Covering an area of 23,310 square meters, the Lingering Garden is the best garden in Suzhou as well as being one of the four most famous gardens in China. (The others are: the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Mountain Resort of Chengde, and the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou). It is renowned for the artistic way in which the spaces between various kinds of architectural forms are dealt with.

Situated outside the Cang Gate of Suzhou city, the garden was built in the 21st year of the reign of Wanli (1583 A.D.) by Xu Taishi, a bureaucrat, as his private garden-residence and named East Garden. According to the famous writer Yuan Hongdao (1568 - 1610) in his "A Record of Gardens", the East Garden at that time "has magnificent multi-storey houses in the front and halls in the rear, and a range of awe-inspiring stone mountains built by the well-known master Zhou Bingzhong, resembling a long scroll of landscape painting."

Later the garden belonged to the Liu family in the 59th year of the reign of Qianlong (1794 A.D.) and was expanded, repaired, and renamed "the Hanbi Villa", while popularly known as "Liu Garden". In the 12th year of the reign of Tongzhi (1873 A.D.), it was purchased, expanded and repaired by the Shengs, who gave it a new name "Lingering Garden ", since "lingering" in Chinese sounds similar to "Liu", the surname of the former owner.

Today the garden is separated into the eastern, central, northern and western parts. The central part features a man-made mountain and lakeside scene, resembling a long scroll of traditional Chinese painting. The eastern part is noted for its joyous groupings of garden courts and elegant buildings, the western part for the enchantment of woody hills, and the northern part for cottages with bamboo fences and idyllic scenes.

An artificial hill made from Taihu rock is always the main component of Suzhou gardens. The 6.5-meter-high Cloud-Capped Peak in this garden, as the highest limestone in classical gardens of Suzhou, is believed to have been left behind by the imperial collector of the Northern Song Dynasty. Weighing about 5 tons, the limestone is supposed to have been carried from Taihu Lake, 40kms away.

The number of stelea in the Lingering Garden has never been surpassed by any other garden in Suzhou. Masterfully inscribed with the works of over 100 calligraphers in the Jin, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, these priceless stelea illustrate the evolutionary course of Chinese calligraphy during the past 1,000 years.

Lingering Garden is characteristic of the classical gardens in the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze region and in 1961 it was listed as a cultural relic of national importance.