Tuisi Garden, Classical garden in Tongli Town, China.
Tuisi Garden is a classical Chinese garden in Tongli, a water town in Jiangsu Province. It is divided into an outer section with ceremonial halls and an inner residential area arranged around a central pond, with pavilions, stone bridges, and layered rock formations throughout.
Ren Lansheng, an official from Tongli dismissed from his post in Anhui, spent 100,000 taels of silver to build the garden between 1885 and 1887, following a design by the Wumen painter Yuan Long. He died in 1888, and in 1906 his second son, Ren Chuanxin, turned the garden into classrooms for the Lize girls' school. The site was listed as a national key cultural relic in June 2001 and added to the UNESCO World Heritage list that November as part of the Classical Gardens of Suzhou.
The name Tuisi translates roughly as "withdraw and contemplate", and this idea shapes how every part of the garden is arranged. Moving from one pavilion to the next, visitors notice that each framed view seems to invite a pause rather than a quick glance.
The garden is in the center of Tongli and easy to reach on foot from the town's main canals. The path through it changes direction often and the ground shifts between levels, so comfortable shoes make the visit easier.
The garden's main axis runs east–west rather than the traditional north–south, and its buildings are set back from the pool's edge while the water is kept high, a layout called "The Garden Floating on Water." The designer was Yuan Long, a painter of the Wumen school.
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