how is life in Suzhou overall

Hi All,
I'm hoping to get some opinions on the overall quality of life in Suzhou. I'm from Boston in the US and will be taking a Protected content expat assignment there. I have two general questions 1) are you happy there or are you counting the days until you go back home and 2) is the pollution as bad as they say? There are some other threads on the pollution, but there isn't much information on it. I've heard it can be depressing, since the sky is rarely blue. I realize it's better than the air quality in Beijing, which can be very bad, but in Boston our AQI score is usually about a 20. This is a big difference compared to some of the poor scores even in Suzhou where it's 76 as I write this. So, even though it may be good for China it may be bad compared to what I typically experience.
Overall, I'm interested in a healthy lifestyle, so this is important for me. Thanks in advance for your input.