Crab sculptures inside Bajie Garden

Bajie Garden in Bacheng town, Kunshan is a 3.8 square kilometer landscape garden dedicated to Ba Jie - a folklore figure said to be the first person to taste crab meat.

The garden is surrounded by a 910,000-square-meter green belt. Inside the garden the water coverage reaches 1.2 square kilometers, almost one third of the total land mass of the garden. A five kilometer lakeside track, specially designed for cycling enthusiasts, can be found there.

Various stone sculptures are dotted around the garden, many of which feature crab-themed carvings.

One stone sculpture at Kunshan's Bajie garden features lotus flowers and a scavenging crab. [Photo from bachengly] Lotus and crab in Chinese pronounces as he xie, the same as the Chinese word for harmony.

A bronze sculpture at the park depicts a lifelike crab holding a reed between its pincers with a young child sitting on top of it. The image is famous in folk culture, since the saying "two crabs passing along a reed" (erjia chuanlu) was once used as an idiom meaning to achieve an excellent result in the imperial examination.