Shanghai Yu Garden and City God Temple Guide: A Foodie’s Guide

Shanghai Yu Garden and City God Temple exude an old Shanghai cultural vibe. Many people struggle to live in this atmosphere, bathing in the gentle sunshine, with a touch of ease and nostalgia, carrying beautiful memories, searching for lost time and memories in the City God Temple.

At the intersection of Nanjing East Road and Henan South Road, walk south along Henan South Road for about 20 minutes to reach Yu Garden and City God Temple.

This is a charming architectural complex composed of old houses, old temples, old streets, and gardens with Jiangnan characteristics. Strictly speaking, this architectural complex should be divided into two parts: City God Temple and Yu Garden.

City God Temple is an open-air commercial area consisting of several majestic temples and several traditional neighborhoods. It sells jewelry, jade, antiques, a wide range of folk crafts, and a variety of local snacks. Tourists of all colors and languages ​​flow through the streets day and night, creating a bustling scene.

If you are willing to spend 30 yuan on a ticket to visit Yu Garden, you will find a different world.

This garden, covering an area of over 30 mu, was originally a private garden built in the 1660s, and has a history of over 400 years. It is a typical Jiangnan garden, with architectural styles and scale that are not inferior to the gardens of Suzhou.

The houses with flying eaves and bracket sets, the winding corridors, the staggered rockery, the delicate bridges, the clear and mirror-like ponds, the lush and flourishing ancient trees, all exude an elegant, delicate, elegant, peculiar, and beautiful charm. The ingenuity of the designer and the craftsmanship of the builder are fully displayed.

The famous modern poet Wen Yiduo said that a good poem should have the beauty of architecture, the beauty of music, and the beauty of painting. I will change this sentence, putting the beauty of architecture as the subject, and putting it in front to evaluate Yu Garden, which is perfect. This ancient garden architecture blends the beauty of poetry, painting, and music.

The design and construction of traditional Chinese gardens is no different from the ancient masters of art using their intelligence and hard work to write a poem with a poetic atmosphere, paint a landscape painting with appropriate shades of ink, and play a melodious and graceful ancient folk music on the earth. This is material cultural heritage. It is material, but more importantly, it reflects national aesthetic consciousness and traditional humanistic spirit.

Four hundred years ago, white silver from the people was transformed into a magnificent private garden. Over 400 years of vicissitudes of life have given it a thick patina and turned it into a national treasure and a public property. The owner of the garden can be said to have inadvertently repaid a debt of conscience owed to the people.

A few days ago, I was fortunate enough to visit a site of West Lake from the time of Ouyang Xiu in a medium-sized city in the north. Nearly a thousand years ago, it was once as famous as West Lake in Hangzhou and West Lake in Yangzhou. Because it was located on the ancient Yellow River channel, silt gradually accumulated on the lake surface, eventually leading to its decline and abandonment. However, today, within this ancient West Lake site, which is several times larger than Yu Garden, several incongruous Roman columns, European medieval knight sculptures, and a copycat Eiffel Tower have been built, completely ruining this ancient West Lake site with its millennia of cultural heritage.

In a modern metropolis, in the urban forest made of steel and concrete, there is such a traditional classical architectural complex that stands guard, harmoniously coexisting with modern high-rise buildings, which is truly remarkable. The strong contrast in time and space brings about visual novelty while causing a shock to the soul.

Tourists who have finished shopping on the bustling Nanjing East Road come here with weary steps. They see the majestic flying eaves and flowing eaves, the nine-curved bridge that winds through the half-acre pond, admire the lotus leaves standing gracefully in the pond, and the leisurely carp. It is like a traveler who sees an oasis in the desert of desire, and their fatigue instantly disappears. 

Standing on the old street of City God Temple, my gaze passes through the flying eaves and gray tiles, and the skyscrapers of Pudong Lujiazui soar into the sky, as illusory as theatrical scenery, yet so tall that you can only look up.

Think about it, for over a hundred years, Shanghai, and even China, have always been struggling to survive and fight under the gaze and pressure of Western civilization built of steel and concrete. How many cultural treasures of the Chinese nation have fallen into oblivion due to the plunder of foreign invaders and the destruction of domestic traitors.

One hundred and twenty years ago today, a vast empire, corrupted by ants and rats, fought a fierce war against a small island nation in the waters of northeast China, suffering a Waterloo in Asia.

Today, if fate pushes these two countries back to this sea area, will history repeat itself?

