Chinese traditional garden emerging as a photo spot among young couples

Wolhwawon Garden is a good place to visit for resting in silence. The garden is usually calm on holidays and weekends even when there are more visitors. Since its opening about 10 years ago, it has been visited only by a few people who got to know about it through word of mouth. However, recently, the garden has emerged as one of the best photo spots since the airing of a TV drama series Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo. The irony is that the drama series is set in the Goryeo era: Wolhwawon Garden has a concept of a Chinese traditional garden of the Lingnan region in the late Ming and early Qing eras.

Food is something that best represents the history and culture of a country and so does a garden. As the Chinese people who always cross the line between bluffing and exaggerating, this Chinese garden also features obscure boundaries between spaces. When you climb a staircase and enter the garden through its main gate, walls spread out before your eyes. They are decorated with translucent green glass with flower patterns. The inside of the garden is scarcely perceptible through the walls. Behind them is a pond, across which Ongnandang House is standing, telling you that you are not in Korea anymore. Its roofline sharply curved with both ends soaring toward the sky is something that is never found in Korean traditional structures. You find yourself in China, all of a sudden.

Strolling in Wolhwawon Garden, you may keep coming across other unexpected sceneries. After crossing a bridge, you are led by a winding path to a steep artificial hill on which Ujeong, a pavilion that mysteriously looks so high seemingly due to its narrow width, is standing. On the pond across the hill, another pavilion named Wolbang is floating on the water as a boat. If you pass through round doors on brick walls, you enter totally different spaces. Is it that you are lost and have stepped into a Chinese utopian world? You become puzzled and fascinated at the same time.

Wolhwawon was opened in 2006 inside Hyowon Park in Ingye-dong, Suwon, under an MOU between Gyeonggi-do and Guangdong Province of China on the creation of their national traditional garden in each other's country for cultural exchanges. This garden with a total area of 6,000 square meters was formed by about 80 Chinese workers, costing about USD 3.2 million borne by Guangdong province.

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