Viewing Fish at Flower Harbor

Viewing Fish at Flower Harbor

Viewing Fish at Flower Harbor is also known as Western Hill Park with its front gate facing Su Causeway and the Outer West Lake, its back gate facing Yang Gong Causeway, while its southern gate lying across the Nanshan Road.

During the Southern Song Dynasty, a palace eunuch named Lu Yunsheng built for himself a garden villa and cultibated fish and flowers in it after he retired from his official post.

Several footsteps down the front gate are a rectangular pond called Historic Fish Pond, a pavilion and a stele beside the pond. And this is the original site of ” Viewing Fish at Flower Harbor”. These characters were inscribed on the stele by the Qing emperor Kangxi in 1699. Later on, Emperor Qianlong carved his at the back of the stele.

” A stream from the Flower Hill flows into the Flower Harbor,
The petals fall on the fish who sucks at them,
But in autumn one finds a world quiet and serene.”

Since 1952 large-scale extensive expansions of the park have been carried out and its present area is 22 hectares. It consists of five scenic areas: red carp pond, peony garden, the lawn, a forest and Flower Harbor.

The one-hectare pond used to be a low-lying land, but later an islet was built there, with winding embankment of stone and grass, flowers and trees. A zigzag bridge spans the pond, and thousands of red carps are swimming merrily there, attracting hordes of visitors every day who linger to watch and feed the carps with bait.

Across the pond you can see the Peony Garden, a winding path leading to a beautifully worked-out mound of ornamental hill with plants and sculpted pines. Peony Pavilion, octagonal in shape, stands on top of the mound, and it is the centerpiece of the park where in April many colors of rare peonies bloom in plots separate by black and white cobblestones. The whole scene makes one intoxicated.

Between the lawn and the South Lake lies Jiang’s Mansion, built in 1912. Nowadays most of the buildings of the mainsion have been turned into Ma Yifu’s Memorial Hall, a Confucian scholar (1883-1967). To the left of the main hall near the lake is the Ji Zhao Pavilion, on which a couplet reads:
“May I ask where the white clouds will go?
I have no idea when the moon will arrive.”

It is a most ideal place to watch the white clouds, to see the rise of the bright moon as well as to relax oneself.

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Author: Amoytrip---Free China Travel Guide--Viewing Fish at Flower Harbor
Free Inquiry: ryan@amoytrip.com