Xihui Park is a key state park of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

located west of

Wuxi Wuxi (, ) is a city in southern Jiangsu province, eastern China, by car to the northwest of downtown Shanghai, between Changzhou and Suzhou. In 2017 it had a population of 3,542,319, with 6,553,000 living in the entire prefecture-level city ar ...

in eastern

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''Roman province, provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire ...

. It was established in 1958 and commands historically famous views overlooking the city, the adjacent Grand Canal, and nearby

Lake Tai Taihu (), also known as Lake Tai or Lake Taihu, is a lake in the Yangtze Delta and one of the largest freshwater lakes in China. The lake is in Jiangsu province and a significant part of its southern shore forms its border with Zhejiang. With ...

. Its grounds include the

Jichang Garden Jichang Garden () is located inside Xihui Park, east side of Huishan, east side of western suburban of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, China. It is close to Huishan Temple. Jichang Garden is a famed Chinese classical garden in South China, and it was c ...

, the Second Spring under Heaven, the Dragon Light Pagoda, and a cable car connecting the park to the summit of Mount Hui. Local legend purports that Xishan was once visited by the

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

Shi Huangdi Qin Shi Huang (, ; 259–210 BC) was the founder of the Qin dynasty and the first emperor of a unified China. Rather than maintain the title of "king" ( ''wáng'') borne by the previous Shang and Zhou rulers, he ruled as the First Emperor ( ...

Name

The park is named for Mount Xi (t , s , ''Xīshān'', lit. "Tin Hill") on its grounds and for nearby Mount Hui (lit. "Kindhearted Hill"), which is administered separately as the Huishan National Forest Park.

Features

Garden

is a famous traditional

Chinese garden The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate ...

Spring

The Second Spring under Heaven was the inspiration for the blind ''

erhu The ''erhu'' (; ) is a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument, more specifically a spike fiddle, which may also be called a ''Southern Fiddle'', and is sometimes known in the Western world as the ''Chinese violin'' or a ''Chinese two-s ...

'' player

Abing Abing (; 17 August 1893 – 4 December 1950), born as Hua Yanjun (), was a blind Chinese musician specializing in the ''erhu'' and '' pipa''. Life Abing was born on August 17, 1893, in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi to father Hua Qinghe, ...

's most famous composition, the ''Erquan Yingyue''.

Pagoda

Dragon Light Pagoda (t , s , ''Lóngguāng Tǎ'') is a seven-story brick-and-wood octagonal

pagoda A pagoda is an Asian tiered tower with multiple eaves common to Nepal, India, China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most often Buddhist but sometimes Taoist, ...

located at the crest of Xishan. It commands a traditional scenic view of nearby

and the Grand Canal running through Wuxi, but a cable car between Xihui Park and the crest of Mount Hui (elev. ) now offers a higher vantage point. Constructed as a temple during the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

, the original pagoda burnt during the

Qing 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-speaki ...

and was subsequently rebuilt. The pagoda's grounds were used as a "beggar's refuge" for the housing and training of Wuxi's indigent poor during the

Republic A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...

an period. As the city is named for the hill it stands on,Frommer's Short Cuts. ''Eastern Central China, including Qingdao and Nanjing''
p. 79
Accessed 21 November 2013. the pagoda is sometimes used as a symbol of Wuxi.

References

Parks in Wuxi Tourist attractions in Jiangsu {{Jiangsu-geo-stub