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The Gusu Water Tour is a canal-boat excursion that runs along the historic moat and canal network of old Suzhou, offering visitors a water-level view of a city that was built, for most of its history, to be seen from the water. The tour typically follows a section of the ancient city moat, the ring of water that surrounds Suzhou's grid of streets, passing under ancient stone bridges, alongside white-walled residences, and past restored sections of the old city walls and water gates. Boats depart from a pier on the southern side of the old city.

The Suzhou moat is more than 2,500 years old, contemporary with the founding of the city itself, and portions of the present-day waterway follow the line of the original moat dug to protect the capital of the Kingdom of Wu. Over the centuries, the moat was linked to the Grand Canal, the vast north-south water highway of imperial China, and became one of the busiest commercial waterways in the Yangtze delta. Today's Gusu tour boats follow this same channel, gliding under arched stone bridges that have carried foot traffic for centuries and past stretches of canal-side housing that still bears the silhouette of its Qing dynasty merchant-city past.

The excursion is particularly popular at dusk, when the canal-side buildings and ancient city gates are illuminated. Boats traveling in the early evening pass through the lit sections of the moat while traditional Pingtan story-singing plays over the onboard speakers, and the combination of reflected lantern light, slow-moving water, and old bridges creates a distinctly Suzhou tableau. The full circuit typically passes the Panmen city gate complex, the best-preserved section of Suzhou's ancient walls with both land and water gates, and continues along the section of the moat historically used by grain barges.

For first-time visitors, the Gusu Water Tour offers one of the most efficient and atmospheric ways to grasp why Suzhou was historically described as a water city. The old city's relationship to its moat is fundamental to its design, and seeing the walls and gates from the water makes the layout immediately legible. The tour complements rather than replaces a walk through Pingjiang Road or Shantang Street, and the two together, a daytime walk through the canal-side lanes and an evening on the water, give the fullest sense of the watery foundation on which the more famous classical gardens were built.