Garden building is considered an important part of Chinese Culture. Some people say that if you have never walked through a Chinese garden, you cannot say that you have really visited China.
Traditional Chinese gardens are located in North China in such places as the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City. In larger imperial gardens, the main buildings are connected by an imaginary line in the middle of the gardens on the north-south axis (轴). Other features of imperial gardens are coloredpaintings, man-made hills and lakes.
Most private gardens are found in the south, especially in cities south of the Yangtze River. Private gardens were mostly built at one side or at the back of the houses. Around the beautiful scene are small open areas with beautiful shaped-doors through which visitors can enjoy the sights. They are open on all sides and are often near the water so that the whole scene can be enjoyed. Suzhou,known as the home of the gardens,displays the most and the best Chinese traditional, private gardens. Different parts of it are examples of the garden styles of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.
The landscape garden contains a number of pleasant natural scenes and some fairy tales. The ancient Chinese used to call the garden landscape “Jing”,which means”Scene”in English. Good examples include the ten West Lake scenes in Hangzhou, the twenty-four Slim West Lake scenes in Yangzhou and the eight Daming Lake scenes in Jinan.