ON GARDENS 2
Tongji University Journal, Issue No. 4, 1979
The term "garden-making" may also be put as "garden-structuring," with stress on "structuring," a word that points to incisiveness of thought and delicacy of aesthetics. Incisiveness of thought calls for artistic conception, and delicacy of aesthetics depends on temperament and interest that give resonance to life, for "garden-structuring" is not merely about construction and horticulture. In "Visiting General He's Wooded Mountains as Escort to Academician Zheng1: Ten Stanzas" and "He's Garden Revisited: Five Stanzas," the great poet Du Fu (712-770) portrays what he sees and thinks of as he goes along on his itineraries. What he sees includes views in the garden, people belonging in a scenic setting, people and scenery combined in one, as well as vistas that change with people. All the while his verse is intimately associated with garden-structuring. Some of his lines depict views in the garden:
The famed garden snuggles up to water green,
While wild bamboos soar into blue empyrean.
Broken by wind, a green bamboo shoot bows;
Nourished by rain, the plum tree scarlet turns.
Some portray people belonging in fabulous scenes:
Distracted by scenery, the yard we quit wiping;
Sitting on green moss, liquor we keep imbibing.
Leaning on stone railing, I dip my brush in ink;
Sitting down, on a parasol leaf I improvise lyric.
Only when one finds himself in such scenic settings can one make sense of the divine philosophy implied in landscape gardening.
Wind, flowers, snow and moon are in objective existence, but when the garden designer dishes up his trump card, he puts them at his beck and call, and the desired vista materializes on its own accord. In the Master-of-Fishnets Garden of Suzhou there is the Pavilion of Moon Arriving and Breeze Coming, which faces west by the side of a pond, with a white-washed wall providing a nice backdrop to it. This scenery is captured exactly by the pavilion's name, in which the moon and the wind seem to be on call in case the pavilion beckons. At the West Lake, the presence of the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon would be out of the question without these pools, which is a typical example of view highlighting, with the pools adding the finishing touch to a perfect man-made scene. "View highlighting" is analogous to a Chinese idiom, that is, to "bring a painted dragon to life by putting the pupils into its eyes." At times, one falls in love with a scenic sight but does not know why; this is where a fitting inscription board comes handy. In A Dream of Red Mansions (Chapter Seventeen), "Literary Talent Is Tested by Composing Inscriptions," Jia Zheng says of the poetic lines to be inscribed on the boards in the Grand View Garden,
All those prospects and pavilions—even the rocks and trees and flowers will seem somehow incomplete without that touch of poetry which only the written word can lend a scene.
Such an inscription implies another approach to view highlighting. Before an inscription is composed for a scenic view, one has got to spend time on it and carefully fathom out what is special about it. This is what is termed "view finding." The poet Jiang Shi (1818-1866)2 has this to say,
I am a fool if I go and seek poetry out, but
When poetry finds me it's hard to reject.
Now poetry has once more sought me out,
As I, alone, get an eyeful of hill and rivulet.
Only when "view finding" reaches such a realm can one hit upon a fitting inscription in a stroke of genius.
In ancient times the creation of a Chinese garden began in most cases with architecture. In a private garden, a parlor should be completed before trees and rockeries were arranged. Such a garden was often done over repeatedly until every requirement was met. Shen Yuanlu (fl. 18th century) says in his "Notes on the Ancient Garden of Lush Bamboos":
Nothing sets a garden's momentum better than a hall;
Nothing defines a garden's scenery better than a hill.
This is why in days of yore a garden was predicated on architectural construction, with trees and rockeries serving as ornamental supplements. This, however, has been changed nowadays, with ponds dug and roads paved before principal buildings come under construction. Thus a whopping sum of money has been spent when a garden being made is barely half way through, with little space available for visitors to set foot in. Such mix-up of priorities tends to give rise to "ghost gardens."
Some gardens, scenic resorts and places of historical interest are treated like tree nurseries, where old trees are hacked and new saplings transplanted under the nonsensical excuse to "make a garden earn its own upkeep."
