Photo Walk 19 – Sun Yat-Sen Park and Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver

I have been to a Japanese Garden when I was visiting Tokyo.  This time, I visited a Chinese Garden in Vancouver.  The Sun Yat-Sen Park and Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden are two parts of the same facility in the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver in China Town.  The Park is free for admission.  The Classical Chinese Garden costs $10 per admission.

Let me take you for a tour.

This is the main entrance of the Chinese Cultural Centre.  What a contrast between the Chinese entrance and the Western hotel behind it!  Try 3D visualization using Google Street View of the front entrance.

Upon entering through the entrance, you will see this courtyard greeting you.   It was a sunny afternoon there were a lot of visitors and it was difficult to get shots with few people around.

The courtyard leads you to the statue of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.  Read more about Dr. Sun Yat-Sun here.

Behind the statue is a circular opening.  This a traditional Chinese design for an opening through a wall into a garden.

The other side of the opening is less mysterious.

Turn around and you would see this gorgeous pond with floating lotus and swimming koi.

Here is a photo with a koi for you.

Here is another one that is zoomed in a bit more.  They look very peaceful and calm even when they make slight ripples on the surface of the water.

The pond is so calm that it looks like a mirror.  It is fun playing with the polarizing filter to cut out reflection at different part of the pond.

It is great that they have different varieties of Chinese style buildings around.  And the landscaping is very nice too.

I was totally taking my time to explore the different part of the park.  It was very relaxing even with a lot of people around.  I had to wait around a bit every time before I took a shot.

It is inevitable that tall buildings will start to show up around this park.  But at least they are not within 50 meters.  I wonder what the park looks like from up there?

Can you spot the people in this picture?

The pond was so nice that I kept taking pictures around it.

Of course there are also walkways that are not around the pond, too.

Apart from the different maple and willow trees, there are also a lot bamboos around.

After walking around once with the EF-S 10-22 mm lens, I switched to a EF-S 60mm Macro lens and did another round.  This time I was trying to capture details. Like these leaves….

And more leaves….

And yet more leaves….

Next we will take a look at the Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

When we went, they were celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival and admission was by donation.  They also served tea and moon cakes once you got in.

The garden has the classic corridor that connects you from one building to another.  It was decorated with lanterns for the festival.

The garden also got a nice view of the park and the pond.

The scenery makes a perfect autumn afternoon leisure walk.  There are more photos posted at my wife’s blog here, please visit her posting for more photos of the Sun Yat-Sen Classic Chinese Garden.

If you visit Vancouver next time, make sure this is on your list of places to visit.