Chángshú

Chángshú lies in the fertile country between the Yangtze and Lake Tài, beneath the wooded slopes of Yú Mountain. The Yuán raised it to Chángshú Department in 1295, and the Míng made it a county of Sūzhōu Prefecture in 1369. Under the Yōngzhèng emperor the Qīng cut its eastern lands into a new county, Zhāowén.

Prosperity fed a tradition of book collecting. In the late Míng and early Qīng the writer Qián Qiānyì kept a famous collection in his Jiàngyún Library. In the early nineteenth century Qú Shàojì founded a library at Gǔlǐ, later known as the Iron Zither and Bronze Sword Tower after two prized objects in it.