Travel By Photo – Lion Grove Garden, SuZhou China

Still Happy 12th Day Of Lunar New Year! China tour continues. We talked about WuZhen scenic village, a marvellous water town first inhabited some 2000 years ago. On the Day 4 of our South Yangtze region tour of China, we continued our journey to another city of heaven, SuZhou.

SuZhou is another heritage city of China which is famous for her beautiful scenes, beautiful silk and most interestingly, beautiful ladies. SuZhou ladies are so attractive to guys because they have silky skin, sharp outlook and most importantly, soft spoken, partly due to their local dialect. The first 2 words we have learnt from a local tour guide are “Ai Yo Yo” and “Ai Ya Ya” which mean “beautiful” and “ugly“…see?

Our first destination of SuZhou was the Lion Grove Garden (狮子林). It was actually a residence of a local famous monk originally and then bought by a rich man later. His heir later donated to the China government as a heritage private garden to open for public viewing, and why we were here. Lion Grove Garden got its name by having huge rock garden with lion look-a-like rock landscaping (spiritually I guess as I didn’t see how they look like lions… 🙁 ).

One of the special thing about this house is it dosesn’t seem to be a house; it’s more like a private garden with trees, rockeries, flowers and water all over the place. That’s why it’s called Lion Grove Garden!

The only building that looked like a house to me is this extended new administration building which is next to the exit.

As we entered the Lion Grove garden compound, we saw the great ancient architecture and structural design of old China.

Chinese believe strongly the influence of words and languages. The above floor patterns made of exotic coloured granite stone was a proof. 5 bats surrounding a coin – Bats read as ‘fu’ (福)which means ‘Blessing’…

Great piece of art work constructed with granite stones…

As we passed by a couple of ancient living halls, here came the highlight, the main garden.

It was so huge that you would not be able to figure out from outside of the house. Does it look like a house?

Compare the residence area and this rockeries garden and you could visualise how big is this rock garden, with fish pond!

The afternoon sun just made the scene so warm and attractive! We walked around the pond to the other side of the guest room in the photo.

‘Come here! Take photo!” “… yes mdm…”

Not only rockeries, the garden is full of trees and flowers as well. I bet you will get lost if no other people are around… Again, does it look like a house?

At one part of the garden, there was a small section of bamboo garden. I took this picture because of the lighting, not the bamboo, sorry. 🙂

We spent the Day 4 afternoon in Lion Grove Garden in SuZhou and left at 4pm. Since it is a popular travel destination, you won’t miss these shops any how…. 🙁

Anyway, some of our tour members have started their shopping mood eventually… SuZhou is famous of its silk, though travelers could still find some other local products like pearl or clay tea pot.

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About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.