[游记]Enjoy Ancient Garden in Suzhou

There is the Chinese old saying” Paradise in Heaven, Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth”. Because the long history of both cities have left behind many attractive scenic spots and historical sites with beautiful and interesting legends. In 2008 NY holiday, I accompanied with a Filipine family from Manila(Elson, Linda, Bill and Debbie) to travel these two cities.

We set out at 8: 58AM on Dec.31 by the express train. On the train, we talked about almost everything on actuality, daily life, culture, history and education, etc in China and Philippines. We laughed together while talking of funny things. So we felt time passed so fast and in fact it only takes around 40 min. to arrive at Suzhou.

Suzhou is a well - known tourist and cultural city, as well as a coastal economic opening area, with 2500 years long history. Our first destination is the Humble Administrators Garden. With a history of 500 yrs, the gardens scenery is focused on a central pond with various buildings of pavilions, terraces, chambers and towers located by the water or on hillocks in a natural, unsophisticated, and appropriate composition.

The Humble Administrator’s Garden, is one of the four most famous gardens in China. Centering upon the broad expanse of a lake. It just demonstrates why people regard Suzhou as "Venice in the East". As the biggest private garden in Suzhou, its owner once enjoyed prosperous life and lived with his family in it. We had seen delicate bridges hanging over flowing springs, the beautiful lakes with undulating hills in lush green and the exquisite arts and crafts displayed in many ladies and gentlemen’s rooms in the elegant classical gardens. Such pretty scenery even attracted a king of Wu-Fuchai to bring his two extremely beautiful princesses, one of them is Xishi, who is well-known by Chinese posterity. The two ladies would like to look at a mirror at that time, but none could be found, so after they leaving, the king commanded to dig two wells instead of mirror named after two ladies’ names. We took a lot of group/family photos there and recorded every appealed spot. Especially for little Debbie, the 9-yrs cute girl, she stood anywhere and made faces or did different actions to work in shooting by his father.

The next stop is Ding Garden, nearby another famous tourism spot-Tiger Hill. The general feature is similar to the former garden, but abt widely-known stories of four talented southerner guys. Besides, three kinds of additional free services r provided to tourists. Aquatic viewing, having local tea in teahouse and enjoying the particular opera. We really had a good time there in the afternoon.

Though we were not able to view various sorts of flowers in bonsai area and other places in both gardens since it’s not in spring season, we picked up the panorama of Chinese ancient garden.

(Suzhou)