Chinese Garden

Stepping into Chinese Garden…

From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Garden,_Singapore)

Chinese Garden (Chinese: 裕华园), also commonly known as Jurong Gardens, is a park in Jurong East, Singapore. Built in 1975 and designed by Prof. Yuen-chen Yu, an architect from Taiwan, the Chinese Garden’s concept is based on Chinese gardening art. The main characteristic is the integration of splendid architectural features with the natural environment. The Chinese Garden is modeled along the northern Chinese imperial style of architecture and landscaping. It is located next to Chinese Garden MRT Station and connected to the adjacent Japanese Garden by a bridge.

The Ru Yun T’a) (7-storey pagoda), situated on a small rise in the garden.

The entrance…

After climbing all 7 levels of the pagoda, I reached the top with my head spinning and my legs weak on top of worrying about being alone up in the tower.  Only saw a man coming down of the pagoda hill as I made my way up.  The view up there was magnificent, lots of greenery as opposed to concretes (well, there are still some concretes to be seen in the distant…we don’t say we live in a concrete jungle for nothing!).

I had to sit on the top of the stairs to catch my breath after the climb…

and I saw these graffiti inscribed on the white stone wall of the stairs…

The spiral stairs…

Giddy yet???

Met another Caucasian man coming up the stairs while I was going down, and another lady (perhaps they were together) at the lower level.  An Indian man was at the second level shouting for his friend, the only noise I heard since venturing into the gardens.

It started to drizzle a little, big fat drops of rain, when I stepped out of the pagoda but it soon stopped and I was able to continue on with my adventure.

Stone bench with the logo of JTC, the authority that runs the gardens…

The start of an introduction to the 8 Chinese legendary heroes…

Confucius was a Chinese teacher, politician and philosopher who emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity.

Most of our teachings are based on Confucianism, not to be confused with confusion 😛  Humanity and Propriety are ingrained in most Chinese since young.

This guy, Qu Yuan, is the reason we have dumplings to eat on the 5th month of the Lunar calendar.  He was minister and poet who drowned himself in the Miluo river to commit ritual suicide as a form of protest against corruption of the era.

Popular legend has it that villagers carried their dumplings and boats to the middle of the river and desperately tried to save Qu Yuan after he immersed himself in the Miluo but were too late to do so. However, in order to keep fish and evil spirits away from his body, they beat drums and splashed the water with their paddles, and they also threw rice into the water both as a food offering to Qu Yuan’s spirit and also to distract the fish away from his body. However, late one night, the spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before his friends and told them that he died because he had taken himself under the river. Then, he asked his friends to wrap their rice into three-cornered silk packages to ward off the dragon.

These packages became a traditional food known as zongzi, although the lumps of rice are now wrapped in leaves instead of silk. The act of racing to search for his body in boats gradually became the cultural tradition of dragon boat racing, which is held on the anniversary of his death every year. Today, people still eat zongzi and participate in dragon boat races to commemorate Qu Yuan’s sacrifice on the fifth day of the fifth month of the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar. The countries around China, such as Vietnam and Korea, also celebrate variations of this Dragon Boat Festival as part of their shared cultural heritage. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qu_Yuan)

Guan Yu, a respectable and formidable warrior, known for his righteousness and loyalty.  He was deified as Guan Di (Emperor Guan) and is also known as Guan Gong (Lord Guan).  As a guardian deity in Taoism and other religious bodies, he has shrines and temples dedicated to him in countries where there are Chinese influence.  In western world, he is sometimes known as Taoist God of War…

Hua Mulan, a woman who posed as a man to join the army on her father’s behalf…

Yue Fei…a general in the Sung Dynasty who had the words 尽忠报国 (jin zhong bao guo) tattooed onto his back by his mother which means to serve one’s country with loyalty…

Wen Tianxiang, another brave and patriotic warrior during the Sung Dynasty…

Zheng He, a court eunuch, navigator, explorer, fleet admiral, diplomat of the Ming Dynasty.  He was born into a Muslim family and played a vital part in developing relations between Chinese and Muslim countries.

Lin Zexu, a Chinese scholar and official of the Qing Dynasty.

His forceful opposition to the trade on moral and social grounds^[2] is considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War of 1839–42. Because of this firm stance, he has subsequently been considered as a role model for moral governance, particularly by the Chinese. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Zexu)

Are you asleep yet?  Enough of Chinese heroes, let’s continue with the walk…

The Twin Pagoda…

Twin Pagodas…

The square beside the tea house…

The ‘Pai Hung Ch’iao’ Bridge (the white rainbow, 13-Arch Bridge)

The main arch building which houses two courtyards, the ‘Early Spring Courtyard’ and the ‘Garden Courtyard’, and a fish pond called ‘Fishes Paradise’.

Don’t know what happened to this picture…

There is a Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum which exhibits different species of tortoises and turtles, including exotic ones (ever seen 2-headed or 6-legged tortoises?) in the main arch building.  It costs $5 per entry and since I didn’t have that much time to really appreciate it, I gave it a pass.

The Rainbow Bridge as seen from the main arch building entrance…

Don’t ask me to translate this poem cos I can hardly recognise the words 😛

Ah ha!  This was taken when I was stranded at the work shed when it suddenly rained as I was starting to walk back to the Japanese Garden car park where hubby’s van was parked.  I had just come out of the main arch building and was almost to the Twin Pagodas when it poured.

The tea house was right in front of me but it was so near and yet so far because of the heavy rain, the danger of lightning strike and slippery slippers.

I was stranded under the roof of the shed for almost an hour, frightened half to death by lightning and thunder, before I could run for better shelter at the tea house and stayed there till my knight in shining armour came to claim me.  See how heavy the rain is? (the stone boat is to the right)

That’s the end of my Japanese Garden and Chinese Garden expedition.  I love the pictures in this series mainly because the majority of the pictures were taken with a proper digital camera until the memory card ran out of space or when I needed to take panoramic view of the place.  That was when I switched to my Samsung S3 phone camera.  I hope you like them too.

Related articles

• My date with the Lightning God (judith4381.wordpress.com)
• https://judith4381.wordpress.com/gallery/japanese-garden/