Travel and Visa

Visa Issue
Most probably, you will need a visa to travel in China. To ensure a successful application, please ask Chinese Embassy or Consulate General for details of visa issue as early as possible. You can find out the nearest Embassy/Consulate through e.g., Travel China Guide or China Tour websites.
You may need an invitation letter to apply for the visa. We will send you an invitation letter by airmail after you finish your registration. Please go to Registration and Abstract page and finish the on-line registration. In some (unusual) cases, the visa office may require a "visa requisition form" (it will be in Chinese) from us, so we would send it to you along with the invitation. For this purpose, you need to supply your passport number. Please send an email to iaus249@nju.edu.cn to give us your (and your accompanier's) passport number.
To ensure a comfortable travel, we suggest you carry adequate medical insurance when you travel in China.

Transportation to/in Suzhou

Suzhou is a city in Jiangsu Province in the east coast of China. It is connected to Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou by railways and express highways. You can fly directly from your place to Shanghai (Pudong International Airport, PVG), or you may arrive in another city in China such as Beijing and Guangzhou, then transit to Shanghai (generally to Hongqiao domestic Airport). From both airports, there are bus shuttles to Suzhou. In the airports, you can also find Airport Bus to Shanghai Railway Station, where you can take a train to Suzhou. We list the timetables of these buses and train below.

Airport bus shuttle to Suzhou

from Pudong10:0010:4011:2011:5012:5013:5014:4015:2016:1016:5017:5018:5019:50
from Hongqiao10:1011:0011:5012:3013:0014:0015:0015:5016:3017:2018:0019:0020:0021:00
It is about 120KM from Pudong International Airport to Suzhou, and it takes less than 2.5 hours by bus. The boarding place is close to the exit of the second-floor Bus Parking lot of the airport building. The distance between Hongqiao Airport and Suzhou is about 80KM, about 1.5 hours by bus. The boarding place in Hongqiao airport is east to the Airport Guesthouse. The ticket price is 80RMB (~10.5USD) for the former routine and 50RMB (6.5USD) for the later. You may ask help from the Information Desk in the airport to find the ticket office and the boarding place.
After arriving at the bus terminal in Suzhou, we suggest you to find a taxi to Soochow University or the hotel. The taxi fee should be less than 15RMB (~2USD).

Airport bus shuttle to Shanghai Railway Station

In Pudong, every 15 minutes from 5:30AM to 9:00PM, a bus labelled "Airport Bus Line No.5" leaves the airport for the Railway Station. The bus station is right outside the International Arrival Hall (at Gate 16, Floor One). When you step out of the Arrival Hall (for International flights), you can see the large yellow/blue sign. Wait for bus there. You can buy the ticket in the Arriving Hall at the Ticket Counter near Gate 12, or you can buy the ticket onboard. There is no difference. The price is 18RMB (~2.2USD) for this 45 minutes trip to railway station.
From Hongqiao Airport, Bus Line 941 is for the railway station, at a 10 minutes interval from 6:00AM to 8:25PM. You should buy the ticket (4.0RMB) on the bus.
Surely you can use taxi in both of these two airports. The taxi fee is about 130RMB (~17USD) from Pudong Airport to the Railway Station and 30RMB (~4USD) from Hongqiao, if there is no heavy traffic jam.

Train from Shanghai to Suzhou

There are many trains (say, every 20 minutes) between Shanghai and Suzhou. Generally the trip is about 1 hour, while the speedy trains (titled with D or T) cost about 40 minutes. You should buy the ticket at the ticket house, which is just by the entrance of the Station Hall. After arriving in Suzhou, we recommend you to use taxi to get Soochow University or the hotel.

Some useful notes

Here we put some printable notes in Chinese here. You may show this to a taxi driver, a ticket person or just a passerby if you can't speak Chinese. A higher resolution version of these notes can be downloaded by a click on this picture. In an emergency, you can also call 0136 4515 3894 (Li-Yong Zhou) or 0135 1254 0416 (Ji-Lin Zhou). Although no one will need, the police number in China is 110.

About Suzhou

Suzhou is one of the most famous cities in China, because both of its great antiquity and of its modernity. Below you can find some links from the internet about Suzhou.
Official site of Suzhou City Suzhou in "Jiangsu Net"
Suzhou Vista Travel China Guide (Suzhou)
Suzhou in Wikipedia
If you want to find Suzhou in a map, the coordinates should be:
Longitude 120 deg. 36 min.Latitude 31 deg. 18 min.