Islands of the Humble Administrator’s Garden 拙政园

I was awestruck by the size of the Humble Administrator’s Garden. It was much larger than I thought. I originally thought it was the size of a backyard garden but the scale of this “garden” defies imagination. Due to the size of the garden, the owner had great flexibility in putting in whatever we can dream of. Plants and trees are a given, but he was able to put a lake on it too. The lake is a mystery to me as there doesn’t seem to be any outlet. Was it natural? Anyway, they made full use of this body of water in the backyard and built a garden on it.

They even built miniature islands on the lake. Rocks were piled up until there was enough land to build an island. There was even enough land to build on top of that island. Numerous island have pavillions and halls built on top of them, it was quite impressive how they were able to perform land reclamation for a “mere” garden. Naturally, the islands were still accessible from the mainland as they were all connected by a network of bridges, some of them sporting a zigzag design.

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