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Visited Chinese classical gardens. First we went to the Humble Administrative Garden (Zhuo Zheng Yuan). This was a huge beautiful garden except that it wasn't humble at all. The garden was crowded of tourists. You could not get somewhere without bumping a few people along the way.
Visited Chinese classical gardens. First we went to the Humble Administrative Garden (Zhuo Zheng Yuan). This was a huge beautiful garden except that it wasn't humble at all. The garden was crowded of tourists. You could not get somewhere without bumping a few people along the way.
One thing for sure is that I did enjoy sketching the garden here. The elements of this place such as the water, plants, zigzags made the landscape look bigger than what it really was. Here, where I decided to sketch, was loud and crowded. I put my earphones and played some music to block off some noise.
The entire garden is surrounded by walls that you don’t even notice are there because there are buffers such as path ways, plants and trees. Rocks surround the water then there are green right next to them. The rocks are holding the water together in place. Artificial. There are many zig zag paths in this garden like in the gardens we saw yesterday as well. All of the stairs here are rocky and uneven. You meander through the whole place. Nothing is straight! This makes everything seem bigger since you are walking more. Most of the bridges that go from across the water are shaded.
We then visited Suzhou Museum that the architect I.M. Pei designed. Most of this took place indoors which was lovely because there was AC. I.M. Pei used geometry shapes as a focus of the design of this museum. My favorite part about this building was the natural lighting.
The last garden of the day we visited was the Lion’s Grove Garden. I really thought I wasn’t going to be impressed of this garden for some reason but that ended up being the complete opposite. The whole garden is a maze!
The first path we went into took us about 15 minutes to go through it all and there wasn’t any way of getting out of it, you had to keep going to get out. At least this one was straight forward and you couldn’t get lost. It was narrow and the steps were glossy and slippery and steep in some areas.
The second time I went into a path was with Jonathan and it took us about another 15 minutes to get back where we first started. This one was the path where you choose different paths along the way and you could potentially get stuck in there for a long time if you don’t choose your paths wisely.
The entire garden is surrounded by walls that you don’t even notice are there because there are buffers such as path ways, plants and trees. Rocks surround the water then there are green right next to them. The rocks are holding the water together in place. Artificial. There are many zig zag paths in this garden like in the gardens we saw yesterday as well. All of the stairs here are rocky and uneven. You meander through the whole place. Nothing is straight! This makes everything seem bigger since you are walking more. Most of the bridges that go from across the water are shaded.
We then visited Suzhou Museum that the architect I.M. Pei designed. Most of this took place indoors which was lovely because there was AC. I.M. Pei used geometry shapes as a focus of the design of this museum. My favorite part about this building was the natural lighting.
The last garden of the day we visited was the Lion’s Grove Garden. I really thought I wasn’t going to be impressed of this garden for some reason but that ended up being the complete opposite. The whole garden is a maze!
The first path we went into took us about 15 minutes to go through it all and there wasn’t any way of getting out of it, you had to keep going to get out. At least this one was straight forward and you couldn’t get lost. It was narrow and the steps were glossy and slippery and steep in some areas.
The second time I went into a path was with Jonathan and it took us about another 15 minutes to get back where we first started. This one was the path where you choose different paths along the way and you could potentially get stuck in there for a long time if you don’t choose your paths wisely.