Master-of-Nets Garden / Wangshi Garden 网师园

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to Master of Nets Garden in Suzhou. Today I will take you along the garden's official tour route, through what many consider the finest example of "achieving grandeur in small spaces" among all Suzhou's classical gardens. Starting from the entrance gate, we will move through the Sedan Hall, the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes, the Tower of Gathered Beauty, Cloud-Climbing Chamber, the Pavilion for Viewing Pines and Paintings, Late Spring Studio, Moon-and-Wind Pavilion, the Water Pavilion of Washing the Tassels, and the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo. Each stop has its own story and its own rewards.

Master of Nets Garden was first built during the Chunxi reign of the Southern Song dynasty — over 800 years ago. Its original name was "Fishing Retreat," and it was created by a government official who had resigned and come home to live in seclusion. During the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty, Song Zongyuan, a junior minister of the Court of Imperial Entertainments, rebuilt the garden and renamed it Wangshi Yuan — Master of Nets Garden — evoking the image of a fisherman-hermit withdrawing from the world to fish and live in peaceful seclusion. Covering just over half a hectare, the garden cleverly organises three distinct zones — residence, garden, and private study — into a single unified space. It is the ultimate example of how Chinese classical garden design achieves the feel of vast landscapes within a small footprint. In 1997, the garden was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 1979, Late Spring Studio, one of the garden's key pavilions, was faithfully reproduced at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it became known as the Astor Court — a landmark moment for Chinese garden culture going global. I hope today's visit gives you a taste of the great wisdom and beauty contained in this small but remarkable garden. Please follow me, and let's begin at the entrance gate.

Through the plain grey-brick gatehouse, we have now arrived at the Sedan Hall. In a traditional Jiangnan residence, the Sedan Hall was where guests were welcomed and palanquins set down — a transitional space between the outside world and the formal inner compound. Take a look at the hall: it is broad and open, built with a column-and-tie-beam timber frame. Every wooden element is left as natural timber, with no paint or lacquer applied. This "bare-faced" simplicity is the most distinctive hallmark of Ming dynasty architecture.

A screen door stands in the middle of the hall. It is kept closed during ordinary days and opened only on ceremonial occasions. When open, it creates a formal axis running straight from the outer gate all the way through to the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes — a physical expression of the Chinese architectural philosophy of gradual progression and deepening revelation. Take a look at the floor beneath your feet — it is paved with what are known as "golden bricks." These are not actually gold-coloured; the name comes from their dense, solid quality, which produces a resonant, almost metallic sound when struck. Golden bricks were originally reserved for imperial palaces and the residences of high officials — a quiet indicator of the garden owner's considerable status. The side bays of the hall were used for storing the palanquins and providing space for attendants to wait. The Sedan Hall carries no flashy decoration, but every detail speaks to the restrained, understated aesthetic of the Jiangnan literati.

Photography enthusiasts: pay special attention to the mortise-and-tenon joinery in the timber frame. This ancient craft — connecting timber entirely through interlocking cuts, without a single nail — is one of the crowning achievements of Chinese craftsmanship. The warm, smooth tones of the unpainted nanmu beams photograph beautifully in soft light; natural light works best, as it draws out the full grain and texture of the wood. The carved wooden panels on the screen door, though restrained in style, are precisely cut — worth a closer look. From here, we continue deeper into the residence, toward the main hall — the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes. Something altogether grander awaits.

The Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes is the main hall of Master of Nets Garden and the largest building in the entire garden. The name "Ten Thousand Volumes" alludes to the ideal of reading ten thousand books. It served as the owner's space for receiving guests and conducting affairs, as well as the centrepiece of the whole spatial sequence. The hall is three bays wide, oriented to face south toward the main courtyard, imposing yet refined. Look up: the columns and beams throughout are built from nanmu — a timber with warm, amber tones that deepen with age and that is naturally resistant to insects and rot. It was the favoured building material of Jiangnan literati.

