Among all the elegant and classical gardens in Suzhou, the Humble Administrator's Garden is the largest and the most renowned. The garden is representative of the Ming Dynasty building style. Along with the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Mountain Resort of Chengde in Hebei Province, and
the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, the Humble Administrator's Garden is listed as one of China's four most famous gardens.
The garden was built around 1509 AD during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It was initially a private garden of a farmer government servant named Wang Xianchen. It was said he intended to build a garden after his retirement, and just do some gardening work like planting bees and vegetables, which he said was the life of a humble man. Hence is the name of the garden.
The garden was created upon the old relics of a resident and a temple. Water forms the park's main background and its natural landscape includes small forests, hills and rock formation. It also has man-made pavilions, halls and parlors.
The garden consists of Eastern, Central and Western sections as well as some residences of the former owners. The resident houses are typical of the style of Suzhou local residences, the site of which has now been rebuilt as the Garden Museum.
The Eastern Section is dotted with sheer hills, green glasses, dense bamboo, pine forests and winding streams. The main building is the Langxiang Hall, which has a panoramic map of the entire garden on its south wall. The Heavenly Spring Pavilion, which is located in is section, is the largest octagonal pavilion in Suzhou's gardens. It got its name because there is an ancient well in the center of its door. Other buildings in the Eastern Section are Millet Fragrance Hall and Lotus Pavilion.
The Central Section is the cream of the garden with marvelous mountains, clear water, elegant buildings, and verdant trees and flowers reminiscent of the scenery south of the lower Yangtze. The main building in the section is the Hall of Distant Fragrance, or Far Scented Hall, in which the owner of the garden used to give banquets and meet visitors. A lotus pond lies to the north of the hall. In summer soft breeze wafts the scent of lotus leaves and flowers into the hall, reminding us of the line "distant fragrance is all the more delicate and flesh" by Zhou Dunyi, a famous writer of the Song Dynasty. Nearby is the Small Flying Rainbow Bridge, which is the only covered bridge in the gardens of Suzhou.
The main building in the Western Section is a stately and ornate hall which is divided into two by a massive screen. The south part is the 18 Camellias Hall and the north part is the 36 Pairs of Mandarin Ducks Hall. In a nearby pool where the ducks are fed, stands the octagonal Pagoda Reflection Pavilion, which got its name from the optical illusion-it appears as if there were a pagoda in the water, while all we can actually see is reflection of the octagonal pavilion.
