Scenic Spots
Inside Xu Yuan, there is a 14.5-meter-long timber-mimic stony boat, built by gray stones. Now it is the symbol of the garden. Emperor Qianlong used to write "Bu Ji Zhou" (不系舟), or "unmoored boat" for it.
Xu Yuan has an artificial hillock, called "South Rockery", made of rocks resembling 12 Chinese zodiac animals. Among the hillock there is a Hexagonal Pavilion. From afar it looks like an overlapping of two pavilions, but a closer look sees an integrated body. It was called "Mandarin Duck Pavilion", because those duck always appear in pairs.
"Tong Yin Guan" (桐音馆), or "Paulownia Melody House" is the largest building in the garden, built by paulownia timber. It was used as Zeng Guofan's reception hall. Several huge Chinese parasol trees are planted around the house. When rains fall on the trees, the mellifluous sounds resonated. Behind the house lies "North Rockery". There're caves inside the hillocks and they're interconnected, like a maze. Beside it is a stone tablet, on which Emperor Daoguang's handwriting "Heart Stamping Stony House" (印心石室) is engraved.
Read more about this topic: Xu Garden
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“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
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