LegendForty thousand cash
People say Su Shunqin got the garden so cheap because no one wanted a ruin, and that Ouyang Xiu joked he had bought the wind and the moon for nothing.
Source: The price is in Su's own record; the joke is the poem's
The story
In 1044 the young poet Su Shunqin, an official in the capital, held a party for his colleagues paid for by selling waste paper from the office. His enemies called it theft, and he was dismissed. He moved south to Suzhou, found an old overgrown garden of the Wuyue (907–978) kings by the water, and bought it in 1045 for forty thousand cash.
He built a pavilion on the hill and named it after the fisherman's song in the Songs of Chu: when the Canglang water is clear, I wash my hat tassels in it; when it is muddy, I wash my feet. Clean or dirty, the world can be lived with. He wrote a record of the garden, and died three years later, aged forty.
Part of Classical Gardens of Suzhou. Also there: Humble Administrator's Garden, Lingering Garden, Master of the Nets Garden, Lion Grove Garden, Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty, Garden of Cultivation, Couple's Retreat Garden, Retreat and Reflection Garden.
What is here
One small ticket covers the whole garden. The opera Six Records of a Floating Life has its own ticket.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The double corridor and the canal front | Main ticket |
| The hill and the pavilion | Main ticket |
| Shrine of Five Hundred Sages | Main ticket |
| Opera, Six Records of a Floating Life | Own ticket |
If you have one minute
On the bridge over the canal
Every other Suzhou garden hides behind a high wall. This one begins with water: a canal, a bridge, and on the far side a corridor open to the river. It invites the view in before you have even paid.
Inside, the garden is a hill, not a lake. Old trees, bamboo and rocks cover it, and the square stone pavilion stands on top. The buildings stand round the edge, looking in at the hill.
The pavilion has been moved and rebuilt many times. The present one dates from the Qing (1644–1912). On its columns hangs the most famous couplet in the Suzhou gardens.
清风明月本无价 近水远山皆有情
The clear wind and bright moon have no price the near water and far hills all have feeling
Couplet on the pavilion, put together by Liang Zhangju from a poem by Ouyang Xiu and a poem by Su Shunqin
Ouyang Xiu, Su's friend, wrote the first line in a poem about the garden, and went on: what a pity it sold for only forty thousand.
Things people often get wrong
"Canglang is the name of a place in Suzhou." It is the name of a river in an old song, perhaps a stretch of the Han River. Su Shunqin took the name, not the place.
"It is a Song garden." The plan and the idea are Song. The buildings are Qing, rebuilt after the war of the 1860s.
"There is nothing to see because it is quiet." It is quiet because the tour groups go elsewhere. That is the reason to come.
People who stood here
We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then English ones.
- Su Shunqin (poet, 1008–1048)He bought the garden after his dismissal, named it, and wrote its record: here he could forget the struggles of office.
- Ouyang Xiu (statesman and writer, 1007–1072)He never came, but wrote a long poem about it from Su's letters. One line still hangs on the pavilion.
- Han Shizhong (general, 1090–1151)After the wars against the Jin he lived here, and for a time it was called the Han Garden.
- Gui Youguang (essayist, 1507–1571)In the Ming (1368–1644) the garden was a Buddhist temple. When the monk Wenying rebuilt the pavilion, Gui wrote a second record of it.
- Song Luo (governor of Jiangsu, 1634–1713)In the 1690s he rebuilt the garden and put the pavilion on top of the hill, where it is now.
- Shen Fu (writer, 1763–after 1810)He grew up beside the garden. In Six Records of a Floating Life he tells of spending the mid-autumn night here with his wife Yun, looking at the moon.
Go deeper: seven stops round a wooded hill
Cross the bridge, walk the double corridor first, then climb the hill, then go round the halls. One hour.
1. The double corridor and the Water-Facing Hall
The corridor along the canal is double: one wall down the middle, pierced with windows, and a walk on each side. On one side you walk with the water, on the other with the hill. Through the windows each sees the other.
The garden is said to have 108 lattice windows, no two alike. Pick three and compare them.
At the end, the Fish-Watching Place stands over the canal itself.
2. The hill and the pavilion
The hill is earth faced with yellow stone and lake rock, a mix of the old and the later. Paths climb through bamboo and old trees to the pavilion at the top.
Read the couplet on the columns, then look at the eaves: it is a stone pavilion, square, with no walls.
3. The Hall of Enlightenment
The largest hall, south of the hill. Its name comes from Su Shunqin's record, where he says that here the way became clear to him. In the Ming and Qing it was used for lectures.
4. The Shrine of Five Hundred Sages
In 1827 the governor Tao Shu built a shrine and set into its walls nearly six hundred small stone portraits of worthy men connected with Suzhou, from the age of Wu to the Qing, each with a four-character verse.
Read a few of the verses, and look for a name you know from Chinese history.
5. The Emerald Exquisiteness and the bamboo
Three small rooms set at angles among bamboo. The name comes from a line of Su Shunqin: sunlight passing through bamboo, emerald and exquisite. Stand inside and the walls seem green.
6. The Mountain-Viewing Tower
The tower stands on a stone cave in the south of the garden. From the top, people once saw the hills west of Suzhou. Now you see roofs; imagine the hills.
7. The Pure Fragrance Hall and the Imperial Stele
The Pure Fragrance Hall is named for osmanthus. In September the whole garden smells of it.
A small pavilion keeps a stele with words by the Kangxi emperor, who came to Suzhou on his southern tours.
The garden and the same years elsewhere
Su Shunqin bought the garden in 1045. Twenty-one years later William of Normandy crossed to England. In the Qing, Shen Fu wrote of this garden in 1808, three years after Trafalgar.
On some evenings an opera made from Six Records of a Floating Life is played in the garden itself, and the audience walks with the actors from room to room.