Family portrait
(Ying and his mother in the Humble Administrator’s Garden: Suzhou, China)
Here we have a gratuitous shot of my companions from the weekend, since I’m often reprimanded for a lack of personal pictures in these posts. It seemed more fitting to document our new visitor, Ying’s mum, I decided that a family shot would be better than another one of Ying and I. This is a small courtyard section of the garden we visited together and the round, framed scene was practically crying out for a photograph.
The garden is actually astoundingly and quite breathtakingly beautiful; weeping willows are sighing their branches into rippling water, swirling with eddies of gold and silver fish, and paving stones and rocks are worn to a smooth, fine sheen with the wear of thousands of feet. The buildings although centuries old, still retain a genuinely fresh appearance and lend the garden a fairy tale element, a sense that they are the remnants of a long lost magical era. But it is pretty much swamped by visitors and the frantic waving of tour guides umbrellas. Even though we were constantly surrounded, somehow the charm of the garden wins through and there are pockets of intimate peace if you can cut out the sounds of chatter and the guides’ microphones. I was told that this garden is one of the four most prized by the Chinese – along with one more here in Suzhou and two in Beijing. Considering the size of China, I feel very lucky to have experienced one of the finest Chinese gardens, well, ever. It feels so different to the Suzhou where I spend much of my time spotting the ever-abundant Jackie Chan merchandise and punching straws into bags of milk.
