Ge Yuan Garden located in Yangzhou

Yangzhou

Yangzhou is a prefecture-level city in central Jiangsu Province, People's Republic of China. Sitting on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, it borders the provincial capital of Nanjing to the southwest, Huai'an to the north, Yancheng to the northeast, Taizhou to the east, and Zhenjiang across...

, a city renowned for traditional private garden

Garden

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...

s. Every year, millions of visitors from all over the world come to Ge Yuan Garden to enjoy the four seasons demonstrated by vivid rockeries. Spring

Spring (season)

Spring is one of the four temperate seasons, the transition period between winter and summer. Spring and "springtime" refer to the season, and broadly to ideas of rebirth, renewal and regrowth. The specific definition of the exact timing of "spring" varies according to local climate, cultures and...

 is shown by the picture of ”bamboo and rock" .Summer

Summer

Summer is the warmest of the four temperate seasons, between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice...

 is represented by the steel grey Taihu stone, which makes the visitors linger on without any thought of leaving. The scene of autumn

Autumn

Autumn is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer into winter usually in September or March when the arrival of night becomes noticeably earlier....

 is depicted by Huangshan Stone. Xuan Stone represents the winter

Winter

Winter is the coldest season of the year in temperate climates, between autumn and spring. At the winter solstice, the days are shortest and the nights are longest, with days lengthening as the season progresses after the solstice.-Meteorology:...

 stone in the garden.

History

The Geyuan Garden in Yangzhou city was the Garden of Long-lived Ganoderma in the Ming dynasty. In the twenty-second year of the reign of Emperor Jiaqing(1818), Huang Zhiyun, the salt Distribution Commissioner, bought the land and rebuilt the garden as a private place for himself to cleanse his spirits. Huang Zhiyun loved bamboos and believed that they were as persistent, modest, straightforward, and loyal as a gentleman. A cluster of three bamboo leaves resemble Chinese character 个, which was also mentioned in a line written by Yuan Mei, an important literary figure in the Qing dynasty: "the moonlight made the bamboo shadows hundreds of the character ge". Therefore, the owner chose the name ”Geyuan” for his garden also as a namesake which corresponds to the owner's name, Zhi Yun (Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

: 至筠), also meaning bamboo.

Architecture

Ge Yuan Garden is a private garden which is famous for its seasonal rockeries — Bamboo Stone for spring, Taihu Stone for summer, Huangshan Stone for autumn and Xuan Stone for winter. The seasonal rockeries paints a colourful garden which can be described as " the rockery in spring is flamboyant like a bright smile, in summer is verdant like sparkling dewdrops, in autumn is clean like a light makeup, and in winter , it is pale like a sleeping beauty." and "spring hill is for visit, summer hill is for sight, autumn hill is for climbing, and winter hill is for residence."

The Ge Yuan Garden covers an area of 2.5 hectares. It is a small but elegant urban wooded mountain garden, whose main body is made up of bamboos and rocks. Rocks of different hues and shapes are employed to represent scenes of the 4 seasons. Hence the rockery was named “Artificial Mountain of Four season”. As a single case in the Chinese garden history, this artificial mountain has a typical Chinese artistic conception as described in the poem below:

Mountains in spring look like young maids with light make-up, smiling
Mountains in summer look like dark green jade as crystal and clear as water drops

Mountains in autumn look like charming ladies with careful make-up, bright and unstained

Mountains in winter look like old men sleeping in gloom and coldness

Ge Yuan Garden, as a unique and well-constructed garden, can be regarded as one of most prestigious gardens in Yangzhou, China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

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