"View finding" and "view ushering" are essential to the making of the Chinese garden. What is entailed in "view ushering"? It is to give prominence to a certain view in order to engage the visitor. The entire landscape of the South Hill of the West Lake lost its appeal with the collapse of the Lei's Peak Pagoda. A scenic vista becomes inviting only after it is invested with sentiment, and sentiment originates in humanity. Just as a poem has it,
Sentient is grass exuding aroma,
But speechless is the sun setting;
Wild geese fly across the South River
While a lady leans upon a west baluster.
Indeed, where there is no chamber there will be no lady to be seen; where no lady is present there will be no sentiment; where there is no sentiment there will be no scenery. In the scenery depicted in this poem, it is the west baluster that holds the key. The importance of buildings to a garden or scenic resort is there for all to see.
Our forebears made a point of arranging scenery in a garden according to a prescribed plan, so that masterstrokes could spring up at the onset to avoid scenes and sights being detached from their environment. In the Perfect Enlightenment Gully at the West Lake of Hangzhou, a trail meandering its way into the deepest recesses used to be lined with clusters of sweet-scented osmanthus, whose flowers stayed longer than usual as they were nourished by babbling creeks and refreshing mountain air, and whose aroma was detained longer than usual because the gully is hemmed in by high mountains. When autumn set in, visitors would flock in to savor the flowers and their fragrance and be immersed for a while in the sights of the picturesque gully. Nevertheless, with automobiles kicking up clouds of choking dust along a newly built highway that pushes its way into the gully, this infatuating scene is no more.
Insofar as trees and plants in small gardens are concerned, those with fragrant flowers ought to be walled in. Plantains, whose giant leaves provide delightful verdure but break easily in the wind, should be planted at the foot of a wall or the corner of a house. The peony, whose beautiful aromatic flowers thrive in sunshine, ought to be planted south of a garden's main hall. These examples indicate that some trees and plants must be well concealed, while the others can be displayed in the open.
The merit of a potted plant is that it provides a "microlens" through which to see a big picture. This ingenuous conception of potted trees or miniature landscapes is well depicted in the line,
A pot leaps to life with a dwarf tree grown in it;
A pedestal greens with hills into its turf packed.
Potted plants and miniature landscapes are meant to be itsybitsy, but unfortunately, they are ballooning in size nowadays, a malpractice no different from squeezing an elephant into a canary's cage. Potted trees or miniature landscapes depend on three factors: plant, pot and trellis, none of which can be dispensed with. A miniature landscape is made for in-situ viewing, and should be viewed in solitude.
Most classical gardens in China are shut behind closed doors, as they are designed to create limitless immensity in a limited space. Thus it is essential to make such a garden physically spacious and spiritually resonating. A chosen flowering plant or tree should strike a good pose, and a rock to be erected is prized for its "knolls" and "valleys." Their numbers should be kept sparse and their designs highly compact. As an antithetical couplet on a theater stage claims,
In three or five steps one traverses the world;
With six or seven men a mighty foe is breasted.
This performing art principle, too, pertains to landscape gardening.
The lacebark pines dominate the Chinese garden with their graceful shapes and knotted, ancient-looking trunks. Even a mere sapling of it can appear as wrinkled as an old tree. As is much extolled in classic verse, willows are another choice species for garden decoration, so much so that some gardens have made a name for themselves on account of their vast possessions of such trees. However, willows are ill fit for tiny gardens in the Jiangnan area because they are supposed to stand by a pond or a stream in rows of threes and fives that take a lot of space, and because their foliage is so thick they can rarely be seen through. In the north, nevertheless, most gardens are large enough for willows to reach out to the cloudy skies while their long, pliant trigs bow low to flirt with waters, thereby adding substantially to the appeals of these gardens. However, a concrete issue like this calls for concrete analysis—arbitrary unanimity goes nowhere. If it stands reason to say willows should be barred from southern gardens for they wither in early autumn and are therefore ill omens, then why is it that the Humble Administrator's Garden can still pride itself with its "Willow-Shaded Winding Walkway"?
