20 Sep 2009: ZhanYuan 瞻园

瞻园 is one of the 4 well-known parks in Jiangnan. 3 others are 无锡寄畅园、苏州拙政园和留园. Once again, it's the home to 徐达. It's grand and obviously, fengshui was a big part to the design and the structures. It integrates "北斗七星阵" design into the way the passage ways looked like in the park. The heights and water, etc... wow! no wonder several of 徐达's generations prospered!

Sometime impressive at the entrance. The dragon diagram:
At the top of the picture - on the left of the pair of dragon eyes as a bat (蝙蝠) while on its right is a coin (钱). So, when put together, it's read as "福在眼前". So, the chinese were really very clever, right?Of course, there were more to it if we analyse the full diagram carefully.

We also watched a performance in a tea house. While the setting was like the Chinese Teahouse style, the performance was too modern... somehow, it lost that 'touch-and-feel'.