Chinese Gardens

Chinese Gardens

China’s garden design tradition extends over more than 3,000 years and, it is often said, there were three famous garden types: palace gardens, temple gardens and scholar gardens, each of which had a religious (symbolic) role. Three additional types can be added: the vegetable garden, the hunting park (though none survive) and the domestic courtyard, as attached to private houses and palaces (e.g. in the Forbidden City).

Of the four most famous Chinese gardens, two are scholar gardens and two are imperial palace gardens: the Humble Administrator’s Garden (in Suzhou), the Garden for Lingering (in Suzhou), the Imperial Summer Palace (in Beijing), and the Imperial Mountain Resort (in Chengde).

Introduction of Chinese Garden

History of Chinese Gardens

The aesthetic of Chinese gardens developed over thousands of years, becoming more sophisticated over time. The earliest known gardens appeared during the Zhou Dynasty (1046 – 256 BCE). Early records describe these spaces as natural grounds used by nobles for relaxation and hunting. By the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), however, these early gardens became museum-like collections of rare and exotic plants and animals. While the emperor owned the most elaborate of these gardens with species gifted from across the realm, many aristocrats emulated his gardens with smaller versions of their own as a symbol of status.

During the Yuan Dynasty (1279 – 1368 CE), however, the garden became a vital sanctuary for scholars. The occupation of the imperial throne by the Mongols meant few scholars could find employment in the court and their distaste for the rulers they perceived as barbarians led others to reject available positions. Many educated members of society withdrew to lives of private contemplation and pursuit of artistic and literary endeavors. While the private garden retreats were mostly reserved for the upper aristocracy and court scholars for the first two thousand years of Chinese gardening, their popularity among the lower aristocrats and wealthy merchants grew exponentially during the Song Dynasty (960 – 1279 CE). During this period, one of the most common pastimes among scholars and other elites included collecting rock and plant specimens. The most spectacular gardens from this period came from the southern region of Suzhou where the climate, soil, and commercial prosperity allowed plants to flourish and enabled owners to gather rare specimens. Additionally, the chemical composition of nearby Lake Tai eroded local limestone in unique and irregular ways, creating the most prized garden rocks.The Six Dynasties Period, a time of rapid change in ruling families spanning 220 – 589 CE, saw a greater complexity in garden designs and the introduction of symbolic aesthetics. Rather than just status symbols, many gardens became intimate spaces for reflective meditation. One of the most well-known examples of using a garden for a retreat from society comes from this period. The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove appear in countless pieces of art and literature in China. These scholars, many disheartened with political life, withdrew from society and spent their days together in discussion of Taoist philosophy and engaging in several arts.

Finally, Chinese gardens reached their peak of artistry and sophistication during the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644 CE) as imperial rule returned to the Chinese nobles and the traditional employment of the scholarly class and nobles resumed. At this time, the Jiangnan region, located just south of the Yangtze River, produced some of the most spectacular gardens in Chinese history, except for the splendor of the imperial grounds.

Classifications and Distribution

Chinese gardens are generally divided into two categories: imperial gardens (northern gardens) and private gardens (southern gardens).

Imperial garden
Imperial gardens are mostly found in north China, with those in Beijing being most representative, displaying grandness and magnificence. Imperial gardens have been a pet project of many emperors and empresses throughout China’s long history. While gardens from the earliest dynasties have faded into history, many Qing-dynasty (1644–1911) gardens remain. At one time, only members of the royal family and their guests or servants were allowed to experience the beauty of these massive garden complexes, but in modern times, they are open to ordinary people.
Private Garden
The Humble Administrator’s GardenThe Humble Administrators Garden.
Private gardens are mostly found in south China, especially in cities in the ‘south of the Yangtze River area, such as Suzhou, Wuxi, Nanjing, and Hangzhou. Private gardens were designed and created as a place of retreat for ancient scholars to escape the chaos of the city and have private relaxation. Private gardens in China aremore intimate than the grand imperial gardens, but their simplicity offers a unique form of beauty. These gardens were often used for parties, such as those during the autumn moon festival. One important characteristic of many private Chinese gardens is a rockery.

Design of the classical garden

A Chinese garden was not meant to be seen all at once; the plan of a classical Chinese garden presented the visitor with a series of perfectly composed and framed glimpses of scenery; a view of a pond, or of a rock, or a grove of bamboo, a blossoming tree, or a view of a distant mountain peak or a pagoda. The 16th-century Chinese writer and philosopher Ji Cheng instructed garden builders to “hide the vulgar and the common as far as the eye can see, and include the excellent and the splendid.”

