Liuhuahu Park

This guide to Liuhuahu Park in Guangzhou starts beneath the water, where paddleboats now drift over the ruins of a tenth-century pleasure garden built for the teenage Southern Han emperor Liu Chang. You'll hear how palace women once tossed wilted flowers into a stream here, giving the site its name, and how Liu Chang handed real power to eunuchs while hosting lantern-lit banquets on the water. It follows the growing threat from Song armies to the north, and how little of that turbulent history shows from the water's edge today.