Hanging scrolls of calligraphy and painting cover the central wall, with grand armchairs flanking them on either side. A scholar's table holds the traditional accoutrements of the studio — a brush holder, an inkstone, an incense burner, and a curious piece of rock. This arrangement is a classic Jiangnan literati parlour: perfectly suited both for entertaining guests and for reading or calligraphy at any moment. A stone terrace extends from the front of the hall, where the owner would gather guests for moongazing, tea, and music. Imagine the garden's owner here, hosting friends, discussing ideas over tea, with the garden laid out before them — a life of rare refinement. The hall's roof takes a simple hard-gable form, but its timber structure is finely made, every element relying on the natural grain and colour of the wood rather than any decoration. This anti-ornament approach reflects the Ming literati ideal: admire nature, reject excess.

Please look up and study the beam structure overhead. The lines of the unpainted nanmu beams appear and disappear in the shifting light — exceptional material for architectural photography. A wide-angle lens will best capture the full sense of depth within the hall. The stone terrace outside is another strong vantage point: with the hall as the foreground, the main courtyard as the middle ground, and the rockery and water beyond as the background, the three-layered composition is a textbook example of the "deep distance" compositional method in Chinese garden design. In the evening, as the sun moves westward, a golden light falls across the nanmu beams — one of the most beautiful moments of the entire day at Master of Nets Garden.

The Tower of Gathered Beauty stands behind the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes. It was the living quarters of the women of the household. "Gathered Beauty" speaks to capturing the loveliness of the world — a name rich with expectation for a feminine living space. The building has two storeys: the lower floor for everyday living, the upper floor a private boudoir. In traditional life, a young woman of good family moved largely within these rooms and the courtyard just outside — "not stepping beyond the inner gate" was the expression. The Tower of Gathered Beauty was the centre of that world.

The small courtyard in front is planted with pomegranate and crabapple trees. Pomegranate symbolises abundant children, crabapple signals wealth and good fortune — the choice of these plants was never casual. It reflects the Chinese aesthetic tradition in which everything carries meaning and every image carries a wish. Look closely at the upper-floor window lattices: ice-crack patterns suggest the perseverance of a student at diligent study; fret patterns evoke endless continuity and renewal. These window screens are not merely decorative — they were also a kind of daily cultural education for the women inside, who would look out through this carved beauty at the world beyond, and who passed on the family's cultural heritage through needlework and embroidery.

In spatial terms, the Tower of Gathered Beauty and the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes form the classic "front hall, rear tower" arrangement — the hall was the public, male space; the tower was the private, female space. This division embodied the traditional social order of inner and outer in Chinese society. But the design is not oppressive: the small courtyard, full of flowering trees, ensured that even within these walls, the women who lived here remained connected to the beauty of the natural world. Photographers: the combination of the tower and the courtyard plants makes a wonderful subject, especially in spring when the pomegranate blooms — red blossoms against white walls and dark roof tiles is an image of classic Jiangnan grace. Framing the courtyard through the window lattice is also a wonderful compositional technique. Our next stop is Cloud-Climbing Chamber, which served as both study and music room — a space devoted to the literati life.

Cloud-Climbing Chamber sits in the central-western part of Master of Nets Garden. It served as both a study and a music room. The name "Cloud-Climbing" evokes the image of climbing through clouds to reach for the moon — a poetic encouragement to strive through diligent study, and a romantic literati fantasy of reaching the stars. Inside, the scholar's four treasures — brush, ink, paper, and inkstone — are set out alongside an ancient guqin, with scroll paintings and calligraphy mounted on the walls. Every detail reflects the Jiangnan literati ideal of a life devoted to music, chess, calligraphy, and painting.

