On Dongguan Street in Yangzhou, there is one of the oldest and best-preserved salt merchants gardens. This is the Geyuan.

Geyuan was the home of Huang Zhiyun, the first chief salt merchant of Lianghuai in the 22nd year of Jiaqing of the Qing Dynasty (1818). It was a classic representative of Yangzhou's private gardens in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The entire park covers an area of 2.3 hectares. The overall layout adopts the traditional form of a classical garden with a front house and a back garden. The garden is mainly made of bamboo and stone. Demonstrate the luxurious home life of a generation of salt merchants. Due to its unique setting and ingenious construction, there is a unique winding, deep and fascinating realm in the open world. In 1998, it was announced by the State Council as a "National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit". Together with the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou, the Summer Palace in Beijing, and the Summer Resort in Chengde, they are called "China's Four Famous Gardens".

There is a couplet on the pillar of Qingsong Hall: "For hundreds of years, people have nothing but done good, and the first good thing is just reading."

"The owner loves bamboo and covers it with the bamboo foundation." It can be seen that the owner has a great preference for green bamboo and named it "Geyuan". Bamboo is planted all over the garden. The shape of the bamboo leaves resembles the character "ge" in Chinese characters, hence the name "Geyuan". In fact, the biggest feature of the Geyuan is not bamboo, but the concept and architecture of the "Four Seasons Rockery." In this garden, four lifelike rockery areas have been opened up, named spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. In the bamboo bushes in front of us, there are several stalagmites planted. The bamboo is luxuriant and the stalagmites are uneven, just like bamboo shoots after rain. This is the spring scenery of the Geyuan.

The beauty of the garden lies in the beauty of stones, bamboos, architecture, couplets, and in its poetic meaning that "spring mountains are suitable to visit, summer mountains are suitable to see, autumn mountains are suitable to climb, and winter mountains are suitable to live."

Gardeners take advantage of the uneven, uneven, thin, transparent, leaking and wrinkled characteristics of Taihu Lake stones to build rockery. The stacked stones look like clouds and mist rolling, and when viewed from a distance, they are smooth and smooth, like clouds or strange peaks; for myopia, they are exquisitely and transparent, like peaks and caves. This apartment is a summer scene.

In Chinese culture, bamboo is evergreen all year round, does not change color due to changing seasons, and does not wither due to severe cold, becoming a symbol of noble character. Su Shi has a poem: "I would rather eat without meat than live without bamboo." No meat makes people thin, and no bamboo makes people vulgar." Therefore, the name "Geyuan" shows the owner's spiritual ambition to maintain his noble purity although he is in a busy city.

Huang Zhiyun, the owner of Geyuan, is outstanding in that he is a Confucian businessman with profound cultural cultivation. The reason why Geyuan has such high taste and artistic appreciation value is also related to Huang Zhiyun's extraordinary aesthetic taste and artistic appreciation.

The wall hanging of the "Han School" in the Huang Family's main hall "reads Tang sentences by studying bamboo dew and reading Jin Shu by chewing plum blossoms." In the Nanmu Restaurant of the Huang family, there is a couplet "The moon is fun at four o'clock in the afterlife of the family, and the joy of righteousness is reading." These couplets all express Huang Zhiyun's traditional thoughts of cultivating, reading and inheriting the family and his ardent expectations for his children. The Huang family's strict family education, coupled with the children's own efforts, each of the four sons of the Huang family has profound literary cultivation, is good at poetry, calligraphy and painting, and has books passed down to the world.

Huang Zhiyun attached great importance to the education of his children throughout his life. There are many couplets in the halls of the Geyuan, such as "There is no other way to inherit the family but read it if you cultivate it, and there is a good plan for the future to be diligent and frugal." I wonder how the current second-generation official and second-generation rich generation think after reading this pair of couplets?

The biggest feature of the garden is the concept and construction of "Four Seasons Rockery." In the garden covering an area of less than 50 acres, four lifelike rockery areas have been opened, named spring, summer, autumn and winter respectively. The entire garden is centered on Yiyuxuan. Visitors can follow the trend and enjoy the beautiful scenery of the four seasons.

Qiushan Mountain is made of stacked yellow rocks. It has a high mountain and a large area. The rocks are brownish-yellow and have clear edges and angles, like a knife chopping with an axe. The entire mountain is steep and towering, looking magnificent and majestic. If you compare this garden to a picture scroll, then this is the main part of the painting; if you compare this garden to a piece of music, this is the climax of the piece.

Winter Mountain is made of a kind of stone called Xuanshi. This kind of stone is crystal white and crystal white, containing many quartz particles. It shines under the light. Every stone can hardly see the edges and corners, giving people a sense of ups and downs, as if it is covered with snow. It is unknown whether the gardener intentionally or unintentionally stacked the rockery like a group of lions, and from a distance they look like snow lions jumping happily, looking very naive. "Winter is here, can spring be far behind?
The rockery, stacked stones, buildings, bamboo, and couplets in the Geyuan create poetic time and space for us, giving people endless memories. At the same time, it is also interpreting a certain information code passed to us by its owner. This message is the dense fragrance of books that has persisted for a century in the deep courtyard.