He Garden is known as the "first garden of the late Qing Dynasty", with a combination of Chinese and Western architecture and a multi-layered layout connected by multiple corridors.
History
He Zhizhen, the owner of the He Garden, was a Yangzhou gentry who married Li Hongzhang, a prominent minister of the late Qing Dynasty, and Sun Jianai, a teacher of Emperor Guangxu. He built this private garden in the ninth year of Guangxu (1883 AD).
What to see
The entire garden consists of a backyard, residential courtyards, and a small stone mountain house located in the southeast (a pile of fake mountain stones, with only ruins left, on a very small scale). The various parts are connected by a complex corridor (commonly known as "Chuanlou" by Yangzhou people, which is a corridor divided into upper and lower floors).
This two-story corridor is a distinctive feature of He Yuan's architecture, allowing visitors to navigate through the garden through it. It provides shelter from rain on rainy days and shade from the sun on sunny days, unaffected by weather conditions. And a series of leaky windows and empty windows on the winding corridors, forming a floral window belt, is also a major feature of the park.
The backyard is divided into two parts in terms of layout, east and west. The main buildings include the boat hall and the water pavilion. In the east, a group of courtyards is formed with the "hall" as the center, among which the "boat hall" is shaped like a boat, surrounded by cobblestones and tiles, with a pattern of water waves, giving people the feeling of living in water.
In the west of the garden, there is a pool in the middle, in which there is a Water Heart Pavilion. It is the place where the owners of the garden watch theatrical performances, and the design of the "Water Play Pavilion" is ingenious. The young and old people in the garden live in the Jade Embroidery Building in the south, which is a building that combines Chinese and Western styles. It not only adopts traditional Chinese brick and wood structure, but also extensively uses French louvered doors and windows, Japanese style sliding doors, French fireplaces, wrought iron beds, etc.
At present, the He Garden is still a natural base for filming in domestic film and television dramas, with nearly a hundred film and television dramas such as the new version of "Dream of the Red Chamber" and the sequel to "Huan Zhu Ge" filmed here.
The area of He Garden is not large, and tourists can reach any part of the garden through the winding corridors. Heyuan has two gates, the East Gate and the South Gate. Tourists enter and exit through the East Gate, while the South Gate is not open to the public. There is a tour guide service at the east gate, and the tour guides of the He Garden are called "He Family Qianjin", consisting of a group of young girls wearing Qing Dynasty style clothing. Not far to the southeast of the He Garden is Lu's Salt Merchant's Residence, which is now a famous Huaiyang Restaurant in Yangzhou.
Travel Tips
Address: No. 66 Xuningmen Street, Guangling District, Yangzhou City
Telephone: 0514-87239626
Opening Hours: 07:30-18:00 throughout the year
Admission ticket: CNY45