Xihui Garden

Conventionally, no traveling to Xihui Garden, unmeaning for Wuxi Travel; the cultural and historic zone of Xihui Garden is the most attractive part of Xihui Scenic Area. The places of interest of Xihui Garden gather the rich tourism resources comprised of historic and cultural landscape, the natural landscape featured by the diversified garden characteristics. For many years, Wuxi has been crowned as the Open-Air Historical Museum. It is famous for its large number of places of interest exemplified by the Second Spring on the Earth and Jichang Garden and so on.

Wuxi is a place with broad land and a few natives. There are not many big mountains or big rivers except Yangtze River and Grand Canal. But Xishan Mountain and Huishan Mountain are charming and characterized of the thick trees. It is rich in springs, falls, wells and time-honored cultural history. 

During the time of Southern and Northern Dynasties, a house called Lishan Thatched Cottage was the former origin of Huishan Temple in Southern Area of Yangtze River. Anciently, “慧 and 惠”, these two different Chinese characters with the same pronunciation have the similar meaning and definition. Wisdom is blessing and virtue, so Xihui Mountain was widely known as the Huiquan blessed land. Li Shen, the famous poet of Tang Dynasty, studied at the foot of Huishan Mountain at his young time. He considered Huishan Mountain to be his family mountain. The second spring on the earth famed since Tang Dynasty gradually became widely famous as the extension of Erquanyingyue(二泉映月, a blind man named A Bing, was a folk musician and created this well-known music played by Erhu ).

Many historic people such as Lu Yu (Chinese greatest master and expert on tea research of Tang Dynasty, and he also wrote a book titled Tea Book, which roughly is the first special book on tea all around the world ), Li Yangbing (he was a great calligrapher of Tang Dynasty, and the uncle of Li Po, who was the greatest romantic poet in Chinese poem history), Qin Guan( he was a talented man in North Song Dynasty, and he is excellent in poem, essay and Songci, which was an exclusive and unique literature form widely welcomed in Northern Song Dynasty, besides he also was one of Fourth Great Literature Masters of Su Family,”苏门四学士” ), Su Dongpo (he was a famous and authoritative all-around master in painting, calligraphy, essay, poem, music, chess, philosophy, religion and so on. He was one of the rare comprehensive cultural giant in Chinese History), Huang Tingjian (he was a famous Taoist and a well-educated philosopher of Northern Song Dynasty, besides he was also one of Four Greatest Calligraphers ), Weng Zhengming(he was also one of highly-respected giants in Chinese cultural history, he was the spiritual leader of southern area of Yangtze River) and so on left many famous and welcome words on praising Huishan Mountain and Erquan, which left Xihui Scenic area many attractions. 

Gold-Lotus Bridge (in Chinese Pinyin: JinLian Qiao) built in Song Dynasty has a perfect and even design. The decorations shown in carving, culture and others are highly valued. Longguang Temple at the foot of Xishan has been the symbolic building of Wuxi for over 400 years. The skills and techniques used for Jichang Garden established in Ming Dynasty is the high-level representative of gardening in Chinese classical gardens. It is deeply loved by literators but also the emperors such as Kang Xi and Qian Long who both the emperor of Qing Dynasty savored the beauty of this garden. Emperor Qian Long much more preferred this garden, and he also built a garden named Xieque Garden in Qingyi Garden of Summer Palace via copying Jichang Garden.

There are 18 protection units with state level, province level and city level in Xihui Scenic Area, which is 23% of all the cultural sites in protection of Wuxi city. There are also many famous historic sites such as Erquan Academy, Qianwang Temple, Gu Xiancheng Memorial Hall, besides there are also many temples of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

Over the past 50 years, a splendid development has been gained. Zoo, Cuckoo Garden, Children Fairyland, Travel Ropeway of Xihui Mountains, Peony Garden, Bird Garden and Musical Fountain and so on have been built for adding more attractions. Today, it is also widely enriched in attractions.