Meandering in Ge Garden

Geyuan Garden located in No.10 Yanfu East Road, Yangzhou city, a key national cultural heritage conservation unit and one of China's four famous Parks, is a typical private Park in South China. During the years ruled by Emperor Renzong of Qing Dynasty (1796-1820), Huang Zhiyun , general salt merchant of the ancient regions to the north and south of Huaihe River, expanded the Shouzhi Park of the Ming Dynasty. The construction took 10 years. As the owner was fond of bamboos and their leaves looked like the shape of the Chinese character “个”, the park was named as "Geyuan Garden".

Water Pavilion of Geyuan Garden

When you take a little ramble, private garden of Jiangnan style is around the environment. At the end of alley, there is a tablet. It is the Scenic Spots of Bamboo Grove, which means Yangzhou is a good place to live.

Exiting the northern end of the West Fire-exit and walking a few steps to the left, one would be facing a white wall with adorned windows and a moon-shaped door in the middle, above which there is an inscription of two Chinese characters “Ge Yuan”, the only calligraphy left in the garden by its owner Huang Zhiyun (1770-1838 AD). This is the entrance to the first scenery—spring view—of the Four-season Rockeries.

In the flowerbed flanking the moon door grows long, straight bamboo with so much vitality that the stems seem to be striving toward the sky. Moss-covered stone bamboo sprouts are arranged among the bamboo, creating a typical spring scene of bamboo sprouts growing energetically after a shower in spring with a simple pairing of bamboo and stone, visualizing the household Chinese idiom “bamboo sprouts cropping up after the spring rain”.

While an incomparable delight in summer would be watching the moon by a lotus pond at a cool summer night, Geyuan Garden offers the viewers an opportunity to enjoy the moon view even in daylight. The secret lies in the “Fishbone Rock” that erects in the lotus pond. Named after its shape similar to fishbone, this rock resembles the Chinese character “yue” meaning “moon” when its base is not counted. As an epitome that embodies all the features of “slender, creased, porous and transparent” of Taihu Lake rocks, this Fishbone Rock has been regarded as one of the “Top Treasures of Geyuan Garden”.

Heading east along the corridor of Mountain-embracing Building (Baoshan Lou) and passing the double-layer corridor raised in the air after experiencing the mild spring and cooling summer, one would be embraced with the climax of the Four-season Rockeries—the autumn view.

Autumn Rockery Dyed with Maple Leaves

Winter View

The last of the Four-season Rockeries—Winter Rockery—would be unveiled when one passes the gate next to the Book-collecting Building (Congshu Lou).

Soothing Plum Fragrance

In addition to visual elements of “snowy scenes”, the garden builders also employed audial factors such as “wind sounds” to express the winter view in Geyuan Garden. There are 24 Wind Sound Holes on the southern wall, which would make sounds like the blustery north wind when the wind from back blows through these holes.

Though at the end of the four season, winter doesn’t really mean the end. The two circular windows on the wall to the west of the Winter Rockery lead the viewers’ eyes back to stone bamboo sprouts arranged in the bamboo grove of the spring view, creating a feeling that “would spring be far away since winter is already here” and “a new cycle starts with the return of spring”.

The section that connects the summer and autumn rockeries is where the highlight of the rockery arrangement of Geyuan Garden lies. While linked by the Mountain-embracing Building (Baoshan Lou) which is actually named after the spatial relations that the building looks like embracing the rockeries arranged along its structure, the summer and autumn rockeries try to minimize the differences between each other at the transitional foot, by the lack rocks lying at this section of the summer rockery serving as flower terraces and bank reinforcement, and circular and thick yellow stone with vertical lines being selected to decorate the flower terraces at the transitional part of the autumn rockery.

The seven-room-wide Mountain-embracing Building (Baoshan Lou) serves as a connector of the Summer and Autumn Rockeries, on which there are many stone-stair routes leading to the second floor of the architecture. Like two arms that embrace the rockeries (hence the name of the building), the long corridor in front of the building is also nicknamed “space-time tunnel” as viewers strolling on the corridor would accidentally step into a totally different season.

Watching the Autumn Rockery along the corridor of Mountain-embracing Building, one would seem to be looking at endless, undulating, towering mountains, a well-designed view that has all the necessary visual elements, the primary, secondary, complementary, etc. When combining views of the Summer and Autumn Rockeries, one would definitely have a fascinating visual experience: several banana palms erecting elegantly under the dark shade of Chinese parasol trees against the background of the greenery-covering Summer Rockery and the Autumn Rockery dyed red by the maple leaves.

