Over 500 years earlier than the Humble Administrator's Garden, Suzhou's sole academy classical garden—Ke Garden

Ke Garden is the oldest garden in Suzhou. During the Northern Song Dynasty, Ke Garden was part of the Canglang Pavilion. Today, it faces the Canglang Pavilion across the river. Although the garden is not large, it has a complete range of scenery. The initial construction of the garden can be traced back to the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, and it was also known as 'Jinshanlin' and 'Leyuan'. The name 'Leyuan' embodies the idea that 'benevolent people enjoy mountains, wise people enjoy waters'. During the Qianlong era, a historian mistakenly thought it meant 'the joy of revelry', believing that 'revelry cannot be taught', hence the name was changed to 'Ke Garden'. In the Jiaqing era of the Qing Dynasty (1805), the Governor of Jiangsu founded the Suzhou Zhengyi Academy, and during the Daoguang era (1827), Ke Garden was incorporated into the Zhengyi Academy. In the Guangxu era, the 'Xuegutang' was built, housing the 'Bo Yue' book collection with more than 80,000 volumes. It is unexpected that the official academies of ancient times had such rich collections of books. One can only imagine the spirit of the students who studied there, whose writing would flow with divine inspiration after reading thousands of books—it must have been extraordinarily wonderful.