Suzhou, a Chinese “canal town” 62 miles west of Shanghai, bills itself as the “Venice of the East.” My friend Harp and I were drawn to it primarily for this moniker, much in the same way couples used to fall for the “If you like Julia Roberts, you’ll love…” section at Blockbuster. We’d also come to see the town’s renowned 16th-century gardens.

As we bulleted through China’s Jiangsu province on the Shanghai-Nanjing rail line, we passed sad communist architecture and dull wetlands. We considered turning around, but were coaxed off the train by our own exhaustion and the endorsement of a Western hippie who said through a Marlboro cloud that Suzhou “wasn’t that bad at all.” So we soldiered on. After worming through Suzhou’s frenetic train station to a huge highway and a horizon spiked with factories and toxic haze, we realized that it was that bad.

“Venice of the East”? Try “Paramus of the East.” It turns out locals have bestowed the city with the nickname “Little Singapore” due to that country’s investment in Suzhou as an industrial center.

But Suzhou, once a cultural capital and nearly 2,500 years old, is still home to some of the most majestic gardens in the world – and Unesco has agreed, labeling one of the largest of these cultural treasures, “The Garden of the Humble Administrator,” a World Heritage site. Unesco, an organization affiliated with the United Nations, works to preserve and protect locations of unique cultural heritage that are considered a value to humanity. To be deemed a world heritage site is highly coveted and something to write home about. We knew this much.

But as Harp and I made our way through innocuous parts of the town, passing through eruptions of car exhaust and black ice in utterly frigid weather, postcards were the last thing on our minds. Once we were totally lost, a merciful rickshaw driver saved us – and overcharged us with great hospitality.

Built in 1513 by Wang Xianchen, a retired imperial administrator in the Ming Dynasty, the Garden of the Humble Administrator (178 Dongbei Jie, 521-826-7737; entrance fee $3.50) is in no way humble. Characterized by intricate waterways snaking through white walls with moon gates and rock islands festooned in bamboo and crowned with ornate chambers, the garden is still a visual feast today.

The garden’s landscape philosophy, informed by Taoist and Confucian thought, is translated as “borrowed from afar,” meaning wherever the eye lands, a sense of spaciousness should prevail. Indeed, there were many times when we were stunned by the beauty of a sudden vista. So were the throngs of Chinese tourists, who were releasing the shutters on their digital cameras with such fervor, I was sure they’d be struck with Stendhal’s Syndrome.

After taking in the beauty of the garden’s many pavilions, bonsais, and pagodas, Harp and I, agreeing we could die from the sub zero weather, sought out the garden’s teahouse in search of interior comfort. Of course, there was no heat in the teahouse, nor were there customers, only two classically trained musicians playing the pipa and a waitress with black teeth. We made the best of it, sipping some smoky oolong tea while listening to the female musician croon a Ming Dynasty number on loss and regret.

One of Suzhou’s other Unesco-recognized gardens, the much smaller but no less exquisite Garden of the Master of Nets (11 Kutao Xiang, 521-522-3550; entrance fee $3.50), is well worth a visit with its Song Dynasty designs, complete with intimate pathways, ponds, and elegant pavilions.

But on this day, it was time to visit a real canal town. So we fetched a taxi, passed through a noxious landscape of industrial mayhem, and jumped out 11 miles away at the tiny town of Tongli.

Known for its own Unesco-listed Tuisi Garden and the 49 stone bridges that cross its authentic canals, Tongli is also distinguished by being home to China’s only sex museum called, well, Chinese Ancient Sex Culture Museum (Wu Jiang, 0512-6332-2973; entrance fee $2.50).

As every traveler loosely frames the day with a goal, we now had ours. A libidinous one. But first, we enjoyed a cold stroll past the tiny white buildings scarred with peeling paint that run along the town’s gentle waterways. Everywhere, something engaged the eye: women walking down stone steps with red buckets to wash their gorgon fruit; children chasing each other with their mung bean sweets down cracked stone paths, knocking over clotheslines of dried fish along the way.

We were freezing, but Tongli’s beauty was persuasive. The town, not overrun by tourists, offered a vibrant tranquility with the hustling-but-friendly street merchants offering everything from Min cake to hand-painted porcelain chopsticks. When we finally did grab a meal, we once again sat in an icy dining room only to eat a bizarre, sinuous meat listed on the menu in Chinese. When we noticed a “hospitality” charge on the check, Harp, money-obsessed, tried to argue, but our hosts just laughed him off. “Americans,” they muttered as we stumbled away trying to discern what we had eaten, hoping it wasn’t an insolent busboy.

Along the way to the sex museum, a pretty girl in a big white jacket approached us. The sight of her renewed our spirits, but she only wanted to practice her English for her happy parents, who were standing behind her like a couple watching their child receive her diploma. We were so cold, one of us would have proposed marriage only to get close to a nearby hearth. Instead, she gave us directions to the sex museum.

Launched by a passionate professor of sexology, Liu Dalin, the Chinese Ancient Sex Museum was forced to move from Shanghai to cozy Tongli for violating a Chinese law that forbids the “advertising of sexual products.”

We entered, and in a courtyard, were greeted by a large statue of a phallus with a turtle on top. According to the curator, this is how the universe began. Seems reasonable enough. No one else knows for sure.

After passing such spirited exhibits as “Disgusting Prostitution,” the museum took a more sinister turn. Saddles constructed with a prominent phallus were used to “discipline” adulterous women, and foot-binding devices were employed to crush a women’s foot into a 90-degree angle so she couldn’t run away. Foot binding, spawned in 960 C.E., lasted – unbelievably – more than a 1,000 years. As Harp and I gasped, a group of Chinese tourists next to us giggled inscrutably.

It was hard to leave Tongli’s irresistible charms, so we walked whimsically along the canals to get one last look, as if time would take her away from us. But when my jaw began to lock each time I spoke, fear of hypothermia took over, and I decided it was best to depart, even at the risk of abandoning a great beauty. And perhaps one day, I could see her again when it was warm enough to speak.