Gongyuan Garden

Gongyuan Garden

Gongyuan Garden is a national AAA-level tourist attraction and a cultural heritage site protected by Zhuhai City.

Gongyuan Garden, located at the foot of E Feng Mountain north of Tangjiawan, was the private garden of Tang Shaoyi. It was first built in 1910, originally named "Xiao Linglong Shan Guan" ("Small Exquisite Mountain Pavilion"), then renamed "Gongyuan Garden" during its 1921 expansion, and renamed again as "Tangjiawan Park" during the 1982 expansion. Covering 34,000 square meters, its main buildings include the Star-Gazing Pavilion, Rural Villa, Stone Gate Archway, and Six-Pillar Pavilion. The three characters "Gongyuan Garden" inscribed on the archway’s lintel are in Tang Shaoyi's own handwriting. In 1932, Tang Shaoyi donated the garden to the people of Tangjia Village for their leisure and recreation. In 1986, it was designated as a cultural heritage site protected by Zhuhai City.

Located on two hills at the northern foot of E Ling in Tangjia Town, Zhuhai, the garden is nestled by hills and lakes, adorned with pavilions and surrounded by shaded woods, offering serene and picturesque scenery — a unique and charming tourist destination. Originally the private garden of Tang Shaoyi, a prominent political figure from the late Qing and early Republican periods, it was first constructed in the first year of the Xuantong reign of the Qing Dynasty.

Tangjia Gongyuan is one of the three renowned gardens of Zhuhai, covering over 500 acres and costing nearly 400,000 silver dollars. It took six years to complete in phases. Later, Tang Shaoyi "enjoyed leisurely strolls here to entertain his later years." The garden was initially called "Xiao Linglong Xin Guan" ("New Small Exquisite Pavilion"). Legend has it that the name originated from a hollow crystal ball intricately carved from stone, which Tang greatly cherished.

At the entrance of the park stands an elegant stone memorial archway, flanked by two stone lions, with the three characters "Gongyuan Garden" inscribed above. The couplet reads: “It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred years to cultivate people,” and “The wise find joy in water; the benevolent find joy in mountains.” These were handwritten by Wang Jingwei at the time. Inside Gongyuan Garden, lush greenery abounds, with a rich variety of rare trees, vines, fragrant flowers, and famous fruits — hundreds of species in total — most of which are precious plants imported from Southeast Asia and European countries.

The garden boasts well-known plants such as French mahogany, Queen roses, Philippine grapes, guavas, Thai custard apples, Malaysian Bauhinia, Cymbidium, and ginseng fruit. Among them, Japanese black pine, Indian rubber fig, and golden-threaded hanging-green bamboo are considered rare tree species in China and have been hailed as a mini botanical garden by experts. In the past, Tang Shaoyi admired Su Dongpo’s sentiment of “eating three hundred lychees a day,” so he planted more than 500 lychee trees in the garden. When the cicadas chirp and the lychees ripen, tens of thousands of bright red lychees hang from the branches, creating a dazzling and enchanting scene.

In the garden, a large banyan tree with dense foliage grows atop a 2-meter-high tower called the "Gu Rong Tower," also known as the "Landmark Tower," which Tang Shaoyi built for land reclamation and ravine filling. After the tower was built, birds nesting there brought banyan seeds that sprouted inside. Eventually, a banyan tree grew, its roots spreading and intertwining all around the tower, earning it the name "Pánshí Gūróng" (Solitary Banyan on a Rock). It has become a scenic highlight of the garden. Nearby, there is also a uniquely shaped lemon-scented gum tree, towering and elegant, resembling a graceful lady with a pomegranate-red skirt fluttering in the wind, evoking poetic imagination — hence its nickname "Beauty Tree."

Among the garden’s features, the Star-Gazing Pavilion, blending Chinese and Western styles, is particularly distinctive. Its yellow exterior peeks through the lush greenery. In fact, it was a small observatory built by Tang Shaoyi. The arched ceiling on the second floor once clearly marked constellations such as Orion, the Big Dipper, and the Seven Mansions, though this has been damaged. The rooftop of the Star-Gazing Pavilion is circular, with six crenelated brick pillars evenly spaced and connected to six round zinc pipes. A red plumb line links the pipes, facilitating celestial observation along both the eastern and western meridians of 180 degrees using a sextant — a thoughtful design. It is said that on the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month, Tang Shaoyi would climb the pavilion with his family to admire the moon and stars, enjoying familial bliss. The center of the rooftop features a natural whispering wall phenomenon.

After the establishment of the city in 1979, Gongyuan Garden was designated as a district-level park. New additions such as the "Bihai Restaurant," "Qibin Pavilion," "Leshan Pavilion," and the excavation of a 37-acre "Nine-Bend Bridge Artificial Lake" added charm to the garden.

Tang Shaoyi (1862–1938), courtesy name Shaochuan, was born on January 2, 1862, in Xiangshan County, Guangdong (now Tangjia Village, Tangjiawan Town, Zhuhai). He was a prominent political activist, diplomat, and educator during the late Qing and early Republican periods. He served as the head of the Qing government’s Board of General Affairs, the first president of Shandong University, the first premier of the Republic of China, and a member of the Kuomintang government. He also served as president of Beiyang University (now Tianjin University). He studied in Shanghai from childhood, became one of the third group of Chinese students sent to the United States in 1874, attended Columbia University, and returned to China in 1881. He served as consul in Seoul, Korea, and… More details about Tang Shaoyi ++

Tangjiawan Town: Located in Xiangzhou District, Zhuhai, Tangjiawan Town lies in the northern part of Zhuhai at the starting point of the Beijing-Zhuhai Expressway and the Western Guangdong Coastal Expressway. Comprising Tangjia, Jinding, and Qiaozhou, it spans 130 square kilometers, has a town-level government, and governs 16 community neighborhood committees. The total population is about 100,000, including 29,000 registered residents.

Tangjiawan Town is known as the “First Bay of the South China Sea Born Alongside Modern Civilization,” and is celebrated as a “Lingnan town overlooking land and islands, a historic town of legendary times, an ancient-modern fusion town, and a beautiful mountain-sea garden town.” It boasts the… More details about Tangjiawan Town ++