Jiangsu (江苏) is a coastal province in eastern China, stretching along the Yellow Sea from the Yangtze River delta northward. It is one of the most densely populated and economically developed provinces in the country, a flat landscape of rivers, canals and rice paddies that has been central to Chinese culture for millennia.
The province's main draw for travellers is Nanjing, the former capital of China, with its Ming-era city walls, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, and the sobering Nanjing Massacre Memorial. Suzhou, famous for its classical gardens (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), is equally worth visiting. The Grand Canal, the world's longest man-made waterway, runs through the province connecting a string of historic canal towns including Yangzhou and Zhenjiang, both on or near the Yangtze crossing. East of Suzhou, the ancient water town of Zhouzhuang preserves centuries-old canal-side architecture in a way that few places in China still can.