Classical gardens traditionally have these structures:

The ceremony hall (ting), or “room”. A building used for family celebrations or ceremonies, usually with an interior courtyard, not far from the entrance gate.
The principal pavilion (da ting), or “large room”, for the reception of guests, for banquets and for celebrating holidays, such as New Years and the Festival of Lanterns. It often has a veranda around the building to provide cool and shade.
The pavilion of flowers (hua ting), or “flower room”. Located near the residence, this building has a rear courtyard filled with flowers, plants, and a small rock garden.
The pavilion facing the four directions (si mian ting), or “four doors room”. This building has folding or movable walls, for opening up a panoramic view of the garden.
The lotus pavilion (he hua ting), or “lotus room”. Built next to a lotus pond, to see the flowers bloom and appreciate their aroma.
The pavilion of mandarin ducks (yuan yang ting), or “mandarin ducks room”. This building is divided into two sections; one facing north used in summer, facing a lotus pond which provided cool air; and the southern part used in winter, with a courtyard planted with pine trees, which remained evergreen, and plum trees, whose blossoms announced the arrival of spring.

Features of Chinese Garden

Gardens also often feature two-story towers (lou or ge), usually at the edge of the garden, with a lower story made of stone and a whitewashed upper story, two-thirds the height of the ground floor, which provided a view from above of certain parts of the garden or the distant scenery.

Some gardens have a picturesque stone pavilion in the form of a boat, located in the pond. (called an xie, fang, or shifang). These generally had three parts; a kiosk with winged gables at the front, a more intimate hall in the center, and a two-story structure with a panoramic view of the pond at the rear.

Courtyards (yuan). Gardens contain small enclosed court courtyards, offering quiet and solitude for meditation, painting, drinking tea, or playing on the cithare.
Galleries (lang) are narrow covered corridors that connect the buildings, protect the visitors from the rain and sun, and also help divide the garden into different sections. These galleries are rarely straight; they zigzag or are serpentine, following the wall of the garden, the edge of the pond, or climbing the hill of the rock garden. They have small windows, sometimes round or in odd geometric shapes, to give glimpses of the garden or scenery to those passing through.
Windows and doors are an important architectural feature of the Chinese garden. Sometimes they are round (moon windows or a moon gate) or oval, hexagonal or octagonal, or in the shape of a vase or a piece of fruit. Sometimes they have highly ornamental ceramic frames. The window may carefully frame a branch of a pine tree, or a plum tree in blossom, or another intimate garden scene.
Bridges are another common feature of the Chinese garden. Like the galleries, they are rarely straight, but zigzag (called the Nine-turn bridges) or arch over the ponds, suggesting the bridges of rural China, and providing view points of the garden. Bridges are often built from rough timber or stone-slab raised pathways. Some gardens have brightly painted or lacquered bridges, which give a lighthearted feeling to the garden.
Gardens also often include small, austere houses for solitude and meditation, sometimes in the form of rustic fishing huts, and isolated buildings which serve as libraries or studios (shufang).
Rocks have long been admired in China as an essential feature in gardens. By the early Song dynasty, small ornamental rocks were also collected as accoutrements of the scholar’s study, and the portrayal of individual rocks, often joined with an old tree or bamboo, became a favorite and enduring pictorial genre. By the fourteenth century, depictions of gardens almost always included representations of a fantastic rock or “artificial mountain,” and scholars’ rocks often supplanted actual scenery as sources of inspiration for images of landscapes. Sculptural garden rocks, with distinctive shapes, textures, and colors, have always been treasured as focal points of Chinese gardens. By the Tang dynasty, three principal aesthetic criteria had been identified for judging both garden stones and the smaller “scholars’ rocks” displayed in literati studios: leanness (shou), perforations (tou), and surface texture (zhou). These criteria led to a preference for stones that were vertically oriented, often with a top-heavy shape; riddled with cavities and holes; and richly textured with furrows, dimples, or striations.
Water
A pond or lake is the central element of a Chinese garden. The lake or pond has an important symbolic role in the garden. In the I Ching, water represents lightness and communication, and carried food of life on its journey through the valleys and plains. It also is the complement to the mountain, the other central element of the garden, and represents dreams and the infinity of spaces. The shape of the garden pond often hides the edges of the pond from viewers on the other side, giving the illusion that the pond goes on to infinity. The softness of the water contrasts with the solidity of the rocks. The water reflects the sky, and therefore is constantly changing, but even a gentle wind can soften or erase the reflections.
Flowers and trees
In the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, flowers provide a contrast with a scholar stone chosen to represent Mount Tiantai, one of the founding centers of Chinese Buddhism.
Flowers and trees, along with water, rocks and architecture, are the fourth essential element of the Chinese garden. They represent nature in its most vivid form, and contrast with the straight lines of the architecture and the permanence, sharp edges and immobility of the rocks. They change continually with the seasons, and provide both sounds (the sound of rain on banana leaves or the wind in the bamboo) and aromas to please the visitor. Each flower and tree in the garden had its own symbolic meaning. The pine, bamboo and Chinese plum (Prunus mume) were considered the “Three Friends of Winter” (歲寒三友) by the scholars who created classical gardens, prized for remaining green or blooming in winter.