Shen's Garden

It took me a long time to discover these places. Sadly there didn't appear to be any brochures/information in English, so bit by bit I found my way around to these interesting places.

Shen's Garden is not far from Lu Xun's Native Place - in fact the area has quite a few interesting places as I discovered.

Shen's Garden was tucked away behind some shops and the sign "Shenyuan Viewarea" was a bit misleading. If I wasn't actually looking for "Shen's" garden I might have missed it!

Again I used my Tourist Card, but this time had to supply my fingerprint. There was a pad that I had to press my finger on before I was admitted. Anyway, they let me in.

The garden is some 600 years old and of course belonged to the family Shen, and there is a lot of history here. Not that I learned much about it. There was of course a lake, and performance areas, and I could see that turning up to visit on my last day in Shaoxing was NOT a good idea. Why hadn't anyone told me about the regular performances here? Oh, well, next time........

There were in fact several performance areas in the gardens. These gardens did look a little sad on the day I visited, but it was mid winter. I shall surely visit if I am in Shaoxing in spring!

I wandered around taking photos, and as it turned out having photos taken of me! Yes, in China any foreigner is likely to be part of family photos of Chinese families and I wonder how many photo albums I turn up in! Again I found the Chinese friendly and in one pavilion had quite a chat with a Chinese family. They are all keen to help us, and the sales folk all keen to sell us more stuff, but I was all shopped out. I didn't think there was any room for anything in my luggage now. And by this time I had sent the last of my boxes of things back to Australia. All four of them!

When I came out of Shen's Garden - I had walked through the garden and the exit was a block away. I found it was next to another Shaoxing Museum - and the Shaoxing Library. The latter I might have peeked in, as I am sure there was little I could read there, but the Museum might have been worth a visit. Next time perhaps.

Eventually I found a taxi and returned to the college - but there was obviously a nasty car accident just along from Shen's Garden as their was an almighty traffic jam. On the journey home we passed another accident, where a car and a motor bike had collided and the ambulance had just arrived. How I wish I had my camera at the ready as we passed as the two nurses, complete with white uniform and white nurses caps climbed out of the ambulance to help the injured as we just drove by.

It would have been a good photo to capture!