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        On the memory of most of the older generation growing and living in Swatow, a picturesque seaboard city off the coast of southeast China, the Tiny Garden which we called it Xiao Gongyuan in Mandarin Chinese, is an unique entertainment place with the timeless style of architectures in the 1930s. Although now in our eyes, it is just a narrow quarter among the desolate and shabby commercial buildings, this little space which features both western and Chinese architectural styles once was the noisiest street in Swatow City.

                        
        The reason why I consider this place unique is that there exist the grandest integral Cantonese arcade complex still remaining in China including Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese arcade, or named Qilou in Mandarin, which looks like the arcade building in France or Italy, is an architectural form of a storied building adjacent to streets in southern China. The character of Cantonese arcade is that the underside parts of it are the colonnade or the sidewalk in order to avoid rain and overshadow for the passers-by, while the floor parts are over the sidewalk for business. Qilou is a symbol of the culmination of a series of historic forces from economic and social development of Sawtow during 1930s.

                        
        Strolling down among this historical area, you would not only immerse into a fancy world that seems to take a step back in time to China in the first half of twentieth century and evoke the strong surges of nostalgia for elegant lifestyle like Shanghai in the twentieth century, but taste various delicious classic snacks and diets, most of which are honored as the China's Time-honored Brand. In the hexagonal pavilion in the center of the Tiny Garden, several senior citizens are playing the urheen and rihin. The soft sunlight shines on the colorful glass window, and the vines covering the dilapidated wall sway when the wind blows. Homely streets and alleys, bare-stone broken walls, and several sounds of church bells coming, have come back to mean so much to you.


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