Wuxi is a canal city on the southern shore of Lake Tai (Taihu), sitting between Shanghai and Nanjing on one of China's busiest rail corridors. The lake — one of the largest freshwater lakes in the country — defines the city's character: it is a place of water, willow-shaded bridges, and classical gardens, with a pace noticeably slower than the two great cities that bracket it on either side.
The main draw for visitors is the lake itself and the Taihu shoreline parks, particularly Turtle Head Isle (Yuantouzhu), a peninsula of gardens and pavilions that juts into the water and offers good views of the islands offshore. The city also has well-preserved sections of traditional canal-side architecture in the Qingming Bridge area, which rewards a slow afternoon on foot. Li Garden (Liyuan) is the most photographed of the classical gardens, a compact composition of rockeries, pavilions, and water arranged in the Jiangnan style.
Wuxi is easy to visit as a day trip from Shanghai (about 45 minutes by high-speed train) or en route to Suzhou, which is just 20 minutes further down the line. If you stay overnight, you get the canal district largely to yourself in the evenings when the day-trippers have gone. The Lingshan Grand Buddha to the west of the city and the Sanshan Islands in the middle of the lake are both worth the extra half-day.