My journey from Beijing involved a fast train journey to Wuxi East Station followed by road/expressway travel through the area’s agricultural lands where canal boats and barges still operate along many waterways. I noticed the distinctive two-floor white-colored domestic dwellings, often bordering the waters, that I remembered from earlier personal explorings around Suzhou.

Arriving at Zhangjiagang’s urban area there was an obvious sense of spaciousness and clean environment. Alongside the streets there appeared considerable parkland, extensive belts of trees and bicycle ways interlacing with local waterways.

Guomao Hotel on Renmin Middle Road, within the central district, would be our base. With first-class accommodation along with excellent buffet breakfast and dinner, I soon wished the stay could be longer! The hotel, next morning, hosted the opening ceremony of “Go Jiangsu, Discover Zhangjiagang” Social Media Fans Event and 2018 Zhangjiagang Cyberspace Culture Season. This all designed to create and stimulate awareness of the city and its surrounds with a much larger global on-line community. A video presentation introduced the beautiful book, “Zhangjiagang in Poetry and Painting” by artist Li Min.

Near the hotel is Zhangjiagang Cultural Centre featuring within one of its spacious buildings a multi-media presentation on the city’s past, present and future growth; about urban planning priorities and foreign direct investment. It was there I learned about the “Hu-Tong” railway project. I wondered how this would impact on the city’s future development - certainly there was considerable commercial and private real estate construction going on. However, in my brief time, there felt a relaxed air about the city without much sign of traffic frustration. Always a sense of spaciousness. The retail brands and familiar food outlets found in most Chinese cities were present with the city also creating one of China’s first pedestrian shopping streets.

Developing the concept of “greening” and moving away from earlier more polluting industries it was positive to visit the Jiyang Lake Ecological Park in a southern part of the city. Covering 4.41 square kilometers it acts as a major “sponge” zone for Zhangjiagang’s urban core - a concept being increasingly promoted for China’s cities in a bid to reduce potential flooding danger. Following a trail through the wetlands, there appeared a dense mixture of vegetation, both tall trees and water-loving flora. This in turn created a natural habitat and breeding area for bird life. As we passed, one large specie, maybe a heron, lifted off from the marshes and headed above the tree-tops. Alongside Jiyang’s vast lake tall wind-power generating towers rose above the waters.