Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty


The garden's area is not large - 0.1 hectare. The entire garden is based on mountains, with ponds
added, and fully embodies a Suzhou garden's splendour of piling rocks and dividing waters. It has a
small area, and contains the aesthetic artistic conception of Chinese traditional mountain and water
paintings and poetry.

The structural characteristics of the artistic conception of a classical Chinese garden are thus: In
reality there is emptiness, and emptiness derives from reality. As one pavilion and one garden can
create a limitless space by use of a special environment, thus giving a rich experience, the artistic
handling of a garden's mountains and waters condenses the splendour of natural mountains and
waters, giving the feeling of vastness, endlessness and magnificence.

Within an area of less than 500 square meters, the man-made mountain seems to be spontaneous an uncontrived, possessing high peaks,
dells, pathways, carverns, stone houses, stone steps, ravines, precipices, gullies, bridges and cliffs. Like a free hand brushwork in Chinese
painting characterized by vivid expression and bold outline, it ranks first among all existing man-made mountains in Chinese gardens.

A number of buildings are arranged opposite to the mountain. There are two halls to the south of the mountain, facing each other over a stream.
The front hall is called "In Company with a Ravine" and the rear hall "the Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty". On the top of the mountain is a
pavilion called "Housing the Mountain with a Half-Filled Pool in Autumn". At its foot are the Putting-a-Question-to-the-Spring Pavilion and the Make-
Up Autumn Galley. To the west of the mountain is a unique side structure with a long walkway on the ground floor and rooms one floor upstairs.
There are viewing places high above or down below, far away or quite near. The man-made mountain scenery is changing at every step, and gives
great pleasure to the viewer from any direction.

"…Combining rocks of different sizes and shapes and creating a balanced single piece, he said, it
can endure any shock and can last for a thousand years". The garden was a utopia where Chinese
intellectuals sought peace of mind. It is characterized by an aesthetic aspiration for a perfect harmony
of man-made beauty and nature.