Lan Su Chinese Garden

On the Road 1 Minute

The Lan Su Chinese Garden is a beautifully designed classical Chinese garden. It is built on a city block in the Chinatown district of downtown Portland, Oregon, near the riverfront.

The garden is a symbol of the strong ties that exist between Portland and its sister city, Suzhou, China. Both the garden’s designer Kuang Zhen and many of the artisans who completed the work in 2000 came from Suzhou.

Even the name Lan Su combines two Chinese words that respectively refer to Portland and to Suzhou.

The garden follows Chinese principles of the Dao and Confucianism. There are serpentine walkways and zigzag bridges over the small lake built as the garden’s centerpiece. And traditional Chinese artists work in some of the buildings, including formal silk work.

Jim and I arrived around lunchtime today after a full morning at Powell’s bookstore. There were several locals from downtown taking their lunch breaks to meditate or to enjoy the harmony that a classical Chinese garden tries to create.

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Published by Robert Craig Waters

Robert Craig Waters is a Florida writer. After leaving journalism in the early 1980s, he worked as an attorney, communications director, and public spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court in Tallahassee for 35 years. He grew up on a family farm in Beulah, Florida, not far from the Alabama border, before attending Brown University in the 1970s. His mother's family traces its roots to Weaverville, North Carolina. His father's family is from the small village of Burnt Corn, Alabama, where Mr. Waters spent part of his childhood.

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