In fact, my trip to Suzhou had been a failure: I wanted to photograph what was left of it's famous zen gardens, in order to "restore" them with the aid of the computer. But their present state turned out to be too different from what it must have been originally, and my own historical knowledge too poor to make any significant reconstitution. On the other hand, I took some photos of street life, which at the time didn't seem very exciting, but which bear witness a very brief period of transition, between the drabness of the communist era and the dramatic modernization that was to follow.