direction only, the bracket would be called tou xin, or “stolen heart.” If the joint completed a well-balanced square under the eaves, it was called ji xin, or “accounted heart.”18 Since classical Chinese makes no distinction between “heart” and “mind,” these brackets underneath the roof (like the garden as a whole) provided a well-informed gentleman with an opportunity to balance inner and outer worlds.
“Stolen heart,” like “accounted heart,” was a design element that linked garden culture to the predicament of scholars in need of spiritual and physical refuge from the din of political entanglements. Few expressed this need as artfully as Mi Wanzhong (1570–1628), the famous scholar-official who designed Shao Yuan—the most renowned garden in the hamlet Haidian. At the height of his fame, Mi reigned almost like an emperor in the realm of painting and calligraphy. A common saying paid homage to his reputation: “Dong in the south, Mi in the north.” This was an appreciative statement acknowledging two unrivaled masters: Dong Qichang in Jiangsu province and Mi Wanzhong in the Beijing area. At the height of his reputation, Mi needed no retreat from politics; he had not yet turned his artistic attention to details such as “stolen heart.”
This discovery came as a result of his fall from political grace. An outspoken opponent of powerful court eunuchs, Mi was removed from office in 1600. There were no ox pens in China in those days for a scholar who defied the will of the powerful. Exile to the far corners of China was the common fate of lesser luminaries. A disgraced courtier like Mi was left to nurse his wounds near the city of his former glory. The beauty of Haidian suddenly took on fresh appeal. Mi Wanzhong had more spiritual and material resources than other critics of Ming corruption. He knew the history of gardens. He was a skilled and famous painter. He knew how to entice the eye, the heart, and the mind away from disaster.
In 1612, Mi Wanzhong began the design and building of his Haidian garden. By the time it was completed two years later, its fame rivaled the admiration once garnered by his paintings and calligraphy. The name of the garden, like its design, was meant to create an alternative vision to the desiccating squabbles at court. Mindful of the importance of water in northwest Beijing, Mi decided to use it skillfully to embellish the symbolic destiny of his family line:
Because there was only a ladleful of water in the garden and because he thought that a ladle was a suitable container for the Rice (Mi) family, he named his new garden Shao Yuan—Ladle Garden. Shortly after this, Marquis Li Wei, whose family name meant Plum, established his beautiful and famous park just west of Ladle Garden . . . both parks were so beautiful that a certain Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty is reported to have praised their delicious flavor, saying: “the Rice garden is not tasteless nor the Plum garden sour.” Long after the Ming dynasty had fallen and the Plum family’s garden had become an imperial park, the Rice family still lived prosperously in their delightful Ladle Garden.19
Mi Wanzhong was not content to design a garden to perpetuate the family name in times of political disgrace. He was not soothed by the waters of Haidian and the opportunity to dip his “Ladle Garden” into the refreshing source springs.
Once the splendid Shao Yuan was complete, Mi Wanzhong proceeded to grace it with his painterly talent. The result is one of the most gracious, lush, detailed hand scrolls in the history of garden art. A copy of this scroll can be found in the rare book collection of the Beijing University library. One of the few scholars who had access to the fragile remnant was Hou Renzhi, the scholar who knew how to cherish the same waters, the same landscape that had inspired Mi Wanzhong at the end of the Ming dynasty.
Professor Hou has written extensively about the history of Shao Yuan and was kind enough to share with me one of the few color reproductions of the Beida hand scroll (which is no longer available for scholarly perusal). In this painting, the eye of the viewer is invited to travel slowly from the serpentine island on the left toward a central pavilion where scholars gather for the savoring of cultural arts (figure 13). An arched marble bridge is the first man-made element a guest would encounter, a concrete reminder that this is not the effete world of the imperial palace in Beijing but rather a wondrous refuge, a place where thought can take its shape at ease. As if echoing the mind’s call, a boat called the Barge of Tranquility (Ding Fang) ferries guests slowly across waters named the Waters of Linguistic Refinement (Wen Shui Po).20 This barge and these waters were meant to aid the mind in focused contemplation. Having reached the other shore, having further divested oneself of the cares of history and politics, guests could begin a slow-paced walk through a lang—the long, enclosed passage meant to link one vista to another, constantly surprising, constantly changing, constantly delighting. A lower, zigzagging wooden bridge finally brought visitors to the centerpiece of the garden, the stone-viewing pavilion so dear to the heart of Mi Wanzhong.
During one of our many conversations about the history of northwest Beijing, Hou Renzhi took out another, less colorful image of the Shao Yuan garden. This is an ink-and-brush sketch, most likely made by Mi Wanzhong’s assistant, to convey his master’s wishes concerning the architectural details of the site as it was being built (figure 14). In this garden, as in the lush painting, water predominates. Like in the rubbed-out remnant on the doorpost at Wang Yao’s house, scrawny willows bend into a still lake. In the very center of the sketch looms a larger, different kind of tree, perhaps a juniper. Beneath its branches, as in the hand scroll, stands Mi Wanzhong’s treasure: a large, strange-shaped rock.
Figure 13. Reproduction of color hand scroll painting by Mi Wanzhong toward the end of the Ming dynasty, ca. 1609. The scroll is being held in the Beijing University archives. This reproduction was made available to the author courtesy of Hou Renzhi.
Figure 14. Architectural sketch of central pavilion and ornamental rock in the Shao Yuan garden, attributed to Mi Wanzhong’s garden architect. Courtesy of Hou Renzhi.
Figure 15. “The Stone That Is Mi’s Friend,” ornamental rock currently in the courtyard of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, identified as belonging to the collection of Mi Wanzhong by Yang Chengyun in Gu yuan cong heng (Beijing, 1998), p. 15.
At the height of his fame and power, Mi had indulged a passion for collecting strange rock formations. In fact, the scholar-official was known among his friends as Mi Youshi—Mi, the Friend of Rocks. Dislodged from the center of imperial politics by misfortune, Mi embraced this love of hard stone ever more fervently. In the “bones” of the garden, he saw the kind of loyalty and truth that was sorely lacking at the court of the Ming emperor. Mi’s favorite stone was called “Neither-Nor-Rock” (fei fei shi). A tall, boldly perforated structure anchored by a cavernous, thin wall, this rock now adorns the courtyard of the Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology (figure 15). Ignored in the 1950s, Mi’s rock was buried and thereby protected by rubble during the decade of the Cultural Revolution. Unlike residence 75, this remnant from the past was somewhat portable and thus survived relatively unscathed. Unlike the scholars on the door to Wang Yao’s study, unlike the body of the aged scholar and those of his colleagues, Mi’s fei fei shi could speak its own mind. It retained its “neither-nor” quality, its ability to challenge the powers at be. Placed in the heart of the Sackler Museum, it keeps its own counsel, labeled simply as “Mi’s Friend” by the very few who know or care about the history of old gardens embedded in today’s Beida.21
But old gardens have a way of speaking to—indeed, speaking for—those who cannot voice their own concerns. After the collapse of the Ming dynasty in 1644, the
