Macau 澳門小游

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A Chinese garden would always have a pond, with willow trees, a zigzag bridge, and preferably golden carps in the water.

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When the family fortunate declined, the garden fell into ruins but it was eventually purchased and restored by the government in 1973, and opened to the public in 1974, according to the tourist brochure. When we visited the garden, we saw many local residents, mainly elderly people, were exercising in the nice garden.

The main building in the garden is now a pavilion for for arts & craft exhibition and other cultural activities. This picture is the back of the pavilion with two balconies over the pond.

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There was a separate lotus pond. By the time of our visit, the lotus are withered. I imagine how nice it would be in the summer when the lotus are in full bloom.

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In my opinion, even the withered lotus has a rustic beauty. 

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Nice to see some green in the dead of winter.

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Some details of the building, decorations, and plants.

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These tulips at the entrance were nice, but a bit "out of sync" with the rest of the garden, IMHO.

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Among the first creatures to greet us were stray cats. They seems to be well taken care of. We saw a woman fed the cats, right next to the sign that says No Feeding Stray Cats & Dogs.

An old woman told me that these cats are famous, and they all have names. Two of the lighter colour ones are called "知知" & "佐佐" - roughly means Mumble & Jumble.

This particular one just made this patch his (her?) home. Notice the cut on the ear - it means the cat is steriled.

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Our next stop was the Guia Fortress 東望洋砲台. After re-reading the tourist brochure, I realized that we should be visited the fortress first, so we can just simply walking down to the garden, instead of taking two taxi trips.

On the approach to the fortress, the first thing caught my eyes were the banyan (?) tree growing on the wall. Then another tree growing on top of rock. (Did they took the little bonsai tree and grow it on the hill?  )