Why Go
A Landscape Folded Into a Courtyard
1. Nature, edited
Suzhou's gardens were made by scholars and officials who had stepped away from public life, and they are the opposite of a lawn. A pond takes up the middle, rocks stand in for hills, and a covered walkway is set so that the view changes with every few steps. Nothing is on one line; the design depends on turns, windows and glimpses.
At the Humble Administrator's Garden, shown in the pictures here, the water is the structure. Pavilions stand over the pond, bridges cross it, and the walls and trees are used to frame what lies beyond. A pagoda outside the garden wall is brought into the view on purpose, which is a standard device in this tradition.
2. Many gardens, one idea
Suzhou once had as many as two hundred private gardens, and sixty-nine survive, all under national protection. The inscription covers a selection of them, plus one in the nearby canal town of Tongli, chosen to show how the form developed over some nine hundred years.
The Humble Administrator's Garden was laid out in the early 16th century by a retired official, Wang Xianchen, with advice from the Suzhou painter Wen Zhengming, who later painted the garden in an album of views. At about five hectares it is a large garden, so it takes a crowd better than the small ones do.
