Suzhou Museum

Pei summed up his own brief in a short phrase that translates as "Chinese, yet new; Suzhou, yet new". He kept the city's palette of white walls and dark roofs, then redrew it in straight lines and clean geometry, with dark, diamond-cut granite slabs standing in for the old grey roof tiles. The folded roofs read like a low range of hills, or layered waves, throwing shadows that shift through the day.

Watch how he handles light. The main courtyard is roofed with triangular skylights and wooden louvres, a modern echo of traditional timber brackets, and the glazing is angled to let low winter sun reach inside while blocking the high summer glare. The light is the real decoration.

Photo tip: stand under the cloister on a bright afternoon and shoot back toward the glass roof. The framed silhouettes are the shot everyone comes for.

The heart of the building is a walled garden with a still pond, a pavilion, and a bridge that keeps you moving low over the water.

Its signature is the rockery on the north wall: slabs of stone, cut and graded from dark to pale, stood on end against the white plaster so they read as a Song-dynasty ink mountain range. Think of the white wall as paper and the pool as ink; on a still day the reflection is mirror-clear, in sun the shadows do the work, and in rain it turns soft and misty. It is a landscape painting you walk past, not a pile of rocks.

Elsewhere, glass walls frame the older gardens outside (a modern take on the classic Suzhou trick of "borrowed scenery"), while openwork screens filter the light into abstract shadows on the floor. In one corner grows a wisteria said to be propagated from a cutting of the one the Ming painter Wen Zhengming planted nearby, quietly tying the new building back five centuries.

Photo tip: shoot the stone wall in flat morning light, before the sun throws hard shadows across the white.

The museum's single most precious object is a Northern Song reliquary made to hold Buddhist relics, discovered in 1978 sealed inside the city's Ruiguang Pagoda.

Just over a metre tall, it is built up in tiers of gilded wood, crystal, agate, and tens of thousands of tiny pearls, and it has survived almost a thousand years intact. It was found not alone but inside a lacquered wooden case painted with the Four Heavenly Kings, itself a rare survival of Song painting, so the two are really a matched pair of treasures.

Tip: it sits in a dim, climate-controlled room. No flash, and be patient if there's a small queue at the glass.

One of the museum's stars is a celadon lotus bowl in "secret-color" (mise) ware, the rare imperial-grade Yue porcelain whose glaze recipe was long a closely held secret. It is often held up as the benchmark for the whole ware.

It was recovered in the 1950s from the pagoda on Tiger Hill, so it pairs naturally with a Tiger Hill visit on the same trip. The petalled form and the soft, watery green glaze are the whole argument for why this porcelain was reserved for the elite.

A reminder that Suzhou's story runs far deeper than the Ming gardens: this bronze sword belonged to Yumei, a king of the ancient state of Wu, and dates to the Spring and Autumn period, roughly two and a half thousand years ago.

What makes it special is the long inscription running down the blade, still crisp enough to read. It is among the longest found on a Wu royal sword, and a rare first-hand record from a kingdom we otherwise know mostly through legend.

Suzhou was the capital of Ming literati painting, and the museum tells that story on home ground. The Wu School's four masters (Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying) all worked in and around this city.

Even if you don't read Chinese, the ink landscapes are worth slow looking. It is the same restrained, garden-minded aesthetic you see built in stone and water next door at the Humble Administrator's Garden.

Attached to the modern building is the mid-19th-century palace of a Taiping Heavenly Kingdom prince, one of the best-preserved buildings of that short-lived rebel state.

Its painted beams and old halls are a deliberate contrast to Pei's clean lines, and they are included with your ticket. Don't leave without walking through: it is the museum's oldest exhibit.