After eating the hotel buffet breakfast at 7:00 a.m. on November 25, 2019, take Bus No. 31 at Pingmen Huayuan Station across the road from the hotel, get off at Yunshui Bridge West, go back to the 50-meter intersection and turn left. About 300 meters is Suzhou Xiyuan Temple.

Suzhou Xiyuan Jiezhuang Lü Temple, referred to as Xiyuan Temple. It is located at No. 18, Xiyuan Lane, Liuyuan Road, Changmen Gate, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. It is surrounded by the Lingering Garden in the east, Hanshan Ancient Temple in the west, Huqiu Scenic Area in the north, and Changmen Canal in the south.

Xiyuan Temple was founded between the Yuan Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty (1264-1294) and was named Guiyuan Temple. It has a history of 700 years. The existing building was rebuilt in the Qing Dynasty and was announced by the People's Government of Jiangsu Province as a cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu Province in 1982.

At the end of Jiajing of the Ming Dynasty (1522- 1566), when Xu Taishi, the minister of Taipu Temple, built the East Garden (now Lingering Garden), he converted the already declining Guiyuan Temple into a homestead named Xiyuan.

After Xu Taishi passed away, his son Xu Rongsheyuan became a temple and named it Fugu Guiyuan Temple. In the eighth year of Chongzhen (1635), he invited Maolin, a lawyer from Baoguo Temple, to serve as the abbot and changed the name to Jie Zhuang Lu Temple. This name reflects the temple's high tree building, the temple is built with precepts as the foundation and the law as the foundation. Through the efforts of Maolin lawyers and subsequent generations of abbot, Xiyuan Temple became a Buddhist temple, and the Dharma Conference was at its peak. It was listed as a famous temple in Jiangnan.

Most of the existing temples in Xiyuan Temple were built in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. It is the largest temple in Suzhou City. On the central axis from south to north, there are three-wide archway, mountain gate, Jingang Hall, free life pond, Daxiong Hall, and Sutra Tower. There is Guanyin Hall on the east side of Exit Jingang Hall and Arhat Hall on the west side. There are also buildings in the temple such as Buddha Reading Hall, Fa Yun Hall, Guest Hall, Zhai Hall, Warehouse Hall, etc.

In addition to the regular buildings of the temple, Xiyuan Temple has two other highlights that deserve attention.

The first is the unique Luohan Hall in Suzhou gardens. The Luohan Hall has a deep and wide house, with a total of three and forty-eight rooms in the shape of a field. Focusing on the plastic seats of the four famous Buddhist mountains, there are 500 clay sculptures of golden arhats, arranged oppositely in single and even numbers.
Walking into the main hall of Luohan Hall, you will see a four-sided, thousand-handed, thousand-eyed Guanyin carved from four-speed camphor wood. The Guanyin statue has a total of 1000 hands, and there is an eye in each palm, symbolizing the infinite mercy and infinite wisdom of Guanyin Bodhisattva.
The four famous Buddhist mountains have plastic seats, with Arhat Hall as the center and laid out in the character Tian. The four famous mountains are the Yinghua Dojo where the four major Bodhisattva achieved their Tao: Putuo Mountain is the Yinghua Dojo of the Great Compassion Guanyin Bodhisattva; Wutai Mountain is the Yinghua Dojo of the Great Wisdom Manjusri Bodhisattva; Jiuhua Mountain is the Taoist Dojo of the Great Wish King Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva; and Emei Mountain is the Yinghua Dojo of the Dahang Samantabhadra Bodhisattva.

Ji Gong and the crazy monk on both sides of the center of Luohan Hall. The statue of Duke Ji wears a monk's hat at an oblique angle, wears a torn monk's robe on its shoulders, and holds a broken sunflower fan. This is where the image in "The Legend of Ji Gong" now originates.

The second is the release pond in the West Garden. There are two turtle turtles in the release pond in the West Garden. It is the oldest known animal in the world. Moreover, there are only three of these spotted turtles in the world with spots on their backs. However, there are two large turtles in a small release pond in Xiyuan Temple, one oval and the other long round. One is Fangfang and the other is Yuanyuan.
There are two bronze sculpted turtle statues on the bank of the release pond, which are made in a one-to-one ratio. Suzhou locals have many wonderful stories and legends about the Feng Shui turtle.

At first, we thought that the divine turtle was just a legend, but when we saw a reminder on the feeding time by the pool, we asked the local people and found that there were indeed big turtles living in the pool. If we were lucky enough, we could see them surface to the water. We silently looked at the water, and from time to time we saw small turtles swimming in the water, but there was no trace of the big turtle. It was estimated that when we saw the big turtle, we might have to wait until the year of the donkey and horse moon.

At about 10 a.m., we walked out of Xiyuan, returned to the No. 31 bus stop, took the bus back to Pingmen, and got off here. There are Suzhou Art Museum and Silk Museum nearby. We wanted to stop by and visit it when we arrived in front of the art museum. Only then did we realize that the museum is closed all day on Monday, and the Silk Museum is also closed. It happened that the nearby Beisi Tower had not been visited yet, so I decided to visit here to make up for my shortcomings.