[2025 Yangzhou Attraction] Travel Guide for Yipu Garden (Updated Jul)

🌟 Yangzhou Yipu: The Hidden Elegance of Salt Merchants 🌿 When people mention Yangzhou, the poetic line "Of all the bright moonlight in the world, two-thirds shines on Yangzhou" often comes to mind. This ancient city, thriving for millennia thanks to its canals, was once the wealthiest gathering place for salt merchants in China. Yipu Garden is like a yellowed thread-bound book, quietly narrating the refined elegance of salt merchant culture. 🏯 The Past and Present of Yipu Garden Built during the Qing Dynasty's Xianfeng era, this garden is one of Yangzhou's most intact surviving salt merchant residences. Its owner, Wang Zhuming, though holding the official title of "Salt Transport Official of Lianghuai," was a scholarly merchant well-versed in literature. He named the estate "Yipu," meaning "Garden of Leisure," reflecting his transcendent and refined lifestyle. 🌙 A Modern "Grand View Garden" Stepping into Yipu, you'll find echoes of the Grand View Garden from *Dream of the Red Chamber*. Wang Zhuming lovingly crafted this garden for his daughter, with its delicate bridges, rockeries, and pavilions. Standing before the moon gate, gazing at the Taihu rockery, one can almost glimpse the silhouette of a young lady leaning on the railing. The most breathtaking feature is the exquisitely preserved brick-carved gate tower, with its lifelike "Pine and Crane" motif—a living fossil of Yangzhou's brick-carving art. 🍵 A Day in the Life of a Salt Merchant 1️⃣ The Study: Scholars at Heart The "Baoshan Study" in the backyard was the owner's favorite retreat, with a huanghuali wood desk by the window and the "Four Treasures of the Study" on display. Here, Wang Zhuming once hosted literati like Zheng Banqiao for tea and intellectual discussions. 2️⃣ The Theater: Entertainment Fit for Royalty The small stage in front of the west wing is like a miniature imperial theater, where salt merchants once enjoyed Kunqu opera and Pingtan storytelling. Standing beneath it, you can almost hear the melodious strains of *The Peony Pavilion*. 3️⃣ The Kitchen: "Wealth Lasting Three Generations" The copper hot pot and fine porcelain in the kitchen attest to the luxury of "salt merchants dining with silverware." The ingenious smoke ventilation system above the stove is a testament to ancient ingenuity. ✨ While strolling through Yipu, I met an elderly caretaker who said, "These old houses—even the cracks between the bricks hold stories." Indeed, every brick and tile here records the rise and fall of the salt merchants. Visit on a drizzly day, umbrella in hand, and become a time-traveling guest.

The neglected courtyard next to the famous garden is deep Yipu was built in 1910. It is a relatively well-preserved private garden located on Dongguan Street, adjacent to the famous Geyuan. Usually, after visiting the garden, tourists will not go back to see Yipu. Therefore, compared with the hustle and bustle of Geyuan, Yipu is more elegant and peaceful. Garden layout and artistic features Chen Congzhou, an expert on ancient Chinese garden art, introduced in his book Yangzhou Gardens: "Yipu is similar to Suzhou Quyuan, both of which are laid out using L-shaped gaps, but it is more ingenious than Quyuan, forming a complex and varied landscape." The overall layout of Yipu Residence is west house and east garden. The western residence has six entrances and is not open to the public. The Eastern Garden is long and narrow, which is not conducive to garden construction. However, the owner of the garden cleverly used the deepness of the space to create a feeling of "a new world after a dark tunnel". There is a long and narrow passage paved with pebbles at the entrance. On the left side, there is a relatively tall blue brick horse-head wall, and on the right side, there is a white wall with lattice windows. A series of rockery is stacked with Taihu stones, which are close to the wall and rise and fall in an orderly manner, breaking the dullness of the space and forming a miniature landscape scroll. At the end, there is a pentagonal pavilion with exquisite proportions. Continue walking and you will reach the West Garden, where there are rockery and small buildings, tall trees and a very quiet environment. There is a viewing corridor on the second floor of the building, from which you can enjoy the scenery of the garden from a high vantage point, giving you the feeling of being in a study yet still in the mountains. There is a couplet in Yipu Garden: "The ancient bright moon in Yangzhou, the old family style in the humble alley". Although the owner of this house and garden moved his family to Taiwan during the war, Yipu has been preserved intact, allowing today's tourists to get a glimpse of the life pursuits and garden style a hundred years ago. Scarcity★Easy to shop★Easy to take pictures★ Tips: Tickets are 15 yuan On Dongguan Street, next to Geyuan The visit lasts about half an hour If you don't like crowds, you can go here to immerse yourself in the wonders of the garden. As a Yangzhou native, have you ever been to Yipu?

Yizhou Garden. I am even more fond of this small garden next to the Ge Garden. It is adjacent to Ge Garden, sharing the bustling Dongguan Street, yet it seeks quietness within the noise, being small and exquisite, and appears reserved and elegantly simple. Of course, there are not many visitors here, so it is naturally quiet. Compared to Ge Garden, it is smaller in size and elongated in shape. Therefore, the rockery built along the courtyard wall and the half pavilion at the end are also adapted to the local conditions, but I prefer such lightly embellished rockeries and buildings among the mountains. The overly tall and complex stacked rocks forming mountains, which require constant climbing and tunneling, are not to my liking. I also love the back garden. The back garden is very small, but the lake rocks, flowers, plants, trees, and the surrounding buildings, including the Reading Tower, are all very exquisite and cleverly arranged. Yizhou Garden and Ge Garden, two gardens next to each other, have very different appearances. Besides the difference in the financial resources of the two owners, it also makes one think of some differences in the lifestyle and attitude towards life of their owners.

Yangzhou Yipu: Located at No. 356 Dongguan Street, Yangzhou, it is a garden with a unique style. This garden was built by Li Hesheng, a salt industry broker in the early years of the Republic of China, in 1910 and took three years to complete. 'Yi' represents excellence, and 'Pu' refers to a place of fruit trees and vegetables, reflecting the garden owner's pastoral interests. Yipu is similar to Suzhou's Quyuan, both utilizing the space of curved ruler-shaped gaps for layout, but Yipu is more ingenious, forming a complex and varied landscape with multiple levels. There are four major attractions in the garden: one is the garden itself, the second is the artificial mountains, the third is the gates, and the fourth is the 'carvings'. These carvings include brick carvings that symbolize 'spring, summer, autumn, and winter' with white magnolias, lotuses, chrysanthemums, and plum blossoms; wood carvings that represent 'five blessings sharing longevity' with five bats surrounding the character for longevity; and peonies, pine and cranes, carps, magpies, pomegranates, Buddha's hands, etc., with intricate and exquisite patterns, each piece is an artistic treasure, unique in Yangzhou's gardens. Yipu currently has 55 old houses and 18 wings, covering an area of more than 2,000 square meters, with a building area of 1,445.3 square meters. In 1962, it was designated as a municipal cultural relics protection unit, and in 2013, it was selected as a national key cultural relics protection unit.