Suzhou Gardens
2 min readWelcome to the”land offish and rice”-Suzhou.Suzhou，one ofthe Chinese”Cities of gardens”tops all others in both number and artistry of gardens.Starting from Pijiang Garden of the Eastern Jin Dynasty，Suzhou’s art of gardening has undergone a history of1，500 years.The concept of Suzhou classical gardens has gone beyond the city and the regions of the Yangtze.
The four classical gardens of Suzhou are The Surging Waves Pavilion，The Lion Grove Garden，The Humble Administrator’s Garden and The Lingering Garden.The gardens represent the different architectural styles of Song，Yuan，Ming and Qing dynasties.
My friends，now we are in The Lingering Garden.It is located in LiuyuanRoad，Suzhou City.It was built by Xu Taishi in Ming Dynasty.At that time it was named Eastern Garden.
There are three treasures in The Lingering Garden.The first treasure are Stones.The stone in front ofus is the most distinguishing stone”Guangyun Peak”.With a weight of 5 tons and a height of6.5 meters，it is one of the four Wonderful Stones in the regions of the Yangtze.You will have some idea about the features of the stones.In addition，it is endowed with the personal characters of faithfulness because of its nature of stiffness andunchangeable outlook.Thus it has been worshipped by people since old time.
The second treasure is”Five Peaks Fairy Hall”，which gets the reputation of”the first hall in the regions ofYangtze”.The hall is elegantly designed with over-sized windows on east and west sides.Through the windows，the outside sceneries of the two courtyards can be extended as parts of the hall，thus to ensure enough lights into the building.Five peaks fairy hall was built out ofluxury materials.Beams and pillars are all Nanmu，which isa kind of timber only produced in China.That is also the reason why”Five Peaks Fairy Hall”is also commonly called”Nanmu Hall”.
The”Fossil Fish”we are enjoying is the third treasure of Lingering Garden.It is a natural marble picture.In the middle of the picture are the clutters of mountains which are partly hidden and partly visible；below are flowing streams，above are floating clouds；right on the middle top is a round white spot like a sun or a moon.It is a picture drawn by the nature.The marble stone has a diameter of 1 meter or so and a thickness of15 mms.It was produced in Diancang Mountain，Yunnan province.It is a wonder how such big a stone was delivered in a good condition from Yunnan which is over one thousand miles away from Suzhou.
China is most famous for its elegant classical gardens.Among these，the Lingering Garden is one representative.Ifyou would like to know more about Chinese culture，we welcome you to visit Suzhou again.
