Daguan Park () is a lakeside park located in the southwestern suburb of

Kunming Kunming (; ), also known as Yunnan-Fu, is the capital and largest city of Yunnan province, China. It is the political, economic, communications and cultural centre of the province as well as the seat of the provincial government. The headquar ...

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

. Today many locals come to sit, drink tea, fly kites, and go boating. Among shady walks and pools, Daguan's focal point is Daguan Lou, a square, three-storeyed pavilion built to better the

Kangxi Emperor The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 1654– 20 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Shengzu of Qing, born Xuanye, was the third emperor of the Qing dynasty, and the second Qing emperor to rule over China proper, reigning from 1661 to ...

's enjoyment of the distant Western Hills and now a storehouse of

calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined ...

extolling the area's charms. The most famous

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meaning ...

here is a 118-character verse, carved into the gateposts by the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

scholar Sun Ran, reputed to be the longest set of

rhyming couplets A couplet is a pair of successive lines of metre in poetry. A couplet usually consists of two successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (or closed) couplet, each of the t ...

in China. The park is set on Daguan Stream, which flows south into Lake Dian, and there are frequent hour-long cruises down the waterway, lined with willows, to points along Lake Dian's northern shore. Lake Dian, also known as the Kunming Lake, is the largest lake on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. At Longmen of the Western Hills, there is a panoramic view of the lake.

History

In 1696, Wang Jiwen, the governor of

, carried out a largescale construction of a two-story

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

. Ponds were dug, embankments were constructed, and trees and flowers were planted. With a good view of the waters and hills in the distance, and the sailing boats and trees in mist, the pavilion was titled Daguan ("Grand View") pavilion. In the later years, the Daguan pavilion had twice been reduced to ruins by warfare and flood. In 1883, Chen Yuying, governor of Yunnan and

Guizhou Guizhou (; Postal romanization, formerly Kweichow) is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in the Southwest China, southwest region of the China, People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Guiyang, in the center of the pr ...

Provinces, ordered Monk Xingtian to take charge of the renovation of the pavilion, and the pavilion has remained intact ever since. Since the Daguan pavilion was built,

men of letters ''Men of Letters: The Post Office Heroes who Fought the Great War'' is a book by Duncan Barrett, co-author of '' The Sugar Girls'' and ''GI Brides'' and editor of '' The Reluctant Tommy''. It was published by AA Publishing on 1 August 2014 and off ...

coming from far and near in the country have often gathered here, composing and reciting poems. During the past two to three hundred years, many excellent works and poems have been created. Among them, the Long Couplet written by Sun Rangweng has for many years enjoyed the highest reputation around the world. Daguan Park has become famous due to Sun Rangweng's Long Couplet.

References

*https://web.archive.org/web/20100419200737/http://www.kmtrip.net/en/city/kunming/attraction/daguanpark.htm {{coord, 25, 01, 45, N, 102, 40, 25, E, display=title Parks in Yunnan Tourist attractions in Kunming