Photo Gallery

Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty (current layout early 19th century onward)

The Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997 along with a number of other Suzhou gardens. It sits within the present-day property of the Embroidery Museum. The history of the site extends back to the eastern Jin dynasty, when Wang Min and his brother donated their residence to create the Jingde temple. After changing hands several times, the temple became the Xuedao Academy of Classical Literature during the Ming Dynasty, and then became a government office in charge of food supplies. In the early 16th century, during the reign of the Wanli Emperor, the site passed into the control of Sheng Shixing, an esteemed scholar. During the early Qing dynasty his descendant, Sheng Jikui, built the Qu Garden here.

In the late 18th century the garden became the residence of Jiang Ji, a director of the Jurisdiction Department. He had the site excavated, and after digging to a depth of one meter, a spring emerged which was fashioned into a pond called "Flying Snow". He also built the "Qiuzi Tower" and created a rockery behind it. The garden subsequently was owned by by minister Bi Yuan and Sun Shiyi, a renowned scholar. Around 1810 Sun's descendents invited the rockery master Ge Yuliang to reconstruct the garden in the limited confines of the site. Working within an area of about 2,180 square meters, Ge fashioned a man-made mountain occupying about 500 square meters. He constructed a series of interconnected pavilions placed in a manner such that wherever one stood in the garden, other pavilions could be seen at varying heights and altitudes. The effect is intended to make the space appear larger, and the illusion is one of the chief charms of this small gem of a garden.