10th February, 2001.
Precious Hardwood Furniture In Suzhou Lingering Garden Pavilions. Tables And Chairs Show Patina Of Age. Mountain Pictures Formed By Natural Grain Of Stone
August, 1987.
Precious hardwood furniture was on display at Liu Yuan, called "The Lingering Garden" and from what we had seen, it was fittingly named, but we were in a 1987 Tour Group, so linger was something not in the Leader�s vocabulary, and we were shepherded to a room in one of the pavilions where the furniture was on display. Tables and chairs in precious hardwood were intricately carved and the backs of the chairs inlaid with stone in which the natural grain formed scenes of mountains. The furniture displayed the care and patina of age and was flawless; to be looked at but not touched.
 On the walls hung other framed stone in which the mountains could easily have been mistaken for the work of human artists and not the result of natural rock formation. The possession of such rarities would be affordable only by Emperors, Mandarins and their peers.
In a land of Emperors the wealth of a country flows in an upwards direction; from the peasants to the Mandarins through all their grades, from the Mandarins to the Emperors. The Grand Canal was utilised for the transport of vast amounts of tribute to the Emperor in Peking and parts of the canal are still in use today but for a different purpose, which we would see when we travelled by boat on the canal from Suzhou to Wuxi.
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