Area: 403sq.km/156sq.mi
Because of its fertile soil and mild climate this region, one of China's major rice trading centers, is known as the ''Land of Fish and Rice''. Wuxi is a well-known health resort with several sanatoriums dotted around Lake Taihu. The town is also a leading manufacturer of
textiles, electronic goods, precision instruments and so on. Silk and cotton manufacture has a long tradition, and painted terracotta figures have been made here for over 400 years, the raw material coming from Mercy Mountain (Huishan) in the west of the town.
Wuxi is one of the oldest Chinese towns west of the Changjiang river. During the Zhou dynasty (11th-3rd C. BC) it was called Youxi (''has tin''), because of its tin deposits. Back in the early Han dynasty, in the 2nd C BC, it was already a major urban settlement. From then onwards it became known as Wuxi (''without tin''), which suggests that by then the tin deposits had already been worked out. Many of the writers of the Tang period (618-907) waxed poetic about the town's streams. Shortly after the opening of the Grand Canal in the 7th C Wuxi became a major center for trade in rice and corn. In the early 20th C the first textile factories soon opened up, and since the 1930s it has developed into a commercial and transport center.
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