Sublime greenery

Apart from the Zhanyuan Garden, Jiangsu province offers a lot of attractions. In Yangzhou, it is possible to visit the well-preserved Geyuan and Heyuan gardens. In Wuxi, there is a garden favored by Qing Dynasty emperors Kangxi and Qianlong, the Jichang Garden. Emperor Qianlong loved it so much that he ordered a copy, the Xiequ Garden, to be planted in Beijing's Summer Palace.

Even on the spring day I visited, when the garden was packed with groups of tourists busy posing for photos and an army of noisy primary school students, it was still possible to find peace around the pool, thanks to the exquisite views.

A middle-aged man with a large camera told me that if I stood where a Chinese snowball tree was blooming, I could see the view for which the garden is famous. I did as he suggested and high above the canopy of the trees, I saw a pagoda on the opposite hill. The pagoda is an element the maker of the garden ingeniously borrowed to perfect the view.