Yan Chenyu really likes to be alone with Yunluo. The two of them strolled hand in hand, admiring the beautiful scenery of Yangzhou. Needless to say, this touched little Yu baby. Yunluo has always been a guy who is very good at coaxing girls. Yan Chenyu has never had the idea of ​​breaking up with Yunluo, which shows that Yunluo is very capable.

Ge Garden is the oldest and best-preserved salt merchant garden in Yangzhou. It faces the famous Dongguan Street in the south and the Yanfu East Road in the north. It was the home of Huang Zhiyun, the general manager of Lianghuai Salt in the 23rd year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty (1818). It is a classic representative of private gardens in Yangzhou during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Geyuan is known as one of the four famous gardens in China, along with the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Mountain Resort in Chengde and the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou. It is one of the four famous gardens in China where Luo Zhewen inscribed his inscriptions.

Huang Zhiyun, the owner of Geyuan, was the chief salt official of Lianghuai for more than 50 years. He had accumulated a huge fortune and rebuilt Geyuan on the site of Shouyi Garden in the Ming Dynasty. Huang Yuyun believed that bamboo has a strong root, a humble heart, a straight body, and a chaste character, which is a gentleman's demeanor.

Because the shape of the three bamboo leaves resembles the Chinese character "ge", the garden was named "Ge Garden" after Yuan Mei's sentence "The moon reflects the bamboos into thousands of Chinese characters". Su Dongpo once said: "I would rather eat without meat than live without bamboo. No meat makes people thin, and no bamboo makes people vulgar." This shows the original intention of the owner of the garden to name it after bamboo.

There are cursive couplets on both sides of the north gate of Geyuan: Spring, summer, autumn and winter bring different mountain scenery; wind, sunshine, rain and dew bring different bamboo shadows. It talks about the different stone scenery of Geyuan in four seasons and the origin of its name.

The whole garden covers an area of ​​2.3 hectares. The overall layout adopts the traditional form of a classical garden with a house in front and a garden in the back. Bamboo and stone are the main elements in the gardening. The purpose of planting bamboo is to enrich the variety of bamboos, with thousands of bamboos and various shapes, which is a magnificent sight. The characteristic of stacking stones is to use stones to divide the peaks, which creates a unique four-season mountain, which is praised by both the north and the south. It is well-known.

There is a Huang family couplet on the wall at the entrance, which is similar to a family motto. In addition, there are three luxury houses, which are grand and subtle, and the afterglow of light and sound show the luxurious atmosphere of the home life of a generation of salt merchants. Due to the unique setting and ingenious composition, there is a tortuous, deep and fascinating realm in the openness.

The word "ge" in the name of Geyuan is the most intriguing. Whether in dictionaries or language habits, "ge" is used as a quantifier, such as: a person, an apple. In fact, the earliest meaning of "ge" is "a bamboo pole". The ancient book "Shiji Zhengyi" has the saying "bamboo is called ge, and wood is called mei".

This is not surprising, because Chinese characters were originally pictograms, and doesn’t the character “个” look exactly like the shape of a bamboo leaf?

Yuan Mei, a great talent and poet in the Qing Dynasty, wrote a poem: "The moon reflects on the bamboo and turns it into thousands of words, and the plum blossoms in the frost are full of flowers." The vivid images and ethereal artistic conception can be said to have captured the charm of bamboo. In addition, Huang Zhiyun himself also used "Geyuan" as his nickname, combining man and garden. It is meaningful.

In the garden, bamboos, stones and people are in three parts. They are separated and become independent chapters, each of which plays a brilliant role, and when combined, they become a natural beauty. People, bamboos and stones are integrated into one, and it is difficult to distinguish between the host and the guest. It is a private residential garden in the south of the Yangtze River with the most local characteristics of Yangzhou.

Entering the north gate, you will see thousands of bamboos. Bamboo is the essence of Geyuan. The soul of Geyuan. When visiting Geyuan, the first thing to do is to see bamboo. Huang Zhiyun loved bamboo and planted thousands of bamboos in the garden. Even the name of Geyuan comes from bamboo.

