Lou Lim Ieoc Garden

After all the baroque churches and Portuguese cobblestones, Lou Lim Ieoc Garden is going to feel like a deep, refreshing breath of Chinese tranquillity. This is Macao's only traditional Suzhou-style garden, and stepping through its gates is like being transported to the classical gardens of eastern China. The garden was built in the late nineteenth century by Lou Kau, the same wealthy Cantonese merchant who built Lou Kau Mansion near Senado Square. Lou Kau was a man of enormous wealth and refined taste, and he wanted to create a private paradise modelled after the famous gardens of Suzhou, a city near Shanghai celebrated for centuries as the pinnacle of Chinese garden design. What makes a Suzhou-style garden special is its philosophy. These gardens are not about wide open lawns or geometric flower beds like European parks. Instead, they create miniature landscapes that evoke the natural world, mountains represented by carefully placed rocks, oceans suggested by ponds, forests compressed into groves of bamboo and ancient trees. Every element is deliberate, every view is composed like a painting. Walk along the winding paths and you will discover the garden's treasures one by one. There is a large lotus pond at the centre,...