Spend a day in the scholar gardens of Suzhou

What the experience is

Suzhou was for a thousand years one of the richest cities in China, and its silk merchants, retired officials and painters built gardens. Sixty-nine survive, and UNESCO has listed nine. They are not parks. They were private, attached to houses and enclosed by high white walls, and each was conceived as a landscape painting in three dimensions.

The elements are few. Water lies at the centre. Rocks stand for mountains; the most prized are the pitted limestones from Lake Tai. Plants are chosen for their meaning: bamboo for integrity, pine for endurance, lotus for purity. Halls, pavilions and covered walks are placed so that the visitor is led from one composed view to the next, and a path bends so that the end cannot be seen.

Three gardens are a sensible number for a day. Begin when the gates open at the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the largest and often the most crowded, with much of it water. Continue to the Lingering Garden, known for its sequence of courts and corridors and for its great Lake Tai rock. Finish at the Master of the Nets, the smallest of the great gardens and one of the most admired by specialists, where everything is arranged round a single pond.

How to look

Walk slowly, and stop where the path stops you. Sit in the pavilions, since the views were composed for seated people. Look through windows and doorways as frames. Notice the paving, laid in patterns of pebble and tile.

When to go

Early morning, light rain and winter, when the structure shows, are the best conditions. The national holiday weeks in early May and early October are very crowded and best avoided.

Good to know

High-speed trains from Shanghai take about half an hour. The Suzhou Museum, designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 2006, stands beside the Humble Administrator’s Garden and is a modern garden in its own right. The main gardens limit numbers at busy times, and tickets should be booked ahead in the busy seasons; hours and rules vary by garden.

Why OKYTO recommends it

Few art forms explain as much about how educated Chinese of the past saw nature, and few places have so many examples within a few streets.