In front of the chamber, a small, precisely composed courtyard holds just a few bamboo stalks and a single upright rock formation — yet they conjure the feeling of a mountain wilderness within a pocket-sized space. In classical Chinese culture, bamboo represented the gentleman: hollow inside, evoking humility; jointed along its length, evoking moral integrity. Stone stood for strength and permanence. Placing bamboo and rock before a study is a typical expression of the literati tradition of "virtue through objects" — using the things around you to reflect the qualities you aspire to. Picture the owner sitting here, playing the guqin, bamboo shadows trembling in the breeze outside, a lone rock standing in silence — "sitting alone in a hidden grove, playing the qin and singing freely" is the very life that Chinese literati most longed for.

Cloud-Climbing Chamber has another quietly clever quality: it sits right at the boundary between the residential zone and the garden proper, functioning as both a study and a threshold into the main garden. From inside, looking out through the window lattice, you can see the water and rockery of the main garden — this "borrowed view from within" gives a small room the visual depth of a much larger world. Photographers: linger on the light and shadow in the small courtyard — bamboo shadows cast onto the whitewashed wall create shifting, dappled patterns that are especially striking on sunny days. The semi-transparent bamboo leaves in backlit conditions photograph beautifully; try your phone's macro or portrait mode to bring out the texture and layered light. If light falls onto the guqin inside, the metallic glint of the strings is also worth capturing up close. Please follow me now into the main garden — the Pavilion for Viewing Pines and Paintings awaits us at the water's edge.

The Pavilion for Viewing Pines and Paintings stands in the northern part of the main garden, right at the water's edge. It is an open hall, transparent on all four sides. "Viewing pines, reading paintings" — the name says it all: this is a place for contemplating the ancient pine outside and the old paintings within, a physical embodiment of the Jiangnan literati ideal of quiet, cultured retreat. To the south it opens onto the main pond; to the north it backs up against a yellow-limestone rockery — borrowed scenery on two sides, so that this modest space simultaneously holds the liveliness of water and the solidity of mountains.

An ancient pine grows in front of the pavilion, its gnarled branches reaching out with vigour — a direct living echo of the pavilion's name. In Chinese culture the pine ranks first among the "three friends of winter" (pine, bamboo, and plum), symbolising longevity, resilience, and unbending character. The pavilion was where the garden owner read books and contemplated paintings; scrolls and calligraphy samples were kept here. You are welcome to sit in the curved resting rails — called "Wu Wang Kao" in the Suzhou dialect — and savour the unhurried, cultivated mood the space was made for. Looking south, the full panorama of the main pond spreads before you, the water like a mirror reflecting the buildings on the opposite shore. Looking north, the stacked yellow limestone of the rockery rises and falls. Two views from one pavilion — a remarkably elegant piece of design, and one of the finest "frame-view" vantage points in the entire garden.

Pay special attention to the light here. The pavilion is open on all four sides, so natural light enters freely throughout the day, always soft and gentle. Try the grid function on your phone to compose shots from inside the pavilion, using the doorframe as a picture frame around the landscape beyond. This "frame within a frame" is one of the most classic techniques in Chinese garden photography. In the evening, when the setting sun angles in from the west, the silhouette of the ancient pine falls across the whitewashed wall like an ink painting — no filters needed. From here, looking across the pond, you can also clearly see Moon-and-Wind Pavilion and the Water Pavilion of Washing the Tassels reflected in the water, composing a complete garden panorama. Next, we head to the most legendary spot in Master of Nets Garden — Late Spring Studio, the place that brought Chinese garden culture to the world.

Late Spring Studio is the most storied place in Master of Nets Garden and the centrepiece of the inner garden in the western section. "Late spring" refers to the final chapter of spring — the season when peonies bloom in their last brilliant flourish. The name carries a beautiful sense of time passing. Originally the owner's private study, the space later evolved into this refined inner garden. The courtyard holds clumps of peonies alongside lake rocks, banana plants, and stands of bamboo — a garden full of life through every season, most splendid in late spring when the peonies open.

