Introduction of Caojia Garden

Caojia Garden is located in Wuma Road, Hebei District, Tianjin, formerly known as Sun Jia Garden. It was built by comprador and arms dealer Sun Zhongying in the late Qing Dynasty. It is now the seat of the 254th Hospital of the People's Liberation Army. Sun Zhongying, a native of Nanjing, Jiangsu, first worked in a bank in Shanghai. Guangxu 16th year (1890) came to Tianjin to do business, and then worked as a comprador in a foreign firm. Knowing Li Hongzhang, he went on to run the arms business and made a lot of money. The 29th year of Guangxu (1903) was the development period of Hebei New District. He bought land in Hebei, starting from Wei Yuan Road in the west, Zhou Wei Road in the east, Wuma Road in the south and Xinkaihe in the north, covering an area of more than 200 mu, building houses and opening private gardens. The garden is rich in flowers and trees, pavilions and streams, and it is also quite elegant, so it is called Sunjiayuan. In the thirty-second year of Guangxu (1906), in order to make new wealth, the garden was sold to Cao Kun privately. Zhongshan, a native of Tianjin, was a cloth seller in his early years. In the eighth year of Guangxu (1882), he joined the new army and was sent to Tianjin Ordnance School for further study. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, he climbed Yuan Shikai, and Guangxu was promoted to the control of the third army of the new army in 32 years. Cao Kun took a fancy to Sun Jia Garden and bought it from Sun Zhongying at a large sum of money. Since then, Sun Jiayuan has been renamed Cao Jiayuan. Since then, relying on his power, Cao Kun has expanded the garden site with plundered wealth, built large-scale buildings in the garden, demolished old houses and converted them into palace-style buildings, with corridors connecting the buildings; It is also for their children that the western-style double-column doors and curved eaves of Gongzi Building and Princess Building were built. We will also build rockeries in the garden, dig artificial lakes, build a pavilion in the middle of the lake, and build a swimming pool; Shi Min, Shima, Shiyang and Shishi are placed in front of each building. The garden is lush, elegant and pleasant, and it is the crown of private gardens for a time. During the expansion and renovation of Caojia Garden, many stones came from Shuixizhuang and other garden sites.