In the morning we went to see the Lingering Garden in Suzhou. This lovely garden is hidden away behind walls and a plain entrance. The name of the garden was taken from the last name of the man who originally built the garden in the 1500s during the Ming Dynasty. His name sounded like the Chinese character for "lingering." When the garden was sold later to another man, the new owner changed the name of the garden, but everyone still called it the Lingering Garden.

Photo by Gene Field

This private garden is one of the most famous gardens in China and was built for the owner, a Chinese bureaucrat, to meditate in. It is divided into many different sections, all different and all of which are separate gardens which you wander through from one to the next, lingering in each. Some of the gardens are like little rooms and as you walked through to the next garden you could see through a latticed window which gave you a glimpse into the next garden.

The garden is very large, over 23,000 square meters, with pavilions, halls and other buildings taking up about a third of the garden. All kinds of trees, vines and plants are arranged artistically throughout the garden - weeping willows, wisteria, peach, ginko and many others. Rocks had to be hauled in from great distances. One section of the garden, behind the moongate, has several hundred bonsai plants.