By: Jessie Liang
The Yuyuan, Shanghai’s most beautiful ancient gardens, is full of stories, statues, and delicacies, and history about the garden. You can’t visit Shanghai and not go there once!
The Yuyuan is a civilized town garden with ancient looks, built 400 hundred years ago, for officer Pan Yun Duan, with small ponds, towers, gigantic temples, and flower gardens for him and his elderly parents to rest and enjoy. All these statues are carefully hand- carved, which gives it delicate patterns and texture, and almost every object in the gardens reflects grace and beauty. Inspite the good souls of the Pan Yu Duan and his family, the garden ended up in enemies’ hands, when the Ming dynasty met its end, and the gardens and beautiful scenery of the Yuyuan was crushed by war and chaos. On 1956 Shanghai rebuilt is beauty and wealth and reopened to the world to share its history, food, and scenery.
But my personal favorite is the mouth-watering foods and the exquisite beauty of the Nine-Turning Zigzag Bridge. Froms its name, you can tell its shape that it’s a zigzag bridge with nine curves each for each traditional and seasonal flower. On the first curve lays a graceful narcissus. Turning to the second, embedded on rock are apricot flowers, small but beautiful, then peach.
After a long day you should replenish your strength with some traditional heavenly tastes, for example, Shanghai’s famous gigantic soup bun. Bite into its crispy colored tan bun dressed with black sesame seeds, and you discover a bun full of steaming hot savory juice and meat for you to slurp up before they spill on your clothes! The golden and red Tanghulu won’t admit defeat either, with its transparent and golden sugar coating and fresh fruit, it will become your favorite snack!
At night, watching the giant light festivals on new year’s is such a treat, where you can spot the zodiac animals flying on the rooftops with gleaming colors and shining patterns, decorations of light in every shape imaginable, giving you the best wishes anyone has had