QIAO'S GARDEN, TAIZHOU
Literary and Museum Newsletter, Museum of Nanjing, Issue No. 16, November 1977
Translated by Zhong Zhilan
The second largest city behind Yangzhou in north Jiangsu province, Taizhou develops its economy on the basis of commerce and handicrafts production. As the scourge of war rarely occurred on its land over the years, Taizhou is the largest repository of ancient buildings, gardens, and other cultural and historical heritages among all the cities in northern Jiangsu. Heading the list is the Southern Mountain Temple, whose stone tablet pedestal dates back to the Five Dynasties (907-960), and whose Ming-dynasty Heavenly Kings Hall1, completed in 1463, the seventh year of the Tianshun reign (1457-1464), is a study of pre-Yuan (1271-1368) architecture on account of its main hall's timber structure, whose inner and outer columns are of equal height, with inverted V-shaped braces resting underneath ridgepoles. Also noteworthy are two other Ming halls that remain relatively intact today: one is fashioned out of Phoebe nanmu in Jiang Ke's2 Mansion built during the Longqing reign (1567-1572), and the other hall, built toward the end of the Ming inside of the Gong's Mansion. There is also the Mount Dai Temple, known for its Tongguang3 Bronze Bell and two bronze statues cast respectively in 1107, the first year of the Daguan reign (1107-1110), and 1126, the first year of the Jingkang reign (1126-1127) of the Song (960-1279).
Insofar as Taizhou's gardens are concerned, no talk about them is complete without the Qiao's Garden on the east-west Straight Road of Character Eight Bridge4.
The Qiao's Garden was built by Chen Yingfang (1534-1601)5, a landed official who served as Chamberlain for the Imperial Stud during the Wanli reign (1573-1620) of the Ming. Drawing inspirations from a line in Tao Qian's "Come Away Home," "The garden enriches my soul through my daily rambling of it," Chen named it "Daily Rambler's Garden" and wrote his Jottings from the Daily Rambler's Garden. The garden changed hands repeatedly after the Chens' fortune went downhill. Tian Jingxi6 became its owner in the early years of the Kangxi reign (1662-1722) of the Qing. A man surnamed Gao renamed it "Three Peaks Garden" after coming into possession of it during the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735). When Wu Wenxi (1800-1870)7 acquired the garden in 1858, the eighth year of the Xianfeng reign (1851-1861), he called it "Hibernation Garden." Soon afterwards, Qiao Songnian (1815-1875)8, Salt Distribution Commissioner of Huaidong and Huaixi, gave it a new leash of life and a new name, "Qiao's Garden."
When Gao Fengzhu9 lived in the garden, he asked a man by the name of Li Yu to paint a picture of it for him. Barely a century later in 1825, the fifth year of Daoguang reign (1821-1850), Zhou Xiang10 came up with four other paintings with views on each side of the Thatched Hall in the Cuckooing Birds' Mountains11. Wu Wenxi wrote the "Notes on the Hibernation Garden" after he had the garden renovated in 1859, the ninth year of the Xianfeng reign (1851-1861). From these literary sources we get a glimpse of what had happened over the years to this oldest garden in northern Jiangsu.
Sprawling over a large area in its heyday, the Qiao's Garden used to be graced with exterior dwellings that gradually grew into a mammoth mansion after the mid-Ming through repeated expansions and annexations by landed bureaucrats. We have no way of knowing the mansion's former glory from the buildings we can see around the garden today, but we can still gain some idea about it from its four remaining Ming-dynasty halls, one of which looks rather intact.
Facing south, the Qiao's Garden is nestled in the center of the mansion. During the years when it was known as "Three Peaks Garden," it offered fourteen sights: the Evergreen Mountain Abode; the Hall with a Rope to Draw Water from a Well12; the Fish Enumerator's Pavilion; the Cloud Enshrouded Cave; the Howling Pine Belvedere13; the Thatched Hall in the Cuckooing Birds' Mountain; the Bamboo Cottage that Splits a Forest in Two14; the Nest Pavilion15; the Zither Playing Verandah16, the Imminent Greenness Belvedere; the Laizi Blessing Hall17; the Rain-Splattered Plantain Verandah; the Literary Osmanthus Landboat18; and the Rock Forest Trail. Though we cannot see the garden's former glory in its entirety, it is not too difficult to restore it based on its present size.
