The Humble Administrator’s Garden locating at No.178 Loumen Northeast Street, is a representative for gardens in the Jiannan area. Being the largest classical scenic garden among all the Suzhou gardens, it is regarded as the Cultural Relics of National Importance under the Protection of the State. Primarily this place had been the residence for a poet named Lu Guimeng in Tang Dynasty, and later the Dahong in the Yuan Dynasty. Till the Zhengde year 4 of Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1509), it was purchased by Wang Xianchen, a Jinshi in Empire Hongzhi’s time and later a TempleYushi in Empire Jiajin’s ruling, who was so officially unpleasant that he quitted his official career and lived the rest of his life in Suzhou.

The former Yushi asked the famous painter Wen Zhengming who was the representative of the Wu School to design the blue print for the garden, and spent 16 years accomplishing the engineering. He made it a name out of The Retirement Song, by Panyue, a scholar in the Xijin Period: In the leisurely muse, I build the garden and decorate it with tree…Vegetable on the ground, keep the day going on…Isn’t it, the administration of a humble administrator? Thus, the humble administrator’s garden is an allusion of his life in which, administration is just growing vegetables and caring the garden. However, he died not long after the garden was completed, and his son played it away in a gamble over night, loosing it to the Xu family. And for the next 400 hundred of years, the garden had been turned into private residence, official residence or civil houses, and was even divided into 3 parts which respectively had a new name. Till 1950s, it again was put into one and reclaimed its name. Covering an area of 10.23 ares (51950m2, about 50000m2 and 52000m2 respectively according to three other data)，it is now composed of 4 parts: namely the east, middle and west area, and the residence area, where the dwellings are typical folk houses of Suzhou, and is presently used as the exhibition hall of the garden museum.