The garden on the goose ridge

The park began as a private garden. In 1909 Li Yaoting, first chairman of the Chongqing chamber of commerce, built a villa on the ridge and called it the Li Garden, or Yi Garden; the house and its grounds kept the manner of the southern Chinese garden, and the ridge was named for a goose because its narrow, steep shape was thought to resemble one. After 1949 the garden passed into public use, and in 1958 a large restoration turned it into Eling Park. The old villa, the rocks and the planting were kept as the core of the park.

Eling is the highest point of the narrow peninsula, and the park occupies the ridge, next to Fotuguan Park, on the line that separates the upper city from the lower one. The Liangjiang Pavilion gives a view of the whole of Yuzhong and of both rivers at once, which is why the park is visited for the view as much as for the garden. The basin's air is humid and overcast for much of the year, and the view from the ridge changes with the weather. It is planted for two seasons, tulips in spring and chrysanthemums in autumn, and holds a Japanese-style garden laid out for Hiroshima. The Eling war-resistance sites, with the Soviet martyrs' cemetery, are inside.