed by the Chinese - while the other presents the economic and social transformation underway in Guangdong province.

After visiting six of the nine Pearl River Delta cities in Guangdong province, Ferguson found out the prevalent belief in the West that China is still all about making cheap plastic toys for export is biased. "It might be true 15 years ago," he said. "It is not even close to being true now."

He cites Songshan Lake High-tech Industrial Park in Dongguan as an example - clean, green and full of some of China and the world's most innovative and ambitious companies.

"I have tried to present a different picture from what Western readers believe or hear is happening," he said. "What a place - with so much happening everywhere, so much effort being expended to transform Guangdong into a place where anyone would be proud to live and work."

yangguang@chinadaily.com.cn