Humble Administrator's Garden

The Humble Administrator's Garden is the largest of the classical gardens of Suzhou and, for many, the finest: a landscape of water, rock, pavilions and galleries pressed into about five hectares in the middle of the old city. It was begun around 1513 by Wang Xianchen, an imperial envoy of the Ming dynasty who withdrew from office and built his retreat on the site of a ruined temple. He took the name from an essay by the Jin-dynasty writer Pan Yue on the idle life, which praises planting trees, watering one's garden and growing one's own food as the fitting occupation of a man out of office. For a former official the name was both modest and pointed: this garden was the only thing he now meant to administer.

Wang's friend Wen Zhengming, one of the great painters of Suzhou, recorded the garden in words and pictures: an album of 31 views with poems in 1533 and a second of eight leaves in 1551, which make it one of the best-documented gardens of its time. After Wang's death his son is said to have lost the property gambling, and for centuries it passed through many hands and was split into separate estates. In 1860 the Taiping prince Li Xiucheng took it over as his residence and remodelled it, and much of what one sees today dates from that period. The three parts were reunited in 1949 and restored in 1952; since 1997 the garden has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Classical Gardens of Suzhou.

Water takes up much of the garden, and the three sections each have their own character. The eastern garden is the most open, with lawns and a pond ringed by crape myrtles. The central garden, the heart of the composition, is laid out around a large pond with three islands; its main hall, the Hall of Distant Fragrance, looks out across the water, and the Small Flying Rainbow, a bridge without parallel in the other Suzhou gardens, spans a narrow arm of the pond. From certain pavilions the pagoda of the North Temple rises above the trees, a "borrowed view" drawn into the garden from outside its walls. The western garden, half the size, is more intimate, centred on the Mandarin Duck Hall.

The garden is also a place of plants tended with great patience: some 21 ancient trees and more than 700 Suzhou-style penjing, miniature landscapes in pots, with peonies in spring, lotus in summer, osmanthus in autumn and plum blossom in winter. It is sometimes said that the young Cao Xueqin knew the garden, and that its scenery echoes in the gardens of his novel Dream of the Red Chamber.

Getting there

The garden lies in the old city of Suzhou. The nearest airport is Sunan Shuofang International (WUX), about 27 km away. Metro Line 4 stops at Beisita (North Temple Pagoda) station, about ten minutes' walk away, and several buses stop at the Suzhou Museum stop, around 200 metres from the entrance. The Suzhou Museum, designed by I. M. Pei, and the Lion Grove Garden are within a ten-minute walk.