Bamboo cultivation in Yangzhou has a long history. As early as the Tang Dynasty, Yao He wrote in his "Yangzhou Spring Poems" that Yangzhou people "only grow bamboos on land and raise geese at home". "Bamboo" has always been loved by Chinese literati, not only because of its elegant posture and jade-like color, but more importantly because of its "upright, humble, and upright" character.

Zhang Jiuling's poem says: "People respect high moral integrity, and the world appreciates humility"; Su Dongpo's poem says: "I would rather eat without meat than live without bamboo. No meat makes people thin, and no bamboo makes people vulgar"; Banqiao's poem says: "Every branch and leaf is full of emotion."

Geyuan has built a "varieties bamboo viewing area" to the north of the four-season rockery, gradually restoring the original historical appearance of "hundreds of species and tens of thousands of bamboos". It is currently the best place to appreciate bamboo in Yangzhou. It covers a total area of ​​12,000 square meters, with more than 60 species of bamboo and nearly 20,000 bamboos.

There are areas such as earthen hill bamboo forest, variety viewing, Yingbi waterside pavilion, and Zhuxi beautiful place.

When talking about classical gardens, Suzhou comes to mind. However, more than 200 years ago, the gardens of Yangzhou, an ancient city in the Jianghuai region, were better than those of Suzhou. As early as the Qing Dynasty, someone made the following comment on the scenic spots in the south of the Yangtze River: "West Lake City is famous for its lakes and mountains, Suzhou is famous for its markets, and Yangzhou is famous for its pavilions." It can be seen that Yangzhou was famous for its beautiful gardens in the south of the Yangtze River at that time.

As early as the Han Dynasty, Yangzhou had large-scale garden-style buildings, and there were innovations later. By the Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou gardens flourished rapidly due to the highly developed handicrafts, commerce, transportation and salt industries, and Emperor Qianlong's six southern tours.

However, there have been many wars and disasters in history, and many gardens have been destroyed. Now only a few gardens such as Geyuan, Heguo Garden, Xiaopan Valley and Houyechun Garden have survived.

Yangzhou is famous for its gardens, and its gardens are famous for their stacked stones. Ge Garden is an urban mountain forest with bamboo and stone as the main body and peaks and stones as the characteristic. The rockery in Ge Garden adopts the method of peaks and stacked stones, using different stones to express the scenery of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It is known as the four-season rockery and is the only example of a national forest in China.

The plants in the garden are mainly bamboo, and the most suitable landscaping materials for bamboo are various peaks and rocks, such as the exquisite Taihu stone peaks and the thin and rugged stalagmites. The combination of bamboo and stone forms a very distinctive bamboo and stone landscape in the garden.

At the entrance of the Ge Garden, the garden designer ingeniously set up a group of small bamboo and stone scenes, clearly pointing out the theme of this garden centered on bamboo and stone.

Watching bamboo in Geyuan is not only a pleasing aesthetic enjoyment, but also a profound and interesting study. Bamboo is neither herbaceous nor woody, it is a special family in the plant kingdom. In plant taxonomy, bamboo belongs to the subfamily Bambusoideae of the Poaceae family. According to records, there are more than 50 genera and 1,300 species of bamboo plants in the world.

There are about 30 genera and more than 500 species of bamboos distributed naturally in my country, which are divided into two categories: clumping and scattered. Yangzhou is located in the Yangtze River and Huai River area, which is suitable for scattered bamboo species and a few relatively cold-resistant clumping varieties.

There are more than 60 species in the park, which can be divided into two categories from the perspective of viewing stalks and viewing leaves. Among the stalk viewing categories, there are differences in shape and color. For example, the tortoise shell bamboo, square bamboo, spiral bamboo; Buddha belly bamboo, arhat bamboo, spicy leek arrow bamboo, high-node bamboo, etc. are all appreciated for their unusual stalk shape.

The purple bamboo, yellow-skinned bamboo, yellow-grooved bamboo, small qinsi bamboo, golden jade bamboo, gold-inlaid jade bamboo, flower bamboo, Jinming bamboo, yellow-skinned black chicken bamboo, flower-stalk chicken bamboo, spotted bamboo, tea-stalk bamboo, purple cattail dianthus, etc. are appreciated for their stem color.

