Baomo Garden is situated in Zini Village, Shawan Town, and Panyu City. With an area of 5mus,it was built at the end of the Qing Dynasty, but destroyed in the fifties of the 20th century. It took the people 6 years to rebuild Baomo Garden since 1995and, now it is expanded to more than one hundred mus.
Baomo Garden consists of the culture of an upright official-Baozheng, ancient buildings in South China, traditional gardening arts of South China, and waterside scenery in the Pearl River Delta. The buildings, the gardens, the hills, the water and the bridges are distributed reasonably and naturally, and they make all the grand sights.
The stone archways at the entrance are an imitation of ancient buildings. It is a wonderful workmanship that looks grand and lofty. In the garden, there are numerous pottery carvings, porcelain carvings, brick carvings, clay carvings, stone carvings and woodcarvings. Among them there are the porcelain sculpture "Riverside Scene of Singing Festival" which has been listed in the Guinness Book of Records and the large refined artistic brick sculpture "Wall of Blooming Flowers With Singing Birds". The gallery in the Litchi Island is resplendent and magnificent.
There is the statue of ancient Chinese sage Confucius who is known as the teacher of human for the people to worship. With Baomo-Treasure Hall, Long-tu Hall, Ju-Bao Hall, Zhaotailai Gallery, all these galleries collect the ancient and modern famous pictures, calligraphy, pottery, porcelain, bronze and jade articles etc.which show the long history of the culture in China and form the special humane attractions. It is really a gardening gallery.
The view of the water in the garden is unique. Such as Litchi View Bay, Qingping Lake and Baomo Lake are connected with more than one thousand meter running river, and the water are as clear as mirrors, make the fascinating inverted image of the whole garden. Over 30 bridges have been built across the limpid rivers and lakes. If you sail a small boat freely, you may feel like being in a fairyland. The Zidong pleasure boat on the Qingping Lake is like a Palace of Art over the water.
The Zidai Bridge is like a rainbow over the lake, the green willows are like the mist around the lake. You may enjoy watching the colourful carps moving about forming red waves and people having smiles on their faces. The Bamboo Garden is especially for the children to wade the small brook, to view and admire the fish. It is a paradise of the children.
With perennial greenery and various blossoming flowers, the garden possesses so many different scenes that one can hardly take them all in. Wherever you go, you will get quite a different view, such as "the litchis' ripe scene on the Litchi Island", willow dike, thousand-year-old podocarpus, banyan on both sides of the road, and camellias etc. All these are worth appreciating much more times. The colorful Rose Garden, the refreshing Lotus Pool, the quiet and graceful Orchid Garden, the breezing Bamboo Garden, all these please both the eye and the mind. And they are especially nice for summer.
The Viewing Tower, the local restaurants, the Purple Bamboo House etc, provide the people with Panyu cuisine in flavors, such as the well-known Shawan Town ginger milk, Zini Village fish-skinned dumpling, Liwan boat porridge and a series of hometown cuisine.
Coming to Baomo Garden, you'll fully enjoy the beautiful scenery of the gardening in South China, you'll be relaxed and happy so much as to forget to go home and finally be led up to meaningful afterthoughts.
(Guangzhou Morning Post March 4, 2003)
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