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He Garden (He Yuan), also called the Family He Garden, is one of Yangzhou's most distinctive classical gardens and is often regarded as the finest surviving late-Qing private garden in the city. Built in the late nineteenth century by He Zhidao, a high-ranking Qing official who retired to Yangzhou, it reflects the transition between classical Jiangnan garden design and the architectural influences entering China toward the end of the dynasty, making it a more layered and unusual space than the city's earlier Ming and early-Qing gardens.

What sets He Garden apart is its two-storey corridor system, a complex network of covered walkways that threads through the entire garden at both ground and upper levels. These connecting corridors, regarded as among the longest and most elaborate in any surviving Chinese garden, allow visitors to tour much of the garden without retracing their steps, looping past pavilions, rockeries, ponds, and halls while moving smoothly between distinct scenes. The upper-level walkways in particular give an unusual overhead perspective on the garden's composition, a vantage point most classical gardens simply do not offer.

Within this framework, the garden is organized around a central pond and a series of halls and pavilions arranged to create layered views outward from inside each building. The architecture blends traditional Chinese forms with occasional Western-inspired details, a reflection of the era in which it was built and of He Zhidao's own exposure to foreign ideas through his official career. A former residence area, a theatre stage, and several smaller garden rooms complete the layout, giving the garden the feel of a self-contained estate rather than a purely ornamental landscape.

A relaxed visit typically takes around an hour and a half, with the upper corridors adding a genuinely different way to experience the same space on a second pass. Weekday mornings tend to be quieter, while weekends and holidays draw larger tour groups, especially in the central courtyard areas.

He Garden sits close to several of Yangzhou's other major gardens and historic sites, including Ge Garden, the Slender West Lake area, and the old city lanes around Dongguan Street, making it easy to combine with them into a single day focused on Yangzhou's classical garden heritage.