But Late Spring Studio's most extraordinary story belongs not to China, but to America. In 1979, this courtyard was faithfully reproduced in its entirety at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where it became known as the Astor Court. It was the first cultural exchange project between China and the United States after the establishment of diplomatic relations — and the first time a Chinese classical garden had ever been built in full on foreign soil. Every piece of lake rock, every timber column, every grey roof tile was carefully selected in Suzhou and shipped to New York, where Suzhou craftsmen assembled the whole thing on site by hand, exactly as it stood at home. Today, anyone who walks into the Metropolitan Museum can step into this wholly authentic piece of Suzhou garden culture. It was a landmark moment for Chinese culture going global — a source of pride for Master of Nets Garden and for Chinese classical gardens everywhere.

Look at the spatial arrangement of Late Spring Studio. Small as it is, the courtyard contains a rockery, a water feature, flowering plants, and a pavilion — the complete vocabulary of Chinese garden design in miniature. At the centre, a delicate rockery is planted with peonies; at its base, a thread of water flows through. The broad banana leaves sway in the breeze with a dry rustle. The ancients wrote of "rain on banana leaves at night" as one of the most moving sounds in Jiangnan — the soft percussion of raindrops on those wide leaves is, by reputation, among the finest night sounds in the region. The combination of peonies, banana plants, lake rocks, and flowing water creates a compressed mountain-and-water scroll in miniature. The best light for photographing Late Spring Studio is between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, when the sun comes in from the side and the shadows on the rockery and plants gain their richest layering. Try capturing the banana leaves in backlight — the semi-transparent quality of the leaves is beautiful in those conditions. From Late Spring Studio, we head to the eastern bank of the main pond — Moon-and-Wind Pavilion, the best vantage point in the garden, is waiting for us.

Moon-and-Wind Pavilion stands on the eastern bank of the main pond. It is a hexagonal pavilion with a tapering pointed roof. Its name comes from a line by the Song dynasty philosopher Shao Yong: "When the moon reaches the heart of the sky, and the wind comes skimming the surface of the water" — just hearing those words, you can already feel the poetry of the place. The pavilion is built at the water's edge, open on three sides, with the best views in the entire garden. Sit down in the curved resting rails — called "Wu Wang Kao" in the Suzhou dialect — and look west across the full panorama of the main pond, the water surface a mirror reflecting the buildings and rockery on the opposite shore. Look north to the yellow limestone rockery; look south to the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo. Sitting in this pavilion, you have a full 360-degree view of the garden.

The most magical time, of course, is at night. If you visit the Night Garden around the time of the full moon, when the moon climbs to the centre of the sky and its light spreads across the water, and a gentle breeze drifts in from the surface of the pond, you will understand exactly what "when the moon reaches the heart of the sky, and the wind comes skimming the surface of the water" really means. That stillness, that poetry — it is something entirely beyond what the daytime can offer. The Night Garden opens from mid-March to mid-November, from 19:30 to 22:00; tickets are CNY 100 per person and include performances of Suzhou Pingtan storytelling and Kunqu opera — the most atmospheric way to experience Jiangnan culture.

Moon-and-Wind Pavilion is also a superb compositional element for photography. The hexagonal silhouette, the curving upturned eaves, and the reflection in the water form a perfect symmetrical image. Use the grid on your phone to centre the pavilion in the frame, with the water reflection occupying the lower half — this symmetrical composition captures the harmonious beauty of Chinese garden design at its best. On a clear day, the blue sky sets off the grey-tiled, white-walled pavilion, and its reflection in the clear water makes it almost impossible to tell which is real and which is the mirror image. This interplay of substance and shadow is the essential aesthetic of Chinese garden design. Please follow me now to the western bank of the pond — the Water Pavilion of Washing the Tassels — for a very different experience of floating above the water.

