Hubei Travel Notes: Jingzhou Garden Expo
On the morning of September 7, 2023, I had breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast at this Home Inn was terrible because it was outsourced to a wonton shop, with each person only having a bowl of wonton. Originally we had booked for two days, but my wife was angry and decided to check out, leaving Jingzhou in the afternoon. After breakfast, we stored our luggage at the front desk and went to the adjacent bus station to buy bus tickets to Jingmen at 4:00 PM, each costing 33 yuan. Then we took bus No. 42 to Jingzhou Garden Expo. Since it was far from the city center, we arrived at the Expo at 10:20 AM. The Garden Expo still charged an entrance fee of 60 yuan, but we enjoyed a free ticket exemption.
Jingzhou Garden Expo is located north of the third largest lake in Hubei Province—Miao Lake, and east of Jinancheng Ruins, covering an area of 1,550 mu (about 103 hectares), of which the lakeside scenery belt accounts for about 636 mu. External access transportation mainly includes Yutai Avenue to the north, Erguang Expressway to the east, and Chudu Avenue to the west. The planning layout is based on a water-green network to reshape the spatial structure, using water to create habitats and greenery to connect scenes. It creates typical landscapes of "streams, rivers, lakes, islands, dikes, ridges, ponds, and islets," and uses colorful forested avenues to connect the main and secondary entrances, forming an overall spatial structure of "one center, one corridor, and five zones."
The Garden Expo is divided into six areas, showcasing the theme "Glorious Jingchu, Water Town Garden Expo." It features 17 city and state exhibition gardens, 10 county and district exhibition gardens, and 16 garden works exhibition gardens. The city and state gardens, themed "Chu Charm," are based on "music charm," "flower charm," "literary charm," and "elegance charm," respectively expressing the connotations of Chu musical rhythm, Chu Ci art, Chu script, and Chu costume embroidery, showcasing Hubei's characteristic landscapes and Jingchu culture. The county and district gardens, themed "Chu Farming," take the Jingchu fish and rice water town culture as a carrier, fully respecting the original natural texture of the site, using landscape nodes such as "fishing sentiment" water pavilions, "rural memory" water town settlements, and "farming techniques" waterwheel boardwalks. The garden works exhibition gardens, including Friendship City Gardens and Master Gardens, are themed "Chu Art," focusing on traditional crafts such as bronze, jade, lacquerware, and embroidery in Jingchu culture to create characteristic cultural nodes, telling the story of Chu culture as a "vein of the Nine Provinces" civilization evolution.
Because the park is very large, we bought sightseeing bus tickets for 20 yuan each. However, it is worth criticizing that the sightseeing bus does not allow unlimited rides; it only runs on a loop line without backtracking. If you want to return to a scenic spot, you cannot re-board. Since it was our first time at the park, we didn't know where to get off, so we went directly to the Chu Culture Museum inside the park and visited the museum first.
The Chu Culture Museum, following the exhibition requirements of people-oriented, history-oriented, story-based, and object-supplemented, takes the eight hundred years of Chu as a vertical timeline and presents the birth, development, and growth of Chu from political, economic, military, material, and spiritual perspectives. The museum covers an area of 6,857 square meters and is divided into three main exhibition halls: "Starting from Scratch," "Creating a Prosperous Era," and "Carrying Forward the Legacy." The exhibition emphasizes the cultural connotation of the prosperous Chu State during the Eastern Zhou period, while highlighting Jingzhou's profound historical and cultural heritage, achieving an organic integration of Chu culture and regional characteristic culture. It is worth mentioning that in the "Creating a Prosperous Era" exhibition hall, the historical achievements of Chu as one of the Five Hegemons of the Spring and Autumn period and one of the Seven Warring States are displayed. Through allusions and historical stories such as "writing on bamboo and silk," "bowing and bending," and "high mountains and flowing water," using items like bronze bells, stone chimes, tiger-seat bird-frame drums, stationery, and Chu bamboo slips, it showcases Chu culture comparable to ancient Greece during that period. Since we had already seen the Jingzhou Museum, we were not very interested and just glanced through it. Then we went out and wandered around the park casually, taking a superficial look, and missed most of the gardens.
We exited the park at 1:45 PM and took bus No. 42 back to the hotel at 2:00 PM. Seeing it was not yet 3:00 PM, we hurriedly retrieved our luggage and went to the bus station to change our tickets to a 3:00 PM bus. The station charged a change fee of 7 yuan per person, which is very rare. We have taken buses so many times and never encountered a change fee, but we encountered it in Jingzhou. No choice, we could depart an hour earlier, so we accepted it. The bus changed vehicles at the east gate of Jingzhou, and we arrived at Jingmen South Bus Station at 5:20 PM. Then we took bus No. 15 and got off at Haihui Middle School, walked for 10 minutes, and checked into Hubei Haiyi Hotel at 6:00 PM. The standard room cost 133 yuan with free breakfast. The hotel service was excellent, and they even gave us a fruit platter. Although they asked for a good review, it was worth it. After settling in, we had lunch nearby and returned to the hotel to rest.