Among the foliage plants, there are broad-leaved bamboos, narrow-leaved Daming bamboos, and bamboos with various color stripes on their leaves, such as the white bamboo, the ground bamboo, and the yellow-striped golden bamboo. In addition, scattered species such as Yan bamboo, bud bamboo, bitter bamboo, red bamboo, Tang bamboo, goose feather bamboo, flat bamboo, and spotted bitter bamboo can also be found in the park.

Tortoiseshell bamboo is the most peculiar bamboo in the garden. It is a variant of Phyllostachys pubescens and a naturally grown variant bamboo. Therefore, it is extremely rare. It is hard to find it even in thousands of acres of bamboo forest. It is a rare ornamental bamboo species.

The nodes of the tortoise-shell bamboo resemble tortoise shells and dragon scales, with bumps and curves, and are hard and rough. Compared with other graceful and elegant bamboos, it is less delicate and elegant, but more strong and resolute. The internodes at the base of the culm are irregularly shortened and swollen, and they are intersecting and continuous like tortoise shells. It symbolizes health, longevity, and happiness as vast as the East Sea.

Cixiao bamboo, also known as filial bamboo, is a clumping bamboo species. Its shoots are in summer, and the new shoots are close to the old bamboo, as if following the ancient saying "Do not travel far away while your parents are still alive". The old bamboo, on the other hand, protects and supports the new bamboo from wind and rain, allowing it to grow safely. As Banqiao said, "The new bamboo is taller than the old bamboo branches, all thanks to the support of the old bamboo."

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

Due to the climate, there are few bamboo clumps in the garden, only a few species such as filial piety bamboo, phoenix tail bamboo and small qinsi bamboo.

Among all bamboos, the most legendary and sad one is the spotted bamboo, because it is closely linked to a beautiful and moving tragic story in our national legend. The green bamboo stalks are covered with purple spots, like tear marks.

According to the "Records of Natural History" written by Zhang Hua, a naturalist in the Jin Dynasty, Yao, the first emperor in Chinese history, had two daughters, one named Ehuang and the other named Nvying. The two sisters were married to Emperor Shun, who inherited the throne, as concubines.

After Emperor Shun passed away, the two sisters who lost their husband cried day and night, and their tears turned into blood, which spilled on the bamboo. The bamboo that grew out was covered with spots from then on. People called it spotted bamboo. Later, when Ehuang and Nvying's tears dried up, they jumped into the Xiang River and committed suicide. Legend has it that they became goddesses of the Xiang River, so spotted bamboo is also called Xiangfei bamboo.

The spotted bamboo is a famous ornamental bamboo. In fact, from a biological point of view, the pattern of the spotted bamboo should be formed by fungi corroding young bamboo. However, people still prefer to believe that it is dyed by tears. The loyal love represented by "a thousand tears on a spotted bamboo" is always something people yearn for.

Golden Jasper is the most common bamboo in the park. It has beautiful colors and lanceolate leaves. It is an excellent ornamental bamboo species. The bamboo stalks are golden yellow with green stripes between the nodes, which is Golden Jasper; the bamboo stalks are emerald green with yellow stripes between the nodes, which is Jasper Golden. It is highly ornamental.

Winding paths leading to secluded places are one of the aesthetic elements of Jiangnan gardens. The long and slender bamboo forest paths are even better in reflecting the beauty of the garden's artistic conception. When you enter the bamboo ecological area, there is a path several dozen meters long that passes through it, with bamboo shadows slanting, bamboo fragrance, and light filtering through the moon.

At the end of the bamboo path is the entrance to the East Gate, on which you can see a plaque inscribed with "A Beautiful Place in Bamboo West". The origin of Bamboo West comes from the poem of Du Mu, a poet of the late Tang Dynasty, which chanted about Yangzhou, "Who knows that the road to Bamboo West, singing and playing is Yangzhou".

In the Song Dynasty, the poet Jiang Kui wrote the phrase "The famous capital of Huaizuo, the beautiful place to the west of bamboo", and people later used "the beautiful place to the west of bamboo" to refer to Yangzhou. "The beautiful place to the west of bamboo" has returned to its original meaning, which is obviously reminding people that the bamboo scenery here is the best. If you think about it carefully, you will suddenly realize that the real beautiful place to the west of bamboo is actually on this bamboo forest path. (To be continued...)