Shanghai Guilin Park 上海桂林公园

Seeing that this morning's weather was not that good and in fact it rained for a bit before we have gone out, we decided to go to nearby place. The place we chose was Shanghai Guilin Park. This park is famous for it's guì huā 桂花 in the month of Sept and Oct. In the normal time this park is free entry. However during the month of Sept and Oct each year an entrance fee of RMB2 will be charged for adults. Children is free. Since we visited on Sept 30th, we have to pay the entrance fee.

Park entrance ticket

Guilin Park was built in 1931 and is famous because it houses the former residence (1932) of the gangster 旧上海帮会头目 'Pockmarked' Huang Jinrong 黄金荣. It is also known as 黄家花园. In 1957 it was renamed Guilin Park 桂林公园. It's now a teahouse. This park is situated at 桂林路128号.

Entrance to Guilin Park

Guidemap to this park (left)

Entrance to the Central Garden

We could find the lantern hung on the trees along the path way towards the garden. These are the remain lanterns from the previous Mid-Summer festival few weeks back. It is said that this park is very lively during the mid-summer festival and it is one of the place that people from surround in the district comes for celebration of 唐韵中秋.

After passing through the garden place with lantern, we came to a building with open ground. In front of the building is the statues of The Eight Fairies 八仙过海. It is fenced up so we can only take photo from outside the stone fencing.

八仙过海

Family photo

The building in front of 八仙过海 is called the Four Religion Hall 四教厅. The Four Religion Hall built in imitation of one kind of Chinese temples is about 250 square meters in area. There are some elaborate designs on the doors, the windows, the roof-beams, the pillars and the folding screens. Some of the roof-beams are hung across the hall, and the pillars are very strong.

There are 3 big lamps hung under the roof one by one, and they are very magnificent. Around the hall there is a two-meter circle corridor. The hall looks spacious and comfortable from any point of view. The structure of the whole building is very conscientious and the modeling is also solemn. In that case it was always used by the owner to hold some important activities.

Short distance after leaving the Four Religion Hall we came to a rock formation in the garden. There are some stairs that lead to the upper portion of the rock formation and a pavilion. I guess after visiting the Lion Forest Garden 狮子林 in Suzhou yesterday this one looks small.

Along the way in the garden we came across a stone ship quite similar to the one found yesterday at Suzhou's 狮子林. I guess the owner or designer of this particular garden should have similar taste or some linkage with 狮子林? This stone ship is of smaller size than the Suzhou one and people are not allow to enter it.

Stone ship

In one part of the garden we found grape vine that crawl on a roof fencing constructed specifically for it to grow. We were amazed to see actual grapes growing on it. I took some close up photo of those grapes through my camera's zoom lens.

Grapes - some turned purple and some still green

Observe the vines twist and twirl on the pillars up to the roof fencing

Roughly 50 paces from the grape vine there is a building that is built surrounded by water. The name is called Fitness Pavilion 颐亭. Not really sure what is it for. Something to do with meditation or maintaining health?

Building on the water

The shape and color of the building is quite catchy to the eye. So much so that it is surrounded by water and stand on four pillars above the water. Its gate was locked and nobody is allowed to enter it.

Directly in front of this Fitness Pavilion there are 2 stone statues, one of a stone horse and the other a stone standing lion.

Family photo with the stone horse

Within this garden there is a restaurant called Guilin Garden 1931 桂林公馆 as shown in the photos below. From the looks of it, it is quite a high class restaurant.

In front of the Guilin Garden (left)

The arch doorway of this hotel is very unique in a way that all the arches are line together in the line of sight shown in the right photo above.

West garden 西园 entrance (left)

One unique thing about this garden is that it has many speaker made in the shape of a rock as shown in the left photo above. There will be music playing from the local radio program throughout the day.

More scenery from west garden

Some rock formation in west garden

We walked out from west garden and make our way towards the east garden 东园. In the East Garden we could see that it has more 桂花 trees here. Unfortunate for us was that the 桂花 has not bloomed yet and yet we have to pay for the RMB2 per person entrance fee. We were very disappointed indeed. It is said that this garden has about 1000 trees with 21 different variety of 桂花. For example 金桂,银桂,丹桂,四季桂, etc.

East Garden entrance

桂花 is just budding (left) Bamboo bushes (right)

The east garden has a slot along the fencing which is planted with bamboo bushes. It was quite a magnificent sight to see so many bamboo trees together along the pathway.

After visiting the east garden, we went out through the main entrance and headed back. Perhaps end Oct we would come back here once more time to view the 桂花 in full bloom?