During Chinese New Year, we spent a few days in Yangzhou (扬州), a historically significant city in Jiangsu province with a rich cultural heritage spanning multiple dynasties.
Having been away from China long enough to forget the phrase “People mountain, people sea” (人山人海), we quickly realised that visiting during the holidays might have been a mistake as the city was overflowing with tourists, especially at the most popular sites.
Yangzhou, on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, has been a cultural and economic centre in China for over two thousand years. Its golden age began in the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE), when it became a thriving hub on the Grand Canal, linking north and south China. As a prosperous port city, it attracted merchants, poets, and officials, earning a reputation for its refined culture, classical gardens, and literary life.
Thanks to the salt trade, the city rose to prominence again during the Qing dynasty. Wealthy merchants funded many of Yangzhou’s grand gardens and residences, which blended northern and southern Chinese architectural styles. Built mostly during the Ming and Qing dynasties, these gardens feature dramatic rockeries, elegant pavilions, and winding waterways designed to evoke expansive natural scenery within tight urban spaces.
Around thirty historic gardens still survive today, alongside beautifully preserved homes, and despite the crowds, we managed to visit some of them.
Slender West Lake (瘦西湖)
Slender West Lake is a narrow, meandering lake lined with willows, pavilions, and arched bridges that echo the elegance of Hangzhou’s West Lake, albeit in a more refined and delicate form.
Originally part of a network of imperial waterways, it became a favourite retreat for poets, painters, and emperors during the Qing dynasty, particularly Emperor Qianlong, who visited multiple times.
The landscape was carefully designed to appear natural while subtly incorporating the aesthetics of classical Chinese garden design, creating a harmonious blend of water, architecture, and seasonal beauty.
Yipu Garden (逸圃)
Once owned by the Li family, Yipu Garden offered a welcome respite from the marauding hordes at Slender West Lake. Despite its modest footprint, the garden exemplifies the ingenuity of Yangzhou landscape design, using clever spatial composition to evoke a surprising sense of openness and variety.
Often compared to the Quyuan Garden in Suzhou, Yipu also occupies a small, square-shaped site, yet its layout is considered even more inventive. A winding, immersive walking route reveals a sequence of ever-changing views, achieved through a design approach known as “rescued from desperation”, a technique that visually connects tight courtyards to adjacent spaces, creating the illusion of expansive grounds.
Little Pangu Garden (小盘谷)
Little Pangu Garden was the private retreat of Zhou Fu, a high-ranking Qing dynasty official who governed the Jiangnan region. Its name comes from a line by the Tang poet Han Yu, and today it is recognised as a nationally protected cultural heritage site.
Unlike the more compact layouts of gardens such as Yipu, Little Pangu feels grander in scale, with sweeping views and a stronger sense of axial organisation.
Spanning over 5,000 square metres, the garden is divided into four sections: East, Central, West, and a more recent addition. It features classic elements such as corridors, pavilions, and rockeries, the most dramatic of which is the northeast formation, a striking “picture of nine lions” rising nearly nine metres high. These towering rockeries were often designed to symbolise strength and good fortune.
Unfortunately, the atmosphere is somewhat compromised by the visible presence of CCTV cameras, which have been crudely affixed to many of the buildings and garden structures.
The streets around Little Pangu Garden form a compact grid of narrow lanes, where traditional brick houses sit close to the road, their tiled roofs and wooden window frames bearing signs of age. The area feels quietly residential, with occasional glimpses of everyday life: a scooter parked outside a doorway, an open window revealing the sound of a radio, potted plants arranged with quiet care.
There’s a sense of historic continuity here, not frozen in time, but lived-in and largely untouched by redevelopment. The modest scale and texture of the neighbourhood provide a subtle counterpoint to the formality of the garden itself.
Museum of the Tomb of Han Guangling King
Built around the 2,000-year-old tomb of Liu Xu, a king of the Guangling Kingdom during the Western Han dynasty, the Museum of the Tomb of the Han Guangling King (汉广陵王墓博物馆) offers a well-preserved example of the craftsmanship and burial customs of the time.
Uniquely carved into a hillside rather than dug underground, the tomb comprises a network of stone chambers intended as living quarters for the afterlife. Remarkably well preserved, the complex includes a bedroom, living room, storage spaces, and even a toilet, reflecting the Han belief that the afterlife was a continuation of earthly existence.
The structure was constructed using bīnmù wood, a highly durable cedar valued for its resistance to decay, and assembled with mortise-and-tenon joinery, an advanced, nail-free technique that ensured long-term structural stability. Massive wooden doors and tightly fitted stone blocks were used to seal the chambers and protect the king’s remains from tomb robbers.
It’s somewhat reminiscent of the Terracotta Army in Xi’an, just on a much smaller scale.
A modern museum building adjacent to the tomb displays artefacts uncovered during the excavation, including jade burial items, lacquerware, and intricately cast bronzes, all of which evoke the wealth, artistry, and spiritual concerns of the Han elite.
Though crowded at times and occasionally marred by modern intrusions, Yangzhou’s gardens still offer spaces where time feels layered rather than lost, where centuries of history quietly coexist with the present, not as nostalgia, but as part of the everyday.
Behind the walls and along the winding paths, you find not only aesthetic beauty but a way of seeing the world shaped by centuries of thought and care. Even in winter, when leaves have thinned and colours are muted, these gardens speak quietly of a civilisation that prized balance, subtlety, and the art of making space for stillness.
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