Standing where classical architecture meets skyscrapers, my thoughts race like a runaway horse.

Just as we face high-rise buildings, Western tourists with high noses and deep eyes are also amazed at the majestic temples, the variety of traditional snacks, and the dazzling folk crafts, with their blue eyes wide open in surprise.

In this city that came from the sea, there is such a well-preserved traditional architectural complex guarding the spiritual home of the Chinese nation, which is a great fortune for Shanghai and a great fortune for China.

Youth is a heavy rain. 

This is the most perfect metaphor I have seen for youth.

It’s called a metaphor, but it’s more like an interpretation, even a definition.

What should a heavy rain look like? It’s the same for everyone. There will be countless mindless, cold raindrops falling crazily, accompanied by indescribable sounds.

However, when it comes to a heavy rain, the first picture that appears in everyone’s mind is different.

That’s the real charm.

Perhaps your heavy rain is in a vast wilderness, deserted and lonely, with a heavy rain coming as scheduled. The entire world echoes with its unchanging, monotonous melody. At this moment, a bolt of lightning strikes heaven and earth, like a crack in time, sucking away all your lost soul in your immaturity. You are stunned, silent, without mood, without expression, until the belated thunder wakes you up from your intoxication. You see you rush into the rain without hesitation, without looking back.

Perhaps your heavy rain is in a city with high buildings and dense forests. You stand in front of a floor-to-ceiling window, the distance is shrouded in twilight, with an unspeakable sense of depression. A heavy rain falls, you don’t know whether it comes from the sky or from below, all the way to the sky. In short, a curtain is drawn before you, the world seems to be still busy, humans build civilization, avoiding the pouring rain, but they can’t avoid the barrenness of the rain nourishing their souls, they can’t avoid the rain’s mockery of the inner torrent.

Perhaps your heavy rain is in a night you can’t see. The darkness you see with your eyes open is more pure than the darkness you see with your eyes closed. You worry about stories that are clearly irrelevant to you, yet you care about them to your very bones. Or perhaps, a person with a heart-shaped halo appears, you are completely unaware of the rain’s arrival, but the rain keeps falling, harder and harder, but you are only thinking about your own thoughts, but you feel an inexplicable joy in your heart, and the rain gains a mysterious quality.

Perhaps your heavy rain is on a simple road. You hold an umbrella, standing at an intersection. Your original firm direction begins to blur. You take a step, you withdraw it. You look up, but the eaves of the umbrella cover you tightly, preventing you from seeing what lies ahead with your inexperienced eyes, because the umbrella has pointed out your path, you can only obediently take a step in that direction, seemingly determined, but your heart still yearns for the other side, your heart still howls in despair, and tears of innocence fall from your eyes.

If at this moment, yes, it is at this moment when you are reading this, a heavy rain pours down from nowhere, what posture will you use to confront the rampant storm? What expression will you use to express your current thoughts?

You will look up, countless raindrops, you don’t know where they come from, you don’t know how many there are, they just fill the sky, pouring down on us, who are clearly vast but seem so tiny, hitting our hair, splashing on our faces, soaking our clothes, dripping into our hearts, so we just stand there, forgetting everything, unable to even say what color the sky is.

You will run wildly, creating splashes of water larger than the raindrops hitting the ground, chasing the small streams that have just formed, just running, not asking for a destination, shouting out everything you have accumulated in your heart, accompanying the endless rain, returning to the heavens, returning to fate, just running, running, until you lose all your strength and courage, until your vision blurs, until the earth becomes your support.

You will hide under an eaves, quietly watching everything that is floating outside. The cold wind blows through, but there is nowhere to escape. You look carefully into the rain, you reach out to try it, the raindrops are heavy, you quickly shake your hand, dry the remaining water, return to what you were before, continue to pretend to be mature, only your longing eyes cannot be restrained and hidden.

You will walk quietly, enjoying the tranquility within. The rain becomes the most treasured part of this journey. The heavy rain washes away the memories of your heart, soaks every story, but the profoundness is destined not to disappear with it. You just think quietly, watch quietly, until every part of you in the memories of your heart becomes a God’s perspective, no longer able to enter the role, until you reach a clear boundary, then you cross the rain curtain without hesitation, wiping away the traces of the rain, but you can’t wipe away the sadness of looking back, you can’t brighten the clear eyes of the past.

Now

Have you lost yourself in the rain?

Because, dear friend,

Do you know

This rain has made us forget our past and our future.