In the Ming Dynasty, the imperial families of Beijing began building gardens in the fecund territory just northwest of the capital city. These were didactic gardens intended to re-introduce agriculture, and by example agricultural policy, in the new regime. The scholar gardeners of Suzhou are often described as constructing urban places for retreat and as a place for aesthetic pursuits that epitomize a Daoist ideal, yet, as Craig Clunas has pointed out, the owners were also situating themselves in a political practice as highly educated gentlemen farmers—a parochial reinterpretation of the Beijing emperors.
EARLY GARDENS OF SUZHOU
Suzhou was founded in 514 B.C.E. in the Spring and Autumn Period when He Lu ascended the throne and built a city twenty-three kilometers in circumference that was protected by eight land gates and eight water gates. Panmen (Pan Gate), in the city’s southwest corner, is preserved from this period. The first recorded gardens in the city were imperial gardens built by He Lu, whose Gesu Terrace was built southwest of Suzhou, and by his son, Fu Chai, who built the Guanwa Palace. Private gardens first appeared in the Eastern Han Dynasty with gardens such as Zuo’s Garden, built by the senior official Zuo Rong.
Figure 5. The entrance to Surging Wave Pavilion, the garden with the longest history in Suzhou, is at the end of a bridge that crosses one of Suzhou’s many canals.
PROSPERITY BORN OF THE YANGTZE RIVER AND GRAND CANAL
The early history of China is marked by west to east transportation along the Silk Road and the great rivers. Xi’an, an early capital, is far inland from the commercial, trade, and political centers of contemporary China. The construction of the Grand Canal strongly influenced the change that altered the “flow” of China forever and linked Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou, and Beijing, among others. These cities remain, almost thirteen centuries later, the most prosperous in China. Suzhou lies at the strategic intersection of these two systems—the east to west Yangtze River and the north to south Grand Canal. Coupled with fecund agriculture and the development of silk culture in the region, Suzhou has remained a commercially successful, and thus, wealthy, city for much of the past millennium. This prosperity contributed to the rise of a class of citizens interested in making gardens.
THE GARDENS OF SUZHOU THROUGH HISTORY
The history of the design and construction of gardens of Suzhou—as with many sites in China—is complex. Gardens were constructed, bought, sold, left to degrade, appended to, and modified in many ways over centuries. The golden age of the Suzhou gardens was from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries during the Ming and Qing dynasties, but most of the gardens of Suzhou were significantly destroyed by the end of the 1940s following invasion by foreign nations, the internal Taiping Rebellion, the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century. Most of the gardens and pavilions are, thus, recent restorations or reconstructions. Yet the desire to restore the gardens of Suzhou affirms that gardens are one of the highest cultural accomplishments of humankind, and they persist in both the imagination and in material culture despite their neglect or destruction.
The Song Dynasty
Surging Wave Pavilion, the garden with the longest history in Suzhou, was first built during the reign of Emperor Qingli (1041–1049) of the Northern Song by Sun Shunqing. It exemplifies the fleeting nature of gardens for, although it maintains the general layout from the Song Dynasty garden that was built on the site of an earlier residence, it has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. It was fully destroyed in the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion and rebuilt in 1927 as part of the adjacent art college.
The Master of the Nets Garden was first built as the Ten-Thousand-Volume Hall in 1440 by Shi Zhengzhi. It was abandoned after his death and was rebuilt in 1770. The current garden is largely the result of a fine restoration in the 1940s by the He family.
The Yuan Dynasty
Among the characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty, founded by Kublai Khan, was a cultural polyglot that provided freedom for various religions—including the flourishing of Buddhism in China. It was in this context that disciples of the Buddhist monk Zhongfeng built the monastery Shizilin, the Lion Grove, which subsequently became a private garden.
The Ming Dynasty
In the Ming Dynasty, the Han Chinese regained power and a flowering of culture ensued that led to the creation of elegant painting, poetry, furniture, calligraphy, architecture, and gardens. There were more than 270 gardens in Suzhou during this period.
Gardens which were founded in the Ming Dynasty and still survive include the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Garden of Cultivation, and Lingering Garden. The Garden of the Peaceful Mind in Wuxi, the Garden of Peace and Harmony in Shanghai, and the Garden of Ancient Splendor in Nanxiang also date from this period.
The Qing Dynasty
Among the 130 gardens that were founded in Suzhou in the Qing Dynasty, those that survive include: the Mountain Villa of Embracing Beauty, the Couple’s Garden, Garden of Harmony, Zigzag Garden (former residence of Yu Yue), Mountain Villa of Embracing Emerald, Crane Garden, and Carefree Garden. The Garden of Retreat and Reflection in Tongli also dates from late in this period.
Contemporary Suzhou Gardens
By the middle of the twentieth century, domestic and foreign unrest had wracked China. In a period of more than one hundred years, much of the knowledge and skill of building the gardens was lost. Chinese landscape architects and garden designers continue to struggle with the lost construction skills and extension of the ideas embodied in these gardens. Contemporary Chinese garden design is in a crisis of poorly built reproduction gardens on a grand scale.
Figure 6. Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Lofty Mount Lu (1467). Water spills into a rocky waterfall and into a calm stream. A trail winds up the left side, across a bridge, and leads to a small hermitage tucked behind a peak in the center right. National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Some recent gardens, such as the ones at the Suzhou Museum, point to possible directions. However, the central garden is poorly scaled, among other shortcomings. The bamboo courtyard off of one of the north galleries, however, is exquisite. Suzhou remains a center of garden scholarship and talent with many elegant private gardens constructed in recent years which provide promise for the continued vitality of Suzhou, a modern city of four million people, as one of the world’s great places for gardens.
LANDSCAPE PAINTING
Chinese landscape painting has expressed the place of humans within the world for centuries. By the late Tang Dynasty (618-907), landscapes had emerged as their own genre and have remained a central subject of painting in China since. The Tang paintings depict vast mountains and watersheds with sparse evidence of human inhabitation. These mountainwater, or shanshui, landscapes depict places of retreat for men in times of political upheaval or personal quests for understanding and enlightenment.
The landscape painting of the ensuing Song Dynasty (960–1279) reflected the more strict Confucian social order initiated during this time. The image of the private retreat, or hermitage, emerged as well-educated—but disgraced or retired—officials retreated into poetry and an expressive painting style that shared its emotional force with calligraphy.
The Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), begun under Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, expelled the educated Chinese officials from service. Many retreated into garden residences where they continued, with their friends and colleagues,
