Xiamen Horticulture Expo Garden

Well I officially regret not buying 2 camera batteries. Gonna have to track another down here.

Yesterday was another fun adventure. We went to the Xiamen Horticulture Expo Garden. This massive (6 mile by 5 mile) garden was built 2 years ago to celebrate the different architectures and cultures all over the country.

The garden is built over 3 different Islands with bridges connecting them. Here's the entrance.


I would guess that each province or cultural section got about half a square mile each in which they have built scaled down buildings and classic land marks. They all had a pretty basic format.

The first part was an entrance arch designed in that cultures traditional architecture like so...


At a glance many have similar over all structure, but the difference are in the colors, woods, paintings, and carvings. Here are two others for comparison.




After that there is a traditional garden with plants and statues from that province like these









And then there is usually their most famous building.





There was also usually a building dedicated too showing some kind of culture

Some had dancers


Some had cool Buddha statues


Others had amazing lanterns


Beautiful painting


And traditional writings



There where pretty Chinese lanterns pretty much everywhere.



And of course the obligatory group shot.

There are actually three other people with us "Jen", Lily (company accountant), and "Peter" (who is probably the most similar person to me I have met so far, also speaks decent English) all of whom are taking pictures. From left too right: Asila (company secretary) Me (like its hard to pick me out) "Jen's" younger brother and Lily's friend who's name I can't remember and didn't say a word the whole time.

Blah, and unfortunately this is again where my stupid camera battery goes dead. We are really only half way threw and I didn't even get to take a good picture of the Emperors palace or the rising moon! Might just google it and add them later!

The second half of the day and 3rd Island was dedicated to the different Universities in each province. The major part was on ancient Chinese learning and then a 1 mile by one mile section was carved up with different arches from about 30 different Universities represented from all over China.

I'm annoyed because I took some pictures on my cell phone but can't see to figure out how to get them on my computer. Anyway, I did snap a picture of one of the school arches because it translated to "Northeastern University", so Dan, I have a picture of it for you when I figure it out. haha

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Until next time.