The Water Pavilion of Washing the Tassels sits on the western bank of the main pond. It is a waterside pavilion built directly above the water. The name comes from the Book of Mencius: "When the waters of the Canglang are clear, I can wash my hat-strings in them." Washing one's hat-strings was a classical metaphor for keeping one's ideals unsullied. The name tells you, right away, that the person who built this pavilion had high spiritual aspirations.

The pavilion has a hip-and-gable roof and is raised on stone pillars above the water surface, so that it appears to float on the pond, light and almost weightless. Inside, a low couch and table offer a comfortable place to rest, or to sit watching lotus flowers and fish in the water below. When the lotuses are in full bloom in summer, sitting in this pavilion puts you in the middle of endless green leaves and pink flowers — boundless abundance in a very small space. Across the water, Moon-and-Wind Pavilion faces it from the eastern shore — the two structures form the garden's central east-west composition: pavilion and waterside hall, airy and solid, high and low, each answering the other.

Take special notice of the reflection in the water. On the surface, the building mirrors itself in perfect symmetry — an expression of the Chinese garden principle of interplay between substance and shadow: the building is real, its reflection is illusion; the bank above is real, the water below holds its mirror image. Reality and illusion weave together, producing a beauty that transcends the merely physical. For photography, crouch down and hold your phone close to the water's surface to capture the pavilion and its reflection in a full symmetrical composition. The slight rippling of the water will blur the reflection a little — that soft, hazy quality is actually more beautiful. If the water is perfectly still, like glass, the reflection is crisp and sharp — equally a perfect moment to shoot. Looking north from here, you see the full face of the yellow limestone rockery; looking south, the bamboo grove of the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo. Our final stop — the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo — is just ahead, and it will bring our visit to a close.

The Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo is in the southeastern corner of the main garden — and our last stop today. The name comes from a famous line by Su Shi: "Beyond the bamboo, two or three sprigs of peach blossom; the river has grown warm — the ducks know it first." That line is already a painting in itself. The pavilion is open on three sides, facing the main pond, with a dense bamboo grove planted alongside it. In spring, peach blossom pushes through the bamboo in two or three pink-tinged branches, red and green interplaying — a scene as beautiful as a classical ink painting. The garden's designer turned Su Shi's verse into a real, inhabitable space, so that visitors can step inside the poem itself. This ability to make poetry into place is a distinctly Chinese garden art.

Looking out from the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo, the main pond, the buildings on the far shore, the upturned eaves of Moon-and-Wind Pavilion, and the rockery in the distance all layer up one behind the other, forming a complete garden panorama. This is a good moment to sit and trace back the route you have taken today — from the plain entrance gate to the spacious Sedan Hall, from the impressive Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes to the quiet Tower of Gathered Beauty, from the scholarly atmosphere of Cloud-Climbing Chamber to the pine-and-painting mood of the Pavilion for Viewing Pines and Paintings, from the legendary Late Spring Studio to the poetic Moon-and-Wind Pavilion, from the water-hovering Water Pavilion of Washing the Tassels to here. Every step of the way has been an immersive encounter with the aesthetics of classical China.

For photographs of the Pavilion Beyond the Bamboo, try shooting from within the bamboo grove, using the bamboo as a foreground frame and looking through the gaps between the stems toward the pavilion and the pond beyond — a layered, depth-filled composition. In spring, include a few peach blossoms in the shot: the contrast of pink flowers against green bamboo is fresh and vivid. No filters needed — the natural light here is the real Suzhou spring. In summer, the bamboo grows thick and the light falls in dappled patches through the stems; photograph the bamboo shadows on the whitewashed wall and you have a ready-made monochrome ink painting.

Friends, that brings our visit to Master of Nets Garden to a close. This garden of just over half a hectare holds the full essence of Chinese classical garden art — mountains and water, architecture, plants, poetry, painting, and philosophy, all woven together as one. I hope you are leaving with a deeper appreciation of the beauty of Chinese classical gardens, and that it has moved you a little. Thank you all very much.