Indeed, Taihu's water proves this to be true in terms of economic development.

The 1980s folk song, The Beauty of Taihu Lake, describes the water body as a source of fish and rice. Taihu is the largest lake in the Yangtze Delta. And Wuxi is known as its "pearl".

Unchecked growth produced pollution, especially a blue-green algae bloom in Taihu that left a million people without water around 2007.

People began to question "development-at-all-costs" and to consider how to balance economic growth with environmental protection.

This pushed the government to guide local enterprises toward green and innovative sectors.

Fisherwoman Gao Shengqiong explained to me how the pollution and recovery of Taihu has affected her family when I joined them to haul up squirming nets.

"Nobody wanted to buy the fish we caught during the algae bloom," she says.

"Our family has fished in Taihu for generations. In my father-inlaw's time, they could catch hundreds of thousands of kilograms of fish a day. But now we can get tens of thousands at most."

Taihu's three treasures are its "three whites"－whitefish, river shrimp and silverfish.

I later helped the crew sort these fingerlings, tossing them into their respective compartments beneath the deck until a dragon's hoard worth of silver ingots shimmered in the compartments beneath the deck. Larger fish, about the size of a forearm, blasted out of the water, sometimes punching against the sides of the wooden boat.

Back on land, I dined on the "three whites" for lunch.

I'd enjoyed them during my many previous visits to Wuxi.

But they'd taken on a new meaning for me after catching them myself while talking with Gao about how they fit into the story of Wuxi's growing pains.