桂湖公园

This guide to Guihu Park in Chengdu follows Yang Shen, the only top scholar Ming-dynasty Sichuan ever produced, who once planted osmanthus along this lake's bank before seeing friends off in a boat. It traces the argument with the young Jiajing emperor in 1524 that cost him his rank and sent him into military exile in Yunnan, and the decades his wife Huang E spent in Xindu writing poems about the distance between them. Some accounts can't even agree on whether he ever saw this bank again. Look for the four kinds of cassia, gold, silver, red, and one that blooms out of season, still lining the water.