Long Yuan, the designer of the Garden of Retreat, is known as Dongli, and is proficient in poetry, calligraphy and painting. He built the park in two years according to the characteristics of water towns in the south of the Yangtze River and local conditions. This garden covers only nine acres and eight minutes. Simple and elegant, with the style of Jiangnan garden architecture in the late Qing Dynasty. The retreat garden has a unique layout, with pavilions, terraces, buildings, pavilions, corridors, squares, bridges, pavilions, halls, halls, rooms and pavilions, with the pool as the center and buildings floating on the water. The pattern is compact and natural, combined with plant configuration, embellishing the scenery of the four seasons, giving people a quiet and famous feeling. Due to the limitation of terrain and the owner's unwillingness to show off his wealth, the architectural pattern of Tuisi Garden ranges from vertical to horizontal, from west to east, with houses in the west, courtyards in the middle and gardens in the east. The house is an outhouse and an inner house. The outhouse has a sedan chair hall, a flower hall and a main hall. Sedan chair hall and greenhouse are generally used to receive guests and park sedan chairs. When there is a wedding ceremony, ancestor worship ceremony or the arrival of distinguished guests, Daxiong Hall is opened to show the grand ceremony. There are four deacons' cards hanging on both sides of the main hall, which are "Give the Bachelor of Cabinet", "Keep Quiet" and "Avoid". They are solemn and daunting.
Characteristics of Suzhou Garden Architecture
An important feature of Suzhou classical garden is that it is not only the product of history and culture, but also the carrier of China traditional thought and culture. It is manifested in the naming, plaques, couplets, calligraphy stones, carving and decoration of garden halls, as well as the meanings of flowers and trees and the feelings of stacking stones. It is not only a beautiful art that adorns gardens, but also stores a lot of historical, cultural, ideological and scientific information, and its material and spiritual content is extremely profound. Some reflect and spread various philosophical concepts and schools of thought such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; Some preach the philosophy of life and cultivate noble sentiments; With the help of classical poems and literary works, the landscape is embellished, germinated and rendered, so that people can turn the landscape into feelings, produce artistic beauty and obtain spiritual satisfaction in the process of living and sightseeing. The park has a well-preserved collection of calligraphy works by famous calligraphers in China, which is a precious work of art with high cultural value. In addition, Suzhou Classical Garden, as the first house garden in China, reflects the life style and etiquette of folk living and leaving their relatives in the south of the Yangtze River in ancient China, and is the material for understanding and studying the folk customs in the south of the Yangtze River in ancient China.