Humble Administrator's Garden

The story

In the first years of the Zhengde emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), about 1509, the censor Wang Xianchen came home to Suzhou after years of quarrels at court. On the ground of a ruined temple he dug a pond, planted trees and called the place the Garden of the Humble Administrator.

The name was a joke against himself. A poet of the Jin dynasty, Pan Yue, had written that to water his garden and sell his vegetables was "the government of a clumsy man". Today the garden covers about five hectares, a third of it water, and is the largest of the nine Suzhou gardens on the World Heritage list.

Part of Classical Gardens of Suzhou. Also there: Lingering Garden, Master of the Nets Garden, Canglang Pavilion, Lion Grove Garden, Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty, Garden of Cultivation, Couple's Retreat Garden, Retreat and Reflection Garden.

What is here

One ticket covers the east, central and west gardens and the Garden Museum. The Suzhou Museum next door is free but must be booked separately. The evening tour has its own ticket.

If you have one minute

By the pond in the central garden

Look west along the water. Above the trees rises a nine-storey pagoda. It is the North Temple Pagoda, about a kilometre away and outside the wall, but from here it seems to stand in the garden. Garden makers call this borrowing a view.

Nothing here is in a straight line. Paths bend, corridors climb and fall, and every few steps a window or a gate frames a new picture. Wen Zhengming, the painter who was Wang Xianchen's friend, counted thirty-one views in 1533 and painted every one.

Wang's son, the story goes, lost the garden in one night at the gambling table. After that it was split three ways. The east part became the Dwelling on Return to the Fields, the west became the Supplementary Garden of a Qing merchant, and the centre passed through officials, a Taiping prince and a provincial guild. Only in 1952 were the three parts joined again and opened to the public.

Things people often get wrong

"Humble Administrator means the owner was modest." It means the opposite: a proud man saying that a clumsy official like him is good only for growing vegetables.

灌园鬻蔬，以供朝夕之膳……此亦拙者之为政也

I water my garden and sell my vegetables to pay for my meals... this too is the government of a clumsy man

Pan Yue, Rhapsody on Living in Idleness, 3rd century

"It is all Ming." The plan of water and islands goes back to the Ming, but most buildings you see are Qing, many rebuilt in the nineteenth century, and the east garden was largely laid out again in the 1950s.

"It is one of the Four Great Gardens because it is the oldest." It is called one of China's four great gardens with the Lingering Garden, the Summer Palace and the Chengde Mountain Resort, for its quality, not its age. The Canglang Pavilion is older.

People who stood here

We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then English ones.

• Wang Xianchen (Ming censor, builder of the garden)He was jailed and demoted more than once for offending powerful eunuchs, and came home to build. He took the name Huaiyu, "rain in the locust trees".
• Wen Zhengming (painter and calligrapher, 1470–1559)He is said to have helped plan the garden. He painted its thirty-one views in 1533 with a poem for each, and wrote its record. Next door, in the Suzhou Museum, a wisteria said to be planted by him still flowers.
• Wang Xinyi (Ming official and landscape painter)In 1631 he bought the overgrown east part and made it his Dwelling on Return to the Fields, finished in 1635.
• Xu Can (poet, 17th century)Wife of the official Chen Zhilin, who owned the garden in the early Qing (1644–1912). She was one of the finest women poets of her age, and her poems carry the garden's name. In 1658 the family was exiled to the far north-east.
• Li Xiucheng (Taiping general, the Loyal King)In 1860 the Taiping army took Suzhou, and his palace took in the garden. Its rooms next door are now part of the Suzhou Museum.
• Zhang Lüqian (Qing merchant)In 1877 he bought the west part and made it his Supplementary Garden, building the hall of Thirty-Six Pairs of Mandarin Ducks. He loved Kunqu opera, and the hall was made to carry sound.
• Chen Congzhou (garden scholar, 1918–2000)His short essays On Gardens taught a generation how to read Suzhou gardens: "a garden has views to be looked at while still, and views to be looked at while walking".

Go deeper: eight stops through east, centre and west

Enter from Dongbei Street. The usual way runs east garden, central garden, west garden, and out through the Garden Museum. Allow two hours, more in lotus season.

1. The east garden: Lanxue Hall

This was Wang Xinyi's Dwelling on Return to the Fields. Its name comes from the poet Tao Yuanming, who left office to farm. The hall is named from a line of Li Bai, "the spring wind scatters orchid and snow".

Most of what you see here, lawns and pine and open water, was laid out again in 1959. Inside the hall a lacquer screen shows the whole garden. Find the pond where you are standing on it.

The Celestial Spring Pavilion stands over an old well. Its double roof makes it look like a two-storey building from far off.

2. The Hall of Distant Fragrance

The main hall of the central garden faces north over the lotus pond. Its name comes from Zhou Dunyi's essay on the lotus: the farther its fragrance goes, the purer it is.

It has windows on all four sides and no inner pillars, so that from the middle you see the garden turning round you like a scroll. This is the view Chen Congzhou called looking while still.

In front, two islands rise from the water with a pavilion each: the Snow Fragrance and Luxuriant Cloud pavilion for plum blossom, and the Waiting for Frost pavilion, named for tangerines that sweeten only after the first frost.

3. Little Flying Rainbow and the Fragrant Isle

Little Flying Rainbow is a covered bridge of three spans, its roof and red railings reflected in the water. It is often called the only covered bridge in the Suzhou gardens.

Beyond it the Fragrant Isle is a stone boat that never sails: a pavilion built like a boat moored at the water's edge. Look into the big mirror inside. It was put there to bring the pond indoors.

4. The Pavilion with Whom to Sit

A small pavilion shaped like an open fan. Its name is a line by Su Shi: "With whom shall I sit? The bright moon, the clear breeze, and I."

Look at the window, the table, the lamp: they are all fan-shaped too. Sit, and the view of the water opens like a fan.

5. The undulating corridor and the Reflection Tower

Between the central and west gardens runs a wall. Pass through and a corridor rises and falls along the water, as if floating, the whole way to the Reflection Tower at its end.

Small window openings in the wall are all different. Count how many shapes you can see.

6. The Hall of Thirty-Six Pairs of Mandarin Ducks

The great hall of Zhang Lüqian's Supplementary Garden is two halls back to back: the north half for summer, facing the water where mandarin ducks swim, the south half for winter, facing the camellias.

Its ceiling is curved so that a voice singing Kunqu carries to every corner. Look at the corners of the building, where small rooms were made for the musicians and servants to wait.

Up on the hill, the Floating Green Pavilion is the highest point of the west garden. Nearby, the Pavilion for Listening to the Rain is named after Li Shangyin: leave the withered lotus, to listen to the rain.

7. The Pavilion of Two Pleasures: borrowing from the neighbours

On a small hill against the wall stands a pavilion that looks over into the central garden. When the garden was split, the west owner built it to borrow his neighbour's view, and the neighbour could see it too: a pleasure for two.

8. The Garden Museum and the bonsai

South of the garden, the old residence is now the Suzhou Garden Museum. It explains how a garden is made, from the choosing of rocks to the laying of pebble floors.

In the west there is a garden of penjing, the miniature landscapes of trees and stones in pots that Suzhou is famous for.

The garden and the same years elsewhere

Wang Xianchen began building about 1509, the year Henry VIII became king of England. Wen Zhengming painted the garden in 1533; that year Ivan the Terrible became grand prince of Moscow, aged three. When the garden was joined together again and opened in 1952, the People's Republic was three years old.