Jin Garden, Chinese garden in Tianning District, China.
Jin Garden is a Chinese garden in Changzhou with a total area of about 4,600 square meters (49,500 square feet), spanning 80 meters (260 feet) from north to south and 64 meters (210 feet) from east to west. The structure includes traditional elements such as rockeries, water features, open pavilions, and decorative bridges arranged in classical composition.
Yang Qingyan, a former Fujian official, bought 0.43 hectares of waste ground behind the Longcheng Academy in 1667 and completed the garden in 1672, naming it Jin Garden for being "almost a garden". The painter Wang Hui took part in its design, and it partly reuses the site of Yun Juechu's Ming-era East Garden. It passed to Liu Yichen in the Tongzhi era and to Yun Yanqi in 1885, who renamed it Jing Garden; it became a national protected site in 2013.
The name Jin Yuan means "almost a garden", as Yang Qingyan considered the site close to, but not quite, a garden. Painters gathered here: Yun Nantian inscribed a rock, Wang Shigu painted the "Jin Garden Picture", Da Chongguang wrote a colophon and Yang himself wrote the "Jin Garden Record"; a damaged stele with this content survives in the garden. The garden is counted with Weiyuan, Yueyuan and Yiyuan as one of Changzhou's four great gardens.
Jin Garden sits inside the grounds of Changzhou Hotel on Changsheng Lane, east of the main buildings, in Tianning District. The garden is entered from the hotel side, and the surviving residential hall is the last bay of the eastern route on Shizi Street. Allow time to walk the circuit from Xiyechao Hall past the pond and rockery to Jianyiting Pavilion, the highest point, which overlooks the whole 80-by-64-metre enclosure.
The garden's rockery hides a cave called Chuigong Dong, with the Sanwu Pavilion built above it. The garden was designed with input from painter Wang Hui, and a damaged stele bearing Yang Qingyan's "Jin Garden Record" and inscriptions by Yun Nantian and Da Chongguang is still kept on site.
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