The garden was first established in 1559 as a private garden created by Pan Yunduan, who spent almost 20 years building a garden to please his father Pan En, a high-ranking official in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1344) , during his father's old age. Over the years, the gardens fell into disrepair until about 1760 when bought by merchants, before suffering extensive damage in the 19th century. In 1842, during the Opium Wars, the British army occupied the Town God Temple for five days. During the Taiping Revolution the gardens were occupied by imperial troops, and damaged again by the Japanese in 1942. They were repaired by the Shanghai government from 1956–1961, opened to the public in 1961, and declared a national monument in 1982.
Jade in chinese is called Yù (玉), where emperor is written like 王, cause he was supposed to be the ruler on Earth as Heaven was ruled by the god of Heaven, thats why there is a stick 一 on heaven and and a stick一 for earth and they are both of them united by a stick 一 in the middle, that means that the rules of Heaven would apply to Earth trhough the actions of the Son of Heaven, the Emperor. So, as you can see jade is something very precious and priceless for the chinese culture.
This garden is very beautiful because it's filles with trees and beautiful pieces of art, of sculptures carved in stone, like dragons.
It has the elements, that the chinese tradition says every garden has to own;these are:
- Lake.
- Bridge.
- Trees.
- Stone.
One of the curious things about this kind of gardens is that in every builduing there are windows, but these windows don't have glasses. So every hole, even if it's just a door, can let you watch and enjoy a magnificient view of nature.
The last picture it's seems to be a mirror, but it is not, two brothers wearing the same red jacket.
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