Only upon entering the courtyard at the back did it become slightly more presentable.
This rear courtyard had a main building, east and west wing rooms, and even inverted rooms, with a few rear-lying rooms behind the main building.
On the east side of the courtyard, there was a row of communal rooms where the maidservants and elderly women lived.
There was also a small kitchen, not large, but equipped with a stove, pots, and cupboards, everything complete.
The courtyard had a grape trellis, though the grape leaves were withering yellow at this moment, there were still ten-odd bunches of purple grapes covered in white frost hanging.
There were also two large water tanks on either side of the courtyard; they once held fish and water lilies but now contained only half shells of yellow sand.
A few trees were planted under the gallery; Wang Yongzhu could roughly identify them: there were wintersweets, red maples, two crepe myrtles, and one osmanthus.
