Liyuan Garden

Liyuan Garden is one of the main attractions in Taihu Scenic area. It is situated at Qingqi Village in suburb of Wuxi City.

It is built nearby the Lihu Lake, so it is named after this lake. Lihu Lake has a former name called Wuli Lake (Which is also a famous but newly-established scenic zone. It is free of charge for traveling. There is a new and modern bridge called Lihu-Lake Bridge, from this bridge you can enjoy the landscape of the whole city. Through this bridge, you can enter the downtown of new part of city). The name of Lihu Lake is also from a classical story happened two-thousand years ago. It was said that during the Era of Spring and Autumn, Fan Li, the high-ranked official or giant businessman, completed his mission to help Yue Kingdom occupy Wu Kingdom, and then he stayed secretly in Wuli Lake with his beautiful wife, Xi Shi, who was one of the Four Classic Beauties and made a great contribution to Yue Kingdom by way of badger game. Hence the people of later generation call this lake Lihu Lake.

During the early period of The Republic of China, Villagers of Qingqi Village, Yu Xunzhen established Eight Attraction of Qingqil, and a businessman called Wang Yuqing from the same village adored Fan Li, so then he established Liyuan Garden. This garden surrounded mostly by waters in three directions. The mountains ups and downs afar, the wave touch greatly the bank-side. A strong poetic surrounding is felt. There are also many traditional artificial hills kept in garden, the material of these hills are also special, and the stone was all brought directly from Taihu Lake, historically it is called Taihu-Lake Stone, which used to decorate for Imperial Gardens in ancient capitals, especially the Classic Gardens in Suzhou, a world heritage, is also found in the form of uniqueness and poetic style. Just as such a stone, it partially caused the collapse of Northern Song Dynasty.

The total area of Liyuan Garden is 8.2 hectares, and water coverage is 3.5 hectares. the three parts of Liyuan Garden are comprised of artificial hills in center, lakeside causeway and four-season pavilion in west, corridor in east, lake-heart corridor and a new zone called Cengbodieying(in Chinese “層波疊影”)