This weekend I had the amazing opportunity to visit one of China’s most beautiful cities, Suzhou. Suzhou is like a giant, more metropolized water town. Nestled among the cities large buildings are beautiful canals with old ancient buildings and serene stone bridges.
One of the sites that we saw while in Suzhou was the Lingering Garden. The Lingering Garden, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a classical Chinese garden.
The Garden was commissioned by Xu Taishi, an official in the Ming Dynasty. This garden is full of ancient stone buildings, cherry blossoms, still water, and willow trees. It is certainly a place where the ancient Chinese came to relax and contemplate. Lingering Garden has multiple seconds, and like most Ming Dynasty gardens, is a maze to navigate. There was the main section, where most of the tourists were, which included a large pond, a wooden bridge laced with Cherry blossoms, and a singing man on a boat.
The other sections had less people in them, and were more open. One section had a bamboo forest, yet another had one of the largest bonsai garden’s I had ever seen. Every Chinese garden I have been to is extraordinary because of its creator’s acute attention to detail. Each part looks straight out of a painting, and combines both architecture, plant, stone, and water to make a seemingly overgrown, natural, and relaxing masterpiece. Lingering Garden was absolutely amazing, it’s only problem was there were so many tourists that it kind of ruined the serene aspect of the garden.
Next, we headed to lunch at a grimy little Chinese restaurant outside the gardens. These type of restaurants are my favorite because of their greasy and fried deliciousness. We had amazing fried dumplings for lunch and yuanxiao for dessert. Yuanxiao are a traditional Chinese food that is basically a glutinous rice ball with a sweet filling. The best yuanxiao contain black sesame seed on the inside, and this is what we had at the restaurant.
Our last stop was Pan Gate, which ended up being a lot more beautiful and serene than the Lingering Garden (maybe because there were just way less people in it). This area, which is a beautiful scenic area, is around 2,500 years old, and holds Suzhou’s earliest pagoda (built in 247). Pan Gate was originally part of the ancient city wall built in 514 BCE. For some reason, this city gate also holds an elaborate garden, with many bridges, greenery, and small streams. In the middle of the scenic area is a small lake, surrounded by flowers and ancient Chinese walkways. The smog was so bad that the buildings on the other side of the lake were hazy. However, it gave the place a fog-like effect, and if you pretended the air was not full of dangerous toxins, you could imagine that it was early morning, when the fog and mist hovered gently over the water. For some reason, this area also had a small waterfall and cave, where many young children were playing, running through the cave’s tunnels and hopping on stones over the water.
For a photographer like me, Suzhou was a paradise. The beautiful gardens, misty (smoggy) canals, and picturesque landscapes gave me some of the best photos I have taken yet. There were many more gardens in Suzhou I did not have time to see and hopefully will have time to explore sometime in the future!