Lingering
Garden
 The
Lingering Garden was listed from the first
as cultural relics of national importance
in 1961. With an area of 23,310 sq.m.it
is celebrated for its artistic way of dealing
with the spaces between various kinds of
architectural form.Buildings make up one
third of the total area of the garden,the
hall of which being the most remarkable
in Suzhou. The garden is separated into
the middle ,eastern,northern and western
parts. The ancestral temple and the house
lie to the south of the garden.
Featuring man-made mountain
and lake scenery in the west and garden
courts in the east,the middle part of the
garden is the original site of the Xu's
East Garden and the Liu's Hanbi Villa,and
is regarded as the best part of the whole
garden. The eastern,northern and western
parts are the extensions of the Sheng's
Garden. The eastern part is noted for its
strangely shaped limestones,the northern
part idyllic scenes,and the western part
the delights of woody hills.
 A
winding roofed walkway behind the small
entrance of the garden,while leading to
the places of quietude,shows the masterly
use of contrast between big and small,straight
and zigzag,and light and shade. After strolling
for about 50 meters,one can catch a glimpse
of lattice-windows revealing a half visible
landscape garden behind. Interestingly enough,the
view is changing at every step.
The middle part of the garden
is centered upon a lake with man-made moutain
in the north-west and a numger of attractive
buildings in the southwest ,such as the
Hanbi Moutain Villa ,the Pellucid Tower,the
Green Shade Pavilion,the Zigzag Stream Tower,the
Hao Pu Pavilion,and the Refreshing Breeze
Pavilion by the lake.The mountains made
mainly of yellowstones and earth,believed
to be desigtned and piled up by Zhou Binzhong,look
very much archaic and splendiferous.The
admirable Crane House, the Small Garden
of Stone Forest, the Return-to-Read Study
in the east with the Celestial Hall of Five
Peaks as the chief stucture are laid out
in such a way that the indoor spaces have
been brought into perfect harmony with the
outdoor spaces. With an evocation of infinity,they
are successfully made to be labyrinthine.
 Flanked
by the Auspicious Cloud and Mountainous
Cloud peaks,the 6.5-meter-high Cloud-Capped
Peak, the highest limestone in the classical
gardens of Suzhou, is believed to be left
behind by the imperial collector of the
Northern Song Dynasty,Mass of buildings,
including the Old Hermit Scholars' House,
the Cloud-Capped Tower,the Cloud-Capped
Terrace and the Awaiting Cloud Temple,are
put up to give emphasis to the Cloud-Capped
Tower,The northern part is now a bonsai
garden in which about 500 valuable bonsai
are put on display.
The western part of the garden
sets a fine example of good-looking earthen
hills studded with yellowstones and covered
with maple trees.There is a winding brook
lined with peach trees and weeping willows.
The number of stelae in the
Lingering Garden has never been surpassed
by any other gardens in Suzhou.Superbly
inscribed with the works of more than a
hundred calligraphers in the Jin,Tang,Song,Yuan,Ming
,and Qing Dynasties, these invaluable stelae
bring to light the evolutionary course of
Chinese calligraphy in the past 1,000 years.
The whole garden possesses
with pride 42 rooms and halls , a 670-meter-long
roofed walkway,200 lattice-windows of different
kinds, 44 parallel couplets and stone carvings
, 373 stelae,and 17 such valuable old trees
as gingkoes,southern wistaria,etc. which
fall into 8 catalogues.
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