The trees planted in a scenic resort are marked for their local distinction. Take pine trees for instance. There are Mount Tianmu Pine, Mount Huangshan Pine, Mount Tai Pine, and so on, all of which are so well attuned to local circumstances as to become natural landmarks for their respective mountain sanctuaries. Today, however, there are quite a few "fashion-savvy" garden-makers who take great pains to beautify our homeland by "making things foreign serve China." In their eyes, snow cedars from alien lands are to Chinese gardens what penicillin is to the treatment of a hundred diseases. As a result, such cedars are ubiquitous in virtually every garden across the land.
Dense enough are weeping willows to hide crows
At the White Gate of Nanjing.
The city that has all its walls greened with willows
Is none other than Yangzhou.
Both lines describe views gone for ever today. Snow cedars have usurped virtually all the gardens where willow trees have so aged that they can no longer set catkins flying everywhere. Having had showcased itself to the world with its Mount Tai Pine for so long, Mount Tai has not but to let snow cedars be planted at the Mount Tai Temple. Even a venerated Chinese structure like this can be decked with such a "foreign coat"! I have no alternative but to call it "nondescript."
In the Chinese garden, pavilions, terraces, lofts and chambers are arranged along with rockeries, brooks and ponds in distinctly local styles that are also rich and varied. Old gardens in the Lingnan area (comprising Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provinces) are surrounded with storied buildings. When the wind rises from waterside buildings and the cool air generated in the thick foliage of trees towering over deep ponds begins to drift, the heat waves of a smothering summer day will vanish in no time, while the orchids' seasonal aroma accumulated in bamboos' shades penetrates visitors'sleeves. It is with such unique fascinations that the Lingnan gardens stand proudly among all counterparts in the Divine Land.
A garden cannot look colorful merely with tangible colors. Gardens in north China obtain multiple hues by setting off green pines and vermillion corridors against white clouds and blue skies. As to gardens in the south, they can pull off myriad changes in color and image by mingling tiny riverside belvederes with whitewashed parapets and low branches. Colorless is white, but color is engendered therein; colorless, too, is a pool of water, yet its color is at its richest. This being the case, we have got to seek color in colorlessness, rather than look for color in colors. The same is true with gardens: scenery ought to be found where there is no scenery, sound where there is no sound, and motion where there is no motion. To capture sceneries where there is no scenery, nothing beats a giant mirror or a big pond, so that scenery can be found where there is no scenery at all.
It is proper to plant plenty of deciduous trees in small gardens, but such trees should be sparsely scattered to leave the space open and ventilated; in large gardens more evergreen trees should be added where the space is wide so as to avoid crowdedness in small space through sparse planting, whereas empty space ought to be filled with a commensurate number of trees. Deciduous trees enable people to visually experience substitution of the four seasons; evergreen trees keep a place verdant even after winter sets in. Winter arrives early in the north, so more pines and cypresses are planted there.
Rocks come in unpredictable shapes, but construction of artificial mountains calls for predictable rules. Such rules are the same as those governing painting in that they are both about veins and momentum. However, poetry dies when stereotypes are imposed on it; lyrics deteriorate when music scores are set for them. Of all genres of verse, be it classical-style poems of the Han (206 BC-220 AD) and Wei (220-265), or short lyrics of the Northern Song (960-1127), the finest pieces are never born of stereotyped tonal patterns and rhyme schemes. When it comes to gerund-grinders chanting verse, or a bookworm filling in a poem to a stylized tune, his composition is bound to lack ingenuity and resonance, let alone sublimity of mood. The same is true with the craft of gardens.
When building an artificial mountain with rocks, heights are brought about on level ground, and twists and turns are derived from straight lines. One must keep the overall picture in mind while proceeding from the minute detail. It is easy to lay down the base for an artificial mountain of yellow stones and hard to bring its top to completion, but the opposite is true with artificial mountains built of Lake Tai stones. Artificial mountains of yellow stones are supposed to look solid and simple, with enough holes and cavities in them, while those of Lake Tai stones are intricately hollowed out but still look solid and strong. In short, the former type tends to lack diversity, and the latter tends to look petty and trivial. Stones differ from one another in shape, quality, veins, and texture, and therefore cannot be measured by the same standard. This is where the cardinal law of dialectics comes handy. It is rare, and therefore commendable, for artificial mountains built of yellow stones to look vivacious with plenty of twists and turns in them, and for those built of Lake Tai stones to appear naturally graceful and intriguing in multiple natural ways.
