Talk:Suzhou Creek

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Research Issues

Name

This page has been originally listed as "Suzhou River". While "Suzhou River" is a faithful translation of the Chinese "Suzhou He", it has historically never been used in English speaking publications. The name found in all old maps, postcards and guides is "Suzhou Creek". Even today, investigations on usage reveal that "Suzhou Creek" remains by far the prevalent name for the river, especially in official publications and originally English sources. Translations of Chinese sources probably done without knowledge of the river's proper English name, and the movie "Suzhou River" in particular may distort these usage statistics. A Google Search cleaned up from results pertaining this movie, however, shows 30,000 hits for "Suzhou Creek", but only 14,000 hits for "Suzhou River", giving evidence that the former is the usual name of the river. Official Chinese publications using this name in English, such as the Suzhou Creek Rehabilitation Program or the Suzhou Creek Art District further prove this point. The river therefore is now listed under Suzhou Creek, with Suzhou River being redirected to this page. --Bluebird47

Good move because "Creek" and "River" is a good way to distinguish the two words meaning "river" in Chinese - "he" and "jiang", which in the Southern context (i.e. around Shanghai) convey a sense of scale: "he" is smaller than "jiang". Thus Huangpu River is Huangpu Jiang but Suzhou Creek is Suzhou He. --Sumple (Talk) 12:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Name (2)

Another issue w/r/t the name is Hù Dú, which gave Shanghai its common Chinese abbreviation, but I'm not sure whether it referred to the whole creek or just a stretch of it.

Also, worth establishing and mentioning that the Suzhou River used to be the main river near Shanghai and a flood diverted most of its water to the Huangpu. One source: http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/claudius-madrolle/northern-china-the-valley-of-the-blue-river-korea-rda/page-36-northern-china-the-valley-of-the-blue-river-korea-rda.shtml. — LlywelynII 10:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

More details added. Diversion was not a flood per se, but successive works that were motivated by a flood. --62.189.73.197 (talk) 14:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sources