Shanghai 上 海 - Yu Garden (Garden of Leisurely Repose) 豫园

First established in 1559 by a Mandarin named Pan Yunduan潘允段 who used to be the governor of Sichuan四川布政使 and was expanded in 1577, the Yu Garden (also called as “Chenghuang Miao”—Town God Temple by the local people, it got two names because of two ancient architectural structures in the area: Yu Garden and Town God Temple) is located on the northeast side of the old Chinese Town. The garden encompasses 5 hectares (12.5 acres). Laid out by a landscape artist, Zhang Nanyang, it has become one of the most renowned gardens in South China. As the Pan family fortunes declined, the garden was neglected and overgrows until the local gentry restored it in 1760. It became the headquarters of the Dagger Society or Small-Society, Uprising (an uprising led in 1853 by the Small-Sword Society, a secret society, against the foreign imperialists in Shanghai and Xiamen, Fujian Province) in 1853, during the early part of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution (1851-1864), and was badly damaged. Part of the garden became the bazaar and local guildhalls, but over 20,000 square meters remain of tall rockeries, halls, ponds and pavilions linked by zigzag corridors. The Spring Hall点春堂, used by the Dagger Society小刀会, houses exhibits of coins and weapons from that period. The five-ton porous Exquisite Jade Rock is one of the attractions. Beautifully shaped, it is about 4 meters in height. It is a piece of grotesque rock from Lake Tai in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, characterized by its wrinkled appearance, slender shape, translucent nature, and numerous holes eroded by water. That if incense is burned underneath, smoke will float out of each crevice, drifting away with the wind, and when water is poured from the top of the rock, it will trickle out through its crevices. Legend relates that it was discovered some 1,000 years ago in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and it joined Emperor Huizong’s collection of weird and grotesque rocks before finding a resting place in Yu Garden.

The Moon Palace, a brick carving on the wall of the eastern corridor of the Chamber for Enjoying the Moon, is considered a rare piece of treasure among all the brick carvings south of Yangtze River. It is exquisitely carved and has approximately 7 or 8 layers, producing a strong three-dimensional effect.

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