Wouldn't Yu (Yuan)?

Yuan are gardens in Mandarin, and these famous Yu gardens in Shanghai were built to honor the owner’s parents. They are beautiful, but the complex outside was packed with tourists, a KFC, and a DQ, and I don’t know if I’d recommend the experience.

Here we learned that it was customary to build up the threshold according to one’s social stature. I think that this is based on the age-old twin concepts of schadenfreude and slapstick slipping and tripping. I was waiting to catapult over a doorsill only to look up and find a group of socially superior people laughing heartily at my expense.

The presence of the dragon head was of particular note because the dragon historically symbolized the emperor. Its inclusion in the architecture signified that the emperor and his coterie had visited the garden housing complex and approved of the animal’s use.

This, to the right, is the third-most-famous rock in China. Don’t ask.

Women were only permitted to view the garden seated, potentially to avoid embarrassing Gone-With-the-Wind fainting sessions when confronted by the beauty.

This is the scene outside the garden. Who doesn’t like DQ?