It is hard to pile up stones and build a hefty and rugged mountain and still harder to produce a peak with a solid and primitive look, but it is the hardest to bring into shape a mountain against a wall. In the sketches by the Yuan-dynasty (1206-1368) painter and poet Ni Zan (1301-1374), what looks like a nonchalant and effortless brush stroke often rivets the closest attention. However, such "nonchalance" can be attained only with great pains, elaborate deliberation and a complete mastery of the entire picture. Only thus can the master painter set his dexterous brushstroke to work; only thus can the mere addition of, say, three hairs to the cheek can bring a human figure to vivid life.3 In the same token, the minutest detail in a garden often merits the utmost attention, be it a single boulder protruding from a water surface, a stone slope, a stone stair, or a stepping stone. The artificial mountains built during the Ming (1368-1644) stand the most intense scrutiny exactly for their casual, but massive and weighty looks.
Artificial-mountain builders during the Tongzhi (1862-1874) and Guangxu (1875-1908) reigns of the Qing pinned their hopes for success on exquisiteness, but they ended up with works that look too thin or too weak. The truth is that none of the best artificial mountains comes from those looking heavy and crude. The beauty of yellow stones lies, as per a rule of nature, in their hefty mass and simplistic appearance. Indeed, where there are no solidity and weightiness there will be no fabulously structured artificial mountains.
The artificial mountains dating back to the Ming could not be simpler in layout. They are composed of stairs, terrace, main peak, cave and nothing else, yet they can conjure up innumerous changes. Their secret rests with well-coordinated openness and closeness. Why? To be open, a mountain must have some outlets in the form of a valley or dale, and the grand artificial mountain of Shanghai's Gratification Garden is a fine example. To be close, it must have a protruding main peak and its slopes must appear in conspicuous graduation. Its foothills and rocks must be scattered to enhance its openness. The same purpose for openness can also be served with the foothills and rocks of an artificial mountain on land, or by rocks on land and in water about a water-bound artificial mountain. The impact of the concise landscape painting style of the Ming and the over-elaborate style of the Qing are keenly felt on the artificial mountains born of their respective ages.
The Ming essayist Zhang Dai (1597-1689)4 says of the three peak-shaped rocks in Wang's Garden of Yizheng, Jiangsu, in his Dreamy Memories of Tao'an,
While there I espied an upended white stone ten feet long and twenty feet wide, which looked eccentric in an inviting way. I also came across a black stone eight feet in width and fifteen feet in length, looking lean but rather enchanting.
By characterizing stones as "eccentric in an inviting way" and "lean but rather enchanting," Zhang Dai invested his sentiment in his discoveries. Gong Zizhen (1792-1841)5 of the Qing often describes people as being "ugly in a lovable way," a term which is also apt for evaluation of stones. The fine-grained chrismatite (known as "yellow wax stone" in Chinese) recently added to gardens in Guangzhou looks rather mischievous, a description I believe can make up for what is lacking in the two terms coined by Zhang Dai.
An artificial mountain can be made to look like water-bound in a landlocked garden, such as the one in the back of the Rosy Autumn Clouds Garden in Jiading, Shanghai, and the rockery in front of the Loft of Two-Thirds Bright Moonlight6 in Yangzhou. An undulating mountain and a piece of low-lying land can be set in mutual contrast to bring about a make-belief pond in a garden that has no water at all. But it is absurd to assert that a water-bound artificial mountain can be wrought in the same way as a landlocked one or vice versa, because the foot of a landlocked mountain and the outlet of a water-bound mountain need be treated differently. The stone trail, boulder and dock belonging to a water-bound mountain cannot be used upon a landlocked one; the stones strewn at the foot of a landlocked mountain would be utterly misplaced if applied on a water-bound one. It is even more obvious that yellow stones cannot be heaped up the way Lake Tai stones are, and the same is true the other way round. To sum up, success is guaranteed if we keep observing the natural landscape, consulting the principles of traditional Chinese painting, learning from Mother Nature the creator, cultivating our thought and temperament, and learning by analogy.
