Beautiful Yu Yuan Harden

On Wednesday morning we visited the beautiful Yu garden, which provided a glimpse of Old Shanghai. This garden spans a couple of acres, and includes a dozen or so structures, multiple water features, and numerous paths and bridges. It was built by a government official as a private garden around 400 years ago. Construction took over 28 years.

Li talked us through the history and symbolism, which was fascinating. We all enjoyed meandering over the paths and bridges and pausing to look at interesting rock formations and, of course, the Koi fish.

The picture above shows that even in a tranquil, 400-year-old sanctuary you are never far from the modern world in this city of 5,000 sky scrapers.