retreat flourished in this short, but dynamic, period. From these urban retreats, the scholars produced paintings that began to represent idealized versions of a cultivated society where thatched cottages and fishermen became metaphors for a humble life.
Figure 7. Wang Hui (c. 1632—c. 1717), The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll Three: Ji’nan to Mount Tai (Kangxi nanxun, juan san: Ji’nan zhi Taishan). Qing dynasty, datable to 1698. Handscroll; ink and color on silk. 26¾ in. × 45 ft. 8¾ in. Detail. Purchase, the Dillon Fund Gift, 1979. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.
When Han rule was restored under the Ming Dynasty, (1368–1644), there was a return in the imperial courts to Confucian orderliness in all aspects of society, including painting that represented a benevolent, well-governed, hierarchical government. However, the personal expression of the scholar-painter endured, especially as officials suffered political setbacks or retired from imperial appointments to return to their native cities and towns. Among the places that had sent many scholars to the imperial court, and was therefore a place of retreat for retired officials, was Suzhou.
When China came under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), many scholars lived in self-enforced retirement. Lacking court access to the vast artistic holdings of the government, these scholar-painters were forced away from the common process of copying master-works. The result was an emphasis on local scenes or landscapes and a wide ranging invention of subject matter. In this period, the gardens influenced the subject of paintings where previously gardens were influenced by the paintings.
In contemporary China, the landscape genre remains central to the emergence of international Chinese artists. Among them is the expatriate Zhang Daqian (1899–1983) who, with his brother Zhang Shanzi, lived for a period of time in Suzhou's Master of the Nets Garden, where the current Peony Pavilion served as their studio.
SPACE IN THE GARDENS OF SUZHOU
The gardens of Suzhou neither recede from the visitor nor spread out in repose. The elements of the gardens confront the visitor—pushing rocks, trees, and walls into the foreground—compressing and compacting space—is if great hands gathered a mountainous territory with rocks, forests, and streams, then squeezed it tightly—and ever more tightly—until the entire region would fit into a small city garden.
Peter Jacobs, the Canadian landscape architect and educator, remarked to me that his photographs of the gardens of Suzhou were predominantly oriented vertically—in contrast with his photographs of most gardens elsewhere in the world, which were oriented horizontally in so-called landscape format. The modern instrumentality of the camera assists us in interpreting the movement of our gaze rising from shallow waters, up stream banks, and high to distant peaks. A similar analysis is often undertaken in the study of Chinese landscape paintings, many of which are also oriented vertically. Common among many is the division of the painting into three zones: at the bottom, a foreground of water; at the center, a small sign of human habitation in a wide landscape; and at the top, the craggy outlines of folded mountains. The viewer’s gaze, as with the observation of the gardens, travels up and down these paintings.
THE QUESTION OF AUTHENTICITY AND HISTORY
The Chinese garden historian Chen Congzhou, in his collected essays, On Chinese Gardens, remarks that the Garden of Harmony “was four times renovated to attain its perfection.” Most of the current gardens, as I have pointed out, actually date from recent, exhaustive renovations. The Garden of the Peaceful Mind, in Wuxi, has probably survived with greater “authenticity” than any other. The gardens have all undergone changes of ownership and maintenance, and one should, with few exceptions, understand that what is seen today is a physical palimpsest of repairs, renovations, and extensions of the gardens. As Maggie Keswick declared, “Chinese history is littered with the corpses of gardens.”
For some, the fact that the gardens are reconstructions is problematic in a current period sometimes described as the “age of reproduction.” Yet, as Pierre Ryckmans cautions, “The Chinese past is both spiritually active and physically invisible.”
The non-Chinese attitude—from ancient Egypt to the modern West—is essentially an active, aggressive attempt to challenge and overcome the erosion of time. Its ambition is to build for all eternity by adopting the strongest possible materials and using techniques that will ensure maximum resilience. Yet, by doing this, the builders are merely postponing their ineluctable defeat. The Chinese, on the contrary, have realised that—in Segalen’s words—“nothing immobile can escape the hungry teeth of the ages.” Thus, the Chinese constructors yielded to the onrush of time, the better to deflect it.
REPOSITORIES OF HISTORY AND CULTURE
The gardens are also repositories of cultural artifacts and traditions. The names of halls and gardens allude to—and remind knowledgeable visitors of—ancient poems and legends. The inscribed horizontal boards above doorways and above the honored position inside the halls perform similar roles, as do the paired vertical couplets mounted on the columns of the halls. These are not only renowned for the sentiments of the words but also for the spirit and skill of the calligraphy—sometimes at the hands of an important figure such as the Emperor Qianlong, who composed many such artifacts.
Stone inscriptions, doorway carvings, and steles also contain rich literary allusions or propagate the philosophical views of Confucian, Buddhist, or Daoist schools of thought and are intended to trigger lofty thoughts or enhance the potency of places in the garden.
Ancient scroll tables (whose ends turn up to prevent scrolls from rolling off), upright chairs, blue and white porcelain, carved inkstones, and other furnishings of the scholar’s residence are also preserved in the gardens.
ANCIENT TEXTS
Three books provide special insight into the Chinese garden. The Craft of Gardens, or Yuan Ye, was compiled in three volumes by Tongli native Ji Cheng at the end of the Ming Dynasty. The Story of the Stone, the Ming Dynasty novel with vivid depictions of life in the gardens, was inspired, in part, by the boyhood experiences of the primary author, Cao Xueqin, in the Humble Administrator’s Garden. The Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden, first published in 1679, codifies the art of landscape painting and includes a collection of exemplary landscape paintings.
GARDEN CONSTRUCTION
The designers of the gardens of Suzhou are largely anonymous. A myriad of skilled craftsmen worked within extended cultural traditions to produce them. Many gardens are attributed, instead, to poets or painters who inspired the gardens or scenes within them. There are a few notable garden makers—such as Ge Yuliang, who made the centerpiece rockery at the Mountain Villa of Embracing Beauty—yet most of the garden makers are obscured in history.
The revitalization of the construction trades and craftsmen in all aspects of Chinese gardens, landscapes, and architecture after the fall of the Qing Dynasty continues to be an imperative. For more than a century, these skills have atrophied, and the passing of expertise from generation to generation has been abruptly severed. Today, the quality and material integrity of construction in many fields is largely artless, and the successful emergence of contemporary material culture will require the education of new skilled craftsmen.
Figure 8. Zuisen-ji, a garden by the Zen Buddhist monk Muso Soseki, bridges the traditions that underlie essential aspects of the gardens of China and Japan. A veranda looks out onto a rock cliff with a pond, two bridges, and a man-made cave at its base.
GARDENS