A large garden can contain small gardens. A large lake can contain small lakes, and the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon at the West Lake of Hangzhou is a good example in this regard. Zhong Xing (1574-1624)7 says in his "Notes on the Plum Flower Villa":
Herein lies a water-bound garden. Observed above and below the water, and left and right of it, its height is embodied by a terrace, its depth by a hall, its intangibles by a pavilion, and its circumambience by a roofed walkway; what lies horizontally is a ferry crossing, and what stands vertically is a rockery; its fauna and flora are represented by birds and flowers, and its passers-by are visitors. All these are what belong to the garden. Why should every man own his own garden? Oftentimes a man stays in a garden without realizing it. It is only natural if it takes a long time before a man realizes that the garden he knows so well is actually a combination of some small gardens.
In garden-making there is no lack of philosophies and principles to be referred to.
If the scenic sights within and without a garden can contrast and complement each other in pleasant ways, it shows the builder's dexterous mastery of siting as a garden-making technique. In his "Notes on the Plum Flower Villa," Zhong Xing goes on,
The river running through the precincts of the three former Wu counties8 begins to flow smoothly only after it reaches Fuli9. It is nowhere to be seen a few steps from the Plum Flower Villa, yet it is right there inside the villa. It turns out that an underground canal is diverting water from the river to the villa's garden. As I open the door, a straight path conducts me past the Wolfberry and Aster Chamber….When I mount a belvedere, I do not see water at the first sight, but water is always there—at the foot of a pavilion, ahead of a roofed walkway, underneath a bridge, by the side of a rockery standing or reclining, and under the thick foliage of drooping willows and slender bamboos…. As I take another look around from atop the building, I find that the roofed walkway is encircled by water, with a wall running parallel to the walkway, and there seems to be a pavilion standing upright beyond the wall. Trees and duckweed turn the whole body of water into a carpet of verdure that dyes people's clothes green. Hereabouts water is all-encapsulating and close at hand, yet it seems beyond reach.... I then walk through a tiny stone grotto and take a break in the comfort of the Beckoning for Cosiness Pavilion, where rocks draped in mosses and lichens seem to be gnawing at the waves in what is known as "Gurgling Brocade Shoal." The long roofed walkway runs by the side of a stream lined with cloves of bamboos and trees that share the breeze but scramble for sunshine amid babbling water, while sunshine streaks right before my eyes. As it is impossible to locate a place in such haste, I could not but settle with this roofed walkway.
The aforementioned garden is based on water. There, water appears at one moment and disappears at another, and exists inside and outside of the garden; when it flows it now rises and falls, now twists and turns. To make water serve people's needs, it is flanked with pavilions, belvederes and corridors, because only buildings like these can generate spatial changes between water and land. Hence the saying, "A garden must be segmented; a body of water must be made to bend." Of all the waterside roofed walkways extant today, the one in the western part of the Humble Administrator's Garden is the most celebrated, and the one in the Plum Flower Villa seems to be a replica of it. It is not unfounded to say that all the gardens in the former kingdom of Wu, that is, the Jiangnan area, can be traced back to the same root.
The venerable Tong Jun (1900-1983)10 says of the Humble Administrator's Garden,
The roads are concealed beneath mosses and lichens, whereas the mountains and ponds look like born of nature. Even the faded color and peeled lacquer of the buildings fill the garden with a cornucopia of delights.
Indeed, a traditional garden's slightly worn-out appearance can in no way spoil the integrity of its hill and dale—its natural rustic looks, indeed, beat tons of tawdry ornamentation. By contrast, like a seven-treasure terraced pavilion having been torn apart, the scenery of Suzhou's fabