Retreat & Reflection Garden / Tuisi Garden 退思园

Welcome to Tuisi Garden, everyone. Please follow me to our first stop: the Entrance Gate. This is the gateway to the entire garden — and the starting point of today's tour. Take a look at the gate tower in front of you. It may not be large, but it is meticulously crafted. The tower is built of unplastered grey brick, with a brick-carved plaque set into the lintel bearing the three characters for "Tuisi Garden." Look closely at those characters — the brushwork is steady and forceful. This was the hand of a Qing-dynasty calligrapher, and although more than a hundred years have passed, the inscription remains perfectly clear.

The stone pieces flanking the gate are called drum stones — a standard feature of traditional Jiangnan residences. Drum stones are shaped like drums, with auspicious motifs carved into the face — bats, peaches, and cloud scrolls, symbolizing good fortune, longevity, and everything going as wished. Why drums? Because in traditional China, drums were instruments of ceremony and ritual. Placing them at the front gate announced that the household was one of rank and standing.

Now look at the threshold. Notice how much higher it is than a typical doorstep? In traditional Chinese architecture, the height of the threshold was directly proportional to the owner's social rank — the higher the threshold, the higher the official. Ren Lansheng held the position of Military Commissioner, a senior third-rank official, so his threshold stands considerably higher than that of an ordinary home. For the convenience of today's visitors, the threshold has been modified slightly, but you can still see where the original height was.

Stepping through the gate, you come face to face with a wooden screen wall. This screen wall serves two purposes: in terms of traditional feng shui, it blocks harmful influences from entering the home directly; in practical terms, it prevents passersby from looking straight into the courtyard, protecting the family's privacy. Screen walls were usually decorated with carved motifs. Look at the carvings on this one — though worn by time, the brick relief is still legible: floral patterns, key-fret designs, all executed with considerable skill.

Crossing through this gate, we have moved from a public street into a private world — from open to enclosed. That transition captures a fundamental idea in Chinese traditional architecture: the clear distinction between what is inside and what is outside.

That's all for the Entrance Gate. Now, please follow me into the second hall — the Sedan Chair Hall, where sedan chairs were once parked and guests received.

Please follow me into the Sedan Chair Hall. This is the first reception hall inside the gate — the place where, in earlier times, sedan chairs would be set down and guests would wait to be announced. Notice the space: square and open, with an unpainted timber-frame structure that lets the natural grain of the wood speak for itself. This style is called understated elegance. Why no painted decoration? Partly because Ren Lansheng, having been dismissed from office, adopted a deliberately modest outlook and did not want his architecture to make any grand display. And partly because late Qing Jiangnan scholars had a particular aesthetic sensibility — they believed that true refinement meant leaving things unadorned, just as the art of ink painting finds infinite richness in the varying depths of a single color.

A plaque hangs at the center of the hall, with couplets on the flanking pillars. Look carefully at the text of those couplets — they are not describing scenery. They express the owner's personal convictions. Ren Lansheng built this garden after being removed from his post, and there was surely a measure of bitter feeling in that. The couplets tend to give voice to those emotions of "retirement and reflection."

The floor is laid with square tiles known as Jin bricks — royal tiles. Despite the name, they are not made of gold. They are a high-quality ceramic tile specially fired along the shores of Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou, so dense and fine that they ring like metal when struck — hence the name. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jin bricks were an imperial building material, used on the floors of the Forbidden City in Beijing. Even in retirement, Ren Lansheng maintained the standards of an official's household in his choice of materials, which tells us something about how he saw himself.

The walls on either side of the hall are pierced with latticed windows through which you can make out a hazy glimpse of the garden beyond. This technique is called "borrowed view" — letting you see just enough of what lies ahead to draw you forward, without revealing everything at once. It keeps your curiosity alive. This is the garden designer's classic principle of "suppress first, then reveal": show visitors a blurred impression first, so that when they finally step through into the full scene, the sense of wonder is all the greater.

That's all for the Sedan Chair Hall. Please follow me to the heart of the residential compound — the Main Hall, Yinyu Hall.

Please follow me to the heart of Tuisi Garden's residential compound: the Main Hall, Yinyu Hall. The name Yinyu comes from an idea in the Book of Songs — "to shelter those who come after, to extend blessings across generations." It means the family's accumulated virtue and good fortune should reach down to the children and grandchildren. When Ren Lansheng built this residence, he was thinking not only of his own retirement but of what he would leave behind. In traditional Chinese society, the continuation of the family line mattered more than any individual's rise or fall.

Look at the scale of this building: five bays wide across the front, and seven structural bays in depth. What does "five bays wide" mean? It means the facade is divided into five sections — a central bay flanked by two on each side. "Seven structural bays in depth" refers to the number of roof purlins running from front to back: more purlins mean greater depth, and greater depth means more interior space. In the Jiangnan vernacular tradition, this is a building of considerable ambition.

Now look up at the roof timbers. You can see the woodcarving: scrolling foliage and key-fret patterns. Scrolling foliage looks like twisting vines or tendrils, symbolizing the continuity of life and prosperity; key-fret patterns are geometric designs built from repeating linked shapes, representing unbroken good fortune. But notice what is absent — no dragons, no phoenixes, no mythical beasts. Why? Because Ren Lansheng had been stripped of his official position. He was no longer entitled to the imperial motifs, and besides, his own spirit had turned inward. He had no wish to trumpet past glories.

The furnishings inside are of rosewood in the Ming and Qing tradition. A landscape painting hangs in the central bay, with high-backed armchairs and tea tables on either side. This arrangement is called the "central hall layout" — the standard configuration for a formal Chinese reception room. The painting is usually a landscape, evoking the Confucian saying "the humane delight in mountains, the wise delight in water." The high-backed armchairs take their name from the Song-dynasty position of Grand Tutor — the high back and broad armrests project a certain authority while also being genuinely comfortable.

Behind Yinyu Hall lies a small courtyard with old trees. If you have a moment, step into the courtyard and look at the trunk of the old tree there. The bark has cracked and furrowed like the face of an elder, recording more than a hundred years of wind and weather.

From here, continuing further back brings us into the private living quarters. Please follow me to the Inner Residence — Wanxiang Tower.

Please follow me into the private living quarters of Tuisi Garden: Wanxiang Tower. The name Wanxiang is wonderfully layered. It comes from a line in Qu Yuan's Lisao: "I have already cultivated vast fields of orchids, and planted acres of fragrant herbs." Wan is an ancient unit of land, and xiang is the word for fragrant herbs. Together they mean that the owner, like Qu Yuan tending his orchids, fills his life with beauty and integrity even in retirement — his principles as fragrant as the flowers he grows. By choosing this name, Ren Lansheng was paying tribute to Qu Yuan and sending a message to the world: I may have been removed from office, but I am not a man of flawed character. My virtue remains, as it always has, as pure as an orchid.

Wanxiang Tower is a two-storey timber building. The ground floor was used for receiving guests and managing household affairs; the upper floor held the bedrooms and the study — clearly separated private spaces. The staircase is narrow and steep, and the wooden handrail has been worn smooth by many hands over many years.

The window lattices upstairs are particularly beautiful. Look at the pattern — the cuts fan out like cracking ice. This is called the "ice-crack" design. Ice-crack lattice windows do two things at once: they are decorative — visually striking, with a natural, almost accidental quality — and they are functional, filtering light through the gaps in a shifting, dappled pattern that plays across the room. Very poetic. And in Chinese symbolism, ice cracking carries its own meaning: ice is cold, but when it cracks, spring is near. For a man in Ren Lansheng's situation, that image of hardship giving way to new possibility was deeply apt.

Out in front of Wanxiang Tower is a small courtyard planted with osmanthus and peonies. Osmanthus calls to mind "plucking the cassia branch" — the old poetic image for achieving success in the imperial examinations. Peonies symbolize wealth and honor. Ren Lansheng's own career had stumbled, but he still hoped his children and grandchildren would take up their studies, pass the examinations, and restore the family's standing.

Walk east from Wanxiang Tower, pass through a moon gate, and suddenly the space opens wide. A pond of clear water appears before you — this is the garden zone of Tuisi Garden. Do you feel the change? In the residential compound, the spaces were enclosed and somewhat subdued — narrow passages, dim light. But the moment you step through the moon gate, everything opens up: the water lies still as a mirror, pavilions and towers are reflected in its surface, and it feels like stepping out of a confined present into a spacious dream. This contrast of spatial compression and release is one of the most celebrated techniques in Chinese garden design — "suppress first, then open wide."

That covers Wanxiang Tower. Please follow me to the centerpiece of the garden — Tuisi Thatched Cottage.

Welcome to the centerpiece of Tuisi Garden — Tuisi Thatched Cottage. This is the garden's finest viewpoint and the place where its owner, Ren Lansheng, would receive guests, read, and sit quietly with his thoughts. Look at the roof. It is thatched — it looks rustic, even humble. That is entirely deliberate. Ren Lansheng chose a thatched roof to evoke the retreats of ancient hermits, to declare in the language of architecture: I have stepped away from official life and returned to something simpler.

In Chinese literary culture, the thatched cottage holds a special place. The most famous example is Zhuge Liang, the brilliant strategist of the Three Kingdoms period, who lived in a thatched hermitage before Liu Bei made three visits to persuade him out of retirement. The thatched cottage became a symbol of the scholar who has turned away from power — not because he lacks ability, but because he chooses a different path.

A small clarification: the "thatch" on Tuisi Thatched Cottage is not actual straw. It is a building material made from rice straw and clay mixed together, shaped into tiles and painted to look like thatch. This gives the traditional appearance while being far more durable and fire-resistant — an innovation of late Qing garden construction.

The cottage is three bays wide, with a moon terrace in front that projects out over the water. Step to the edge of the terrace and look down at the pond. This is Tuisi Garden's most iconic view: the water is perfectly still, and the reflection of the cottage appears in it with complete clarity — substance above, mirror image below, each completing the other. On a clear day, blue sky, white clouds, green trees, and white walls all double themselves on the water's surface, and you begin to lose track of which world is the real one and which is the reflection. In the language of garden aesthetics, this is called "the interplay of substance and shadow."

The interior of the cottage is simply furnished: a writing desk in the center, a painting table and a guqin stand to the sides, calligraphy and paintings on the walls. This arrangement is the scholar's study in its ideal form — the three pieces of furniture together represent three of the four classical arts: music, painting, and calligraphy. Take a moment to look at the artwork on the walls. The inscriptions and seals are reproductions arranged to reflect the kind of pieces Ren Lansheng would have chosen — not originals, but enough to conjure the atmosphere of the scholar-official in retirement.

Tuisi Thatched Cottage is the best single vantage point in the entire garden. Seated here, you can take in the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion, the Qin Room, the Sleepy Cloud Pavilion, and the Guyu Shengliang Pavilion all at once — the full ensemble in one view. It is also one of the most popular spots for photographs. For best results, use a wide-angle lens from the moon terrace and include the reflection in the shot — the symmetrical composition is striking. Or shoot from the side, using the stone railing as a foreground element to frame both the cottage and the water together.

That covers Tuisi Thatched Cottage. Please follow me to the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion — the finest spot in the garden for watching summer lotus in bloom.

Please follow me to the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion. It sits on the north bank of the central pond, directly across the water from Tuisi Thatched Cottage. The name "Waterside Fragrance" refers, of course, to the scent of the lotus flowers growing in the pond below. Look at the water in front of us — it is thick with lotus plants. Come in midsummer, around June or July, and the flowers are in full bloom: red, white, and pink, spread across the entire surface, their fragrance drifting through the open pavilion. Sitting here with tea and flowers in season is the defining pleasure of this spot.

The roof form is called a hip-and-gable roof — the two ends extend outward and curve gently upward, like the tips of a bird's wings. The pavilion is open on three sides, with one side backing onto the covered walkway. This design maximizes contact with the water and the breeze: seated inside, your view is unobstructed in every direction — nothing between you and the lotus and the reflections on the surface.

The most distinctive thing about the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion is how close it sits to the water. Most pavilions rest on raised stone plinths well above the waterline, but this one's floor is almost level with the surface. Sitting inside, you feel as though you are sitting on the water itself. This "waterside building" approach is Tuisi Garden's most celebrated design principle and the reason it is sometimes described as a garden that floats.

A curved bridge connects the pavilion to Tuisi Thatched Cottage on the other side. You will walk across it shortly. The bridge curves rather than runs straight — deliberately so. A straight bridge would let you see its full length in an instant, with no element of surprise. But a bridge that curves gives you a new view at every turn: a few steps forward, and the scene shifts. This is the "scenery changes with every step" principle in its simplest form.

The bridge is also planted with water lilies on both sides — not the same as lotus flowers. Lotus rise above the waterline on tall stems; water lilies rest their leaves and blossoms directly on the surface. In Europe, water lilies are most associated with the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, who painted them obsessively in his garden at Giverny in France. In China, both lotus and water lilies carry the same meaning: beauty and purity that rise from muddy water untouched.

For photography: the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion offers several outstanding angles. From the curved bridge, shoot the pavilion's profile with the reflection below — the curving eaves trace an elegant arc on the water. From inside the pavilion, shoot back toward Tuisi Thatched Cottage with the water in the foreground: near water, mid-distance lotus, distant architecture — a three-layer composition. Or point your lens straight down at the water lilies for a close-up of the flowers and the water droplets on their leaves. Please do not reach out to pick the lotus or water lilies — they are protected plants.

That covers the Waterside Fragrance Pavilion. Please follow me to the Qin Room and Sleepy Cloud Pavilion — the most quietly scholarly corner of the entire garden.

Please follow me to the Qin Room and Sleepy Cloud Pavilion — the quietest, most scholar-like corner of Tuisi Garden. The Qin Room is where the owner would play the guqin, brew tea, and read in seclusion. The Sleepy Cloud Pavilion next to it is a small pavilion for resting and taking in the view. One space faces inward, the other outward — they balance each other perfectly.

Come inside the Qin Room first. The space is small, the furnishings minimal: a guqin table with a guqin resting on it, an incense burner, a tea set. This is the "qin" in the classical scholar's four arts — guqin, board games, calligraphy, and painting. The guqin is one of China's oldest plucked-string instruments, with a history of more than three thousand years. Its sound is unlike any bright or cheerful instrument — it is low, far-reaching, and carries a certain melancholy. The old saying goes that the guqin speaks in the voice of sorrow and longing. Why did scholars love it? Because its tone mirrors so much of their experience: a life that rarely ran smoothly, full of rises and reversals. Ren Lansheng, dismissed from office and returned home, found in music a way to give shape to feelings that had nowhere else to go.

Outside the window of the Qin Room is the Sleepy Cloud Pavilion. Step outside and have a look. It is a small six-sided pavilion with a pointed roof, half-hidden behind bamboo and Lake Tai rockery — easy to miss until you are standing right in front of it. "Sleepy Cloud" comes from a phrase meaning "to sleep among clouds and rest upon stones" — an image of a life so merged with nature that the boundary between person and landscape dissolves. The location of the pavilion is deliberately concealed: bamboo and rockery screen it from most of the garden, so visitors only discover it when they happen upon it. This technique of "hiding" a feature rather than displaying it is a core principle of garden design. Placing a pavilion where it announces itself would lose the pleasure of discovery.

Looking out from the Qin Room windows, the pavilion and the rockery are reflected in the water below, and that view shifts with each season. Spring brings new bamboo shoots in pale green; in summer the lotus opens and its reflection tints the water; autumn turns the bamboo leaves gold and scatters them across the ground; winter covers the pavilion roof in snow. Same window, different time of year — a completely different picture. This is what people mean when they say a classical garden is "alive." It is not a fixed scene but a painting that keeps repainting itself.

Between the Qin Room and the Sleepy Cloud Pavilion, there are also banana plants. Banana leaves are broad, and when rain falls on them they make a soft percussive sound — a sound the Chinese have always loved, and have been writing poems about for centuries. For Ren Lansheng sitting at his guqin while rain fell outside, the sound of the two would have woven together into something beautiful.

For photography: this area is well suited for atmospheric, mood-driven shots. Use the window frame of the Qin Room as a foreground element and frame the Sleepy Cloud Pavilion and water beyond — a picture within a picture. Or stand inside the Sleepy Cloud Pavilion and shoot the bamboo and rockery in the foreground, letting the bamboo stalks serve as leading lines that draw the eye toward the buildings in the distance.

That covers the Qin Room and Sleepy Cloud Pavilion. Please follow me to the Guyu Shengliang Pavilion — the finest place in the garden to enjoy rain and summer cool.

Please follow me to the Guyu Shengliang Pavilion — a water pavilion in the northwest corner of the pond, and one of the most poetic spots in the entire garden. Every character in the name Guyu Shengliang carries meaning. Gu is a water plant — the kind with broad leaves that grows along the edges of ponds. Guyu means rain falling on those leaves in summer. And shengliang means "coolness rises" — the heat breaking, a freshness coming up from the water. Put it together: a summer shower landing on the pondside reeds, and the air turning cool.

But there is a deeper layer. The name quietly evokes a poem by the Song-dynasty lyricist Jiang Jie. In that poem, a man reflects on the experience of listening to rain at three different moments in his life. As a young man, he listened to the rain inside a pleasure house — red candles, gauze curtains, romance and ease. In middle age, he listened from a traveler's boat on a wide river — low clouds, the cry of a lone goose, wind from the west, loneliness. In old age, he listened beneath a monk's roof — his temples already grey, his heart at peace with joy and sorrow alike, content to let the rain fall drop by drop through the night until dawn. Ren Lansheng named this pavilion in a spirit of recognition: life is like rain — it comes in with force and goes out without ceremony, and what remains in the end is a kind of quiet cool.

Look at the pavilion's position: it sits at the corner of the pond, surrounded by water on three sides, connected to the walkway on only one side. Open in every direction, no doors, no windows. The roof is a soft barrel vault — a form called a rolling-ridge roof in Chinese architecture — gently curved, unassuming. The water in front is planted with water lilies and reeds, their leaves flat on the surface like small green rafts. After summer rain, drops gather on the lotus leaves and roll with the wind — small and large pearls tumbling across a jade plate. That image is one of the most beloved in Jiangnan water poetry.

The Guyu Shengliang Pavilion is also simply a good place to cool down. Jiangnan summers are hot and humid, but a water pavilion open on all sides catches every breeze, and the water itself draws the temperature down. Ren Lansheng built this as a retreat from the heat. Imagine him here on a summer afternoon a hundred and forty years ago, fan in hand, listening to cicadas and rain, watching the water lilies sway — a peace that many who remained in official life never found.

For photography: this pavilion is at its best on a rainy day. If you happen to visit Tuisi Garden in rain, spend extra time here. Shoot from inside the pavilion toward the water: raindrops hitting the surface create rings that radiate outward, water lily leaves carry their beads of rain, and the whole scene is alive with quiet motion. Or shoot from the walkway toward the pavilion's side, using the walkway columns as a frame.

That covers the Guyu Shengliang Pavilion. Please follow me to the most architecturally unusual combination in the garden — the Sky Bridge and Xintai Tower.

Welcome, everyone, to the most surprising and unusual architectural pairing in Tuisi Garden: the Sky Bridge and Xintai Tower. What makes it unusual? Because in traditional Chinese garden design, this kind of feature is almost never seen. The Sky Bridge is an elevated covered walkway — not built at ground level but suspended above the rockery, connecting the buildings on either side of the garden at height. Walk across it and you feel as though you are walking through midair: rockery, trees, and water all lie below you. That sensation of moving through empty space is where the name comes from.

Look at the rockery beneath the Sky Bridge. It is made from Lake Tai stone — the finest material for garden rockery in the Chinese tradition. Lake Tai stone has four defining qualities, as described by the Song-dynasty painter and calligrapher Mi Fu: lean, wrinkled, perforated, and transparent. "Lean" means the silhouette is upright and clean, not bulky. "Wrinkled" means the surface is textured with ridges and hollows. "Perforated" means the stone has openings through which light passes. "Transparent" means the structure is open enough to see through to the other side. These four qualities became the standard by which Chinese connoisseurs judge garden rock. Tuisi Garden's rockery is not the largest in Suzhou, but its composition is precise and elegant — and paired with the Sky Bridge above it, it creates a layered, three-dimensional experience: you can walk around the base of the rockery or walk above it on the bridge, taking in the garden from two entirely different heights.

At the far end of the Sky Bridge stands Xintai Tower. What does xin mean? In everyday Chinese, it suggests hardship and toil. Ren Lansheng named this tower xin as a reflection on his own life: the career that rose and fell, the dismissal, the bitterness of return — this tower held all of that. There is also a classical resonance: in the traditional system of Five Elements, xin corresponds to metal, and metal generates water. So "Xintai" can also be read as the tower that gives rise to water — which makes sense, given that water is the soul of this garden.

Climb to the upper floor of Xintai Tower. From up here, the entire garden spreads out below: the pond like a sheet of polished silver, the curved bridge threading across the water, the rockery mounded up in miniature, the Sky Bridge arching over the top of it all. This overhead perspective reveals what you cannot see from the ground — the horizontal layout of Tuisi Garden as a whole, with the residential compound to the west and the garden zone to the east running side by side. It is a layout completely different from any other Suzhou garden.

For photography: Xintai Tower is the finest single shooting position in Tuisi Garden. From the upper floor, use a wide-angle lens and sweep across the pond to take in the water, the curved bridge, and the buildings on the far side in one frame. On a calm day, the reflections will be sharp enough to print. Or point the lens downward from the tower to capture the Sky Bridge spanning the rockery — the geometry of bridge, stone, and shadow from above.

Please take care on the upper level: the railings are not high. Do not lean too heavily on them.

That covers the Sky Bridge and Xintai Tower. Please follow me to the final stop — the Noisy Red Boat and Nine-Bend Corridor, the most dynamic walking route in the garden.

Welcome, everyone, to our final stop: the Noisy Red Boat and the Nine-Bend Corridor. The Noisy Red Boat is a stone boat — not a vessel that moves, but a boat-shaped building at the pond's edge. Look at its form: the prow lifts high, the hull opens with doors and windows, and the whole structure looks like a craft poised to set sail. "Noisy Red" — what do those words mean? Noisy here suggests richness and vitality, and red refers to the lotus flowers. Together the name evokes the scene in midsummer: the entire pond bursting with red, white, and pink lotus, so thick and alive it feels like a sea of flowers, with the stone boat floating among them.

Visitors can step inside the stone boat. There are seats and latticed windows, and once inside you are no longer standing on shore watching the scene — you are, in a sense, afloat within it, looking out at the lotus from a boat's perspective. This is a garden design technique called "entering the picture": rather than remaining a spectator outside the view, you become part of it.

Connecting to the stone boat is the Nine-Bend Corridor. "Nine bends" does not mean the corridor turns exactly nine times — it simply means the corridor winds and curves at length, never running straight for long. It follows the edge of the pond, linking every pavilion and hall in the garden into a continuous loop. Walk through it, and the view shifts every few steps: water and lotus to one side, rockery and bamboo to the other, a pavilion ahead, a tower behind. The "scenery changes with every step" effect depends entirely on this corridor's design.

The corridor walls are pierced with latticed windows, and no two windows carry the same pattern. Each window is a different design — ice-crack, crabapple blossom, key-fret, geometric forms. And every single one is a natural picture frame, cropping the garden into a different image as you pass. Through one window you might see only a branch and a few leaves. Through the next, a pavilion's upturned eave. Through the third, a patch of reflected sky on the water. This technique of "framing scenery" is one of the most refined devices in Chinese garden design.

The Nine-Bend Corridor also serves a deeply practical purpose: it provides shade in summer and shelter in Jiangnan's rainy winters. The height, width, and angle of every turn were calibrated so that walking through feels neither oppressive nor exposed. It is the kind of attention to the body's experience in space that gives classical gardens their lasting quality.

For photography: the stone boat and corridor offer the best portrait settings in Tuisi Garden. Stand at the bow of the stone boat with lotus in bloom as your backdrop for an "adrift among flowers" shot. Walk inside the corridor and use a latticed window as a frame for a creative composition. Or shoot from the corridor back toward the stone boat, using the curving passage as a leading line that pulls the eye toward the hull in the distance.

And with that, our tour of Tuisi Garden is complete. From the composed restraint of the Entrance Gate, through the Sedan Chair Hall's quiet transition, Yinyu Hall's family aspirations, Wanxiang Tower's scholar-poet sensibility, the water reflections at Tuisi Thatched Cottage, the lotus-scented Waterside Fragrance Pavilion, the secluded Qin Room and Sleepy Cloud Pavilion, the rainy-day poetry of the Guyu Shengliang Pavilion, the aerial drama of the Sky Bridge and Xintai Tower, and finally the flower-sea vitality of this last stop — I hope this journey has given you a richer sense of Tuisi Garden, of Suzhou's classical gardens, and of the Chinese cultural tradition they carry. Thank you all.