The Lingering Garden is located at the outskirts of Changmen, in Suzhou City of Jiangsu Province, built during the Emperor Jiajin period of Ming Dynasty.
It is one of the four most famous classical gardens (the Summer Palace, the Mountain Summer  Resort in Chengde, the Garden of the Humble Administrator and the Lingering Garden) in China.
The entire garden was divided into four scenic areas - the center, the east, the west, and the north covering an area of two hectares. It says there is picture in the poem and poem in the picture, each corner of this classic garden was designed with the landscape according to the affection of a poem.
The Hanbi Mountain House is the main hall of the center area. Inside the hall is very spacious and bright and the displays are elegant. The hall is wide and is next to a lotus pond; therefore, this mountain house also called "the Lotus Hall".
The Five Peaks Hall is the main area of the east. There are graceful stone peaks in the front of the hall. Based on the verse from best-loved poetic genius Li Bai, is the elegant landscape design of this section.
There are stone ridges, peaks with simple and grand posture mixed in the garden, and it has the largest selections among the gardens in Suzhou.
There is a chamber where in ancient times was a study room, and comes from the verse of the famous writer named Hanyu in Song Dynasty: "Only absorbing the water of well continuously, one will need the rope." The means studying and gathering knowledge, one must be persistence and have to go to the bottom of it.
The Guanyun Peak in the north of the Lingering Garden is famous for it three peaks: the Guanyun Peak, the Ruiyun Peak, and the Xiuyun Peak. They are elegant, tall, and straight, having the feature of "wrinkling, thorough, leaking and lean" simultaneously. It has the title of the "Champion of the Peaks in Gardens" of south Yangtze River area. 
After you appreciate the beautiful mountains and stones and the grand scenery of the pavilions and platforms, you will arrive another village. This is a large Chinese rose garden with many beautiful flowers and suddenly let you feel a rustic charm. It is landscape based on a poem from a famous poet in Song Dynasty named Luyou.
"Walking in to the dead end road in the mountain, suspicious whether there is a road, suddenly a village appears right in front of your eyes." This corner presented the unique south of the Yangtze River style of the Lingering Garden through this poem.
There are many other gardens and landscapes designed with poems in the four scenic areas. You can notice one thing: The center of the four scenic areas is the winding corridor and it is the main axis lead to various scenic areas with more than 700 meters long.
On both sides of the stone walls, there are over 300 stone-carved calligraphy works of historical famous calligraphers.
If you look out from the flower-engraved corridor, the pond and the pavilion are partly hidden and partly visible in the flowers like a painting and let you find the scenery pleasing your eyes and your soul.
History: The Lingering Garden was bought by the Jiangsu official named Liushu in Qing Dynasty. After rebuild, he renamed it to "Hanbi Mountain Resort" and commonly called Liu Garden.
In early of Emperor Guangxu period, a rich man named Shengjang bought the garden. He absorbed the merit of the Suzhou garden style, and enlarged it according to the poems' feeling of various famous poets and changed the name to the Lingering Garden. |
