China Trip: Day 6 – Liyuan Gardens

Although I enjoyed the Turtle Head Gardens – they were nothing compared to what we saw next. The Liyuan Garden is one of the most famous gardens for lake scenery in Southern China.

Here is our local tour guide leading us through the front gate…

The garden sits on Liyu lake and was formerly the residence of ancient minister Fan Li. There is a very famous love story about him and one of the four ancient beauties, Xishi, that originated here between 770-476 BC. The below image is from a wonderful mural in the garden that tells their story. You can read about them here.

As we began walking through the gardens, we saw an open-doored garden house that had the most beautiful windows…

This bonzai tree was outside the front door. Notice the parquet-style stone tiling on the walkway as well…

As we neared the water gardens…we saw these cute characters welcoming us…I think they were there for a spring festival as we had seen some similar style butterflies up front.

The thing about Chinese water garden design is that every pathway leads you to even more beatiful views. There is no such thing as a bad angle…which makes it such a peaceful & serene place to be. (Click on more for 20 additional pics of the gardens.)

I think these next images speak for themselves.

More great views…

This next series of pictures just proves how well the garden was built. The view is beautiful when you look at this statue from any angle.

Some traditional Chinese architecture…

Unsure if there was any life in these waters, we decided to throw some bread crumbs into one area of the pond and this is what happened…

This image gives you some perspective. And to think we thought there weren’t any fish in there!

They just keep comin’!

Wow! They must not have eaten for days the way they were fighting over the food. *LOL*

After leaving the water gardens, we were off to our next destination, the Hanshan Temple.