An inscription of the Travelogue of Geyuan Garden by Qing-dynasty scholar Liu Fenghao can be found on the southern wall of the corridor on the ground floor. It provides tourists an opportunity to know more about the garden’s history. Professor Chen Congzhou, an expert of ancient architectures and gardens, speaks highly of both the residential and garden areas of Geyuan, as in his eyes, the residential garden has developed its own unique style based on the combination of northern and southern architectural features, integrating elegance and magnificence, just as described by the literary term “create subtle affections with a powerful brush”.

Stone stele inscribed with Travelogue of Geyuan Garden

After visiting the lively spring scene, the building in front of us is Yi Yuxuan, which is the centre part of the whole park, and flowers and other landscape scenery is arranging around it.

There is a couplet in the door of Ting Yuxuan. The first line means the scenery here is beautiful and arouses many kinds of emotions. It also implied the meaning of marital harmony and family harmony. The word “rain” in the second line comes from the story of Du Fu, a famous Chinese poet in Tang dynasty, and raining day is also a detaining day for guests. Later we compare rain to friends. The sentence means that there are many old friends and new friends in the house, which means that the host had many friends and valued friendship. Obviously, this is a reception and entertainment place for host.

Walking to the end of a bamboo-flanking trail one would enter a courtyard with a two-story building featuring a tablet inscribed with “Book-collecting Building” (Congshu Lou) standing right in front of his/her eyes. This building was owned by the renowned scholar merchants the Ma brothers, Ma Yueguan and Ma Yuelu, whose ancestral home was in Qimen, Anhui province and moved to Yangzhou after they engaged in the salt trade.

The pursuit of pleasure and flashiness had become trendy back then in a business center like Yangzhou, in spite of which, the Ma brothers were unremittingly dedicated to collecting, proofreading books, and befriending scholars from across the country. In order to create a tranquil environment for reading and avoid interruption from outsiders, the owner, while allowing no stairs to be built inside the building, took the stone steps of the autumn rockery behind the building as route to the second floor, a perfect visualization of the household Chinese saying “diligence is the access to the mountain of books”.

Entering into the middle building, the first one room is the Sinology school, the Huang family’s reception hall. Its reception specification is higher than Qing Mei school what we have just seen. The wood used by Sinology school is cedar, and in particular made into square pillars, which means to be a upright person in Chinese.

Huang family’s second son Huang Qilin always makes friends through literature here. He is the famous Ji Yi expert in late Qing Dynasty. He made lifelong effort to collect the lost ancient books, and also edited and inscripted serious books, recollected 226 kinds of ancient books.

When we enter into western buildings, the first one we saw is Qing-Song hall, which is specially built for gathering and holding sacrifice and named for Mr. Huang Zhiyun’s great reputation in his later years. Furniture in the hall is decorated with exquisite ornament with Eight Immortals.

Standing in the hall, we couldn’t see the top beam column covered by plank, which is specially designed by host to remember his deceased mother. The host put his mother’s memorial tablet above the plank to remind himself not to forget hers love.

The hall is 12.3 meters long, with eaves of hall and corridor 5.2 meters high. This hall is not only the highest one in Huang’s house, but also the highest one in existing ancient dwelling in Yangzhou.

Located in NO.1, East Road, is Qing Mei Tang for the steward’s social work. Qing Mei is that purity equals to beauty, namely, free from corruption as an officer, upright as a man, which are the priciples Huang Zhiyun pursued.

Is it too generous to offer a special parlor to the steward? Actually, Huang Zhiyun did salt business widespread the country and the job of the salt commissioner so busy that it was impossible for him to take care of the family in every aspect.Therefore, the steward is indispensable, also with great power from meeting the guests that Huang didn’t intend to receive. The parlor is absoutly reasonable for his contributions of undertaking numerous affairs and solving all kinds of trivia.

Xihuo Lane features in its formation that is wide in south end while narrow in north. This typical structure in ancient China symbolized people resided there would be successful in both politics and business.

Stepping out of the last row of middle compound, we will arrive at Xihuo Lane. In old times, for rich and influential family XiHuo Lane is an essential passage for its high walls which can not only protect the host’s privacy, but prevent them from fire and burglary.

Xihuo Lane has different sizes in its two ends, that is, it’s wide in south end while narrow in north. This peculiar design can cause a visual effect, making the lane look longer and deeper than it is.