The centerpiece of the garden is the Thatched Hall in the Cuckooing Birds' Mountains. Hemmed in by a massive artificial mountain with a brook flowing in front of it, the hall's front gate opens onto three stalagmites that soar into the sky from atop the mountain, hence the hall's byname, "Three Peaks Thatched Hall." A Lake-Tai rock embedded in a wall at the western end of the mountain foot is easily mistaken for a lattice window. As per a description in the "Notes of the Hibernation Garden," this very rock is "thoroughly creased, hollowed through and looking slim." A small arch bridge sits astride one end of the brook and a stone beam spans its other end. The bridge conducts to the Cloud Enshrouded Cave that meanders its way through the mountain. There used to be a Flower Goddess Belvedere south of the Three Peaks Mountain, but it is nowhere to be seen today.
An ancient Chinese juniper rises from among the three peaks in front of the former site of the vanished belvedere. As the "Notes of the Hibernation Garden" puts it: "With galls and gnarls piling up upon its curling and coiling branches, this tree belongs unmistakably to a remote generation." Whilst adding an impressive touch to the garden, it is also the most celebrated ancient tree in Taizhou. A half pavilion that clings against the western wing of the mountain foot seems to have been added to the fold in recent times, because its absence is conspicuous among the garden's old pictures. Stepping eastward across the stone beam and the valley, one arrives at the Fish Enumerator's Pavilion, which has collapsed, with its site remaining there for all to see; the ancient pine standing by the pavilion is rare and rustic to the uttermost, but to visitors' dismay, it is rotting away. To the north of the Thatched Hall in the Cuckooing Birds' Mountain, a trail threads through a moon gate in a wall adorned with lattice windows. Inside of the courtyard, a yellow-stone terrace rises along a zigzagging stone stairway before one reaches the Hall with a Rope to Draw Water from a Well. The hall, equipped with floor-length windows on its four sides, is found between two reconstructed structures, the Howling Pine Belvedere to the left and the Nest Pavilion to the right. Jutting out like a wing, the hall is encircled by a parterre that features a cornucopia of trees, slim bamboos, rugged vines and imposing rocks, all of which mingle to accentuate the exceptional seclusion and fascination of the entire scene. With sparse embellishments and a layout akin to a traditional Chinese painting, this courtyard evokes elegance and quietude in ways both unconventional and ingenious.
Comparisons made between historical archives and literature and what remains of the Qiao's Garden indicate that the garden we see today is worlds apart from its former self. Nevertheless, it still offers something noteworthy as far as the craft of gardens is concerned.
Judging from its general layout, the garden is centered upon the Thatched Hall in the Cuckooing Birds' Mountain, and supplemented with a belt of water and a mountain in the front to conjure up its focal scenery. The small courtyard laid out in the rear to add a deliberate digression, serves, in literary parlance, to revive the visitor's spirits with another fabulous scene. Significantly different in size, visibility and importance, the focus and foil give full play to space grouping in a clever way. The integration of simple elements—a hall situated up north, a pond in the middle, a mountain opposite the hall, a cave with rocks hidden inside of it, and a stone beam lying across a brook—brings fresh and original prospects to the premises without falling into the beaten track, an integration that is exactly what the Ming tradition of garden-making is all about. With scenic sights arrayed in all directions, the garden also makes the most of the view-borrowing technique by keeping its belvederes on either side of its enclosing wall. The main travel route takes a circuitous track, with the trail atop the mountain and the cave below it offering two more optional sightseeing routes. More changes are also added to the main travel route in the form of small bridges, steppingstones, and a footpath that forks out at the foot of the artificial mountain.
In terms of rockwork arrangement, all the Lake-Tai rocks and yellow stones were carefully chosen and cleverly arranged in compliance with a unified plan before they were shipped to the Qiao's Garden. There being absolutely no stones to be quarried locally in Taizhou, these rocks and stones were procured from other places, and came in sundry categories and sizes, yet they were assembled and stacked up so intelligently that no trace of cobbling is found in all the artificial mountains constructed on the site. In the pond, for instance, yellow stones are kept under water while Lake-Tai rocks protrude from the water surface to show their distinctive shapes and postures to best advantage. At the Cloud Enshrouded Cave, yellow stones are paved to form the base, with Lake-Tai rocks piled up upon them to beautify the garden's scenic skyline. Moreover, bricks are used to build the archway inside of the cave to make up for the shortage of stones, with a small yard built in the valley to facilitate smooth transition from rock structures to brickwork, thereby forestalling feels of bluntness or blemishes. To further economize on rocks, construction of all-stone walls is minimized and interspersed with brick-and-earth walls surfaced with Lake-Tai rocks. All caves inside of the garden, built in the techniques of brick trail building and dynamic balance of blocks in stone caves (see The Craft of Gardens), are apparent Ming-dynasty legacies. Compactly structured with agreeable variants, and produced with superb craftsmanship with the least traces of artistry, they are among the best of small caves comparative with those found in the Ming-dynasty Five Peaks Garden in Suzhou. Moreover, the brick archway tunneled through the mountain is a rarity unseen elsewhere. The three stalagmites that stand atop the summit and mingle with the curling branches of an ancient juniper are definitely the highlight of the entire garden's scenery, an arrangement that obviously breaks the convention that such stone pillars can only be situated among lush bamboos. At the foot of the mountain, the pond meanders its way into the distance as an admirable supplement; foot roads, bridges and steppingstones are scattered to a nicety. All these excellent ways of doing things are rarely seen in other gardens in north Jiangsu. In similar rockwork techniques, the artificial mountain builder of the Qiao's Garden obviously outdid such consummate rockery builders as Shitao and Ge Yuliang.
In horticultural arrangement, priority is given to arbors, with ancient-looking cypresses highlighted, and pines and plum groves supplementing. Nandinas are planted at most mountain cols and brook bays, and winter sweets and osmanthus clumps are arranged in front of courtyards. Bamboos and plantains offer delightful shade to the surroundings of halls, and arboraceous and herbaceous peonies are cultivated in parterres. These trees and flowers not only give inspirations to building names such as "Evergreen Mountain Abode," "Howling Pine Belvedere" and "Rain-Splattered Plantain Verandah," but also conjure up kaleidoscopic seasonal changes in the garden's scenery. More importantly, the adoption of the aforementioned botanical combinations is in accord with traditional Chinese painting theories. In terms of spiritual setting, demure elegance and unadorned delicacy are the starting point before such trees and flowers are put together. For instance, plantains are used for their coolness and green hues; sparse bamboo twigs can cast picturesque shadows on windows; and nandina, winter sweet, pine and cypress branches intertwine to set off each other agreeably. As prototypes in traditional Chinese painting, all these botanical groupings have captivated so many literati officials through the generations. Bookbinding grass (Ophiopogon japonicus) is also planted to fill in baldness on crags and turn an entire mountain into an unblemished green carpet. In this way, bluntness and flaws in artificial mountains are cleverly covered or concealed so that the entire garden looks like a harmonious whole. The way the bookbinding grass is applied in the Qiao's Garden has long been commonplace among northern Jiangsu gardens, but in my opinion, it ought to be popularized in southern Jiangsu gardens as well, where such grass is still used sparsely for patchwork purposes. It ought to be assimilated by all the garden-makers in China, for that matter. Just as Guo Xi puts it in The Lofty and Sublime Messages of Forests and Streams:
A mountain takes streams as its arteries, grass and trees as its hair, and the misty clouds above it as its spiritual verve.
To sum up, as the one and only completely extant traditional Chinese garden in Taizhou, as well as the most venerable one in northern Jiangsu, the Qiao's Garden deserves a prominent position in regional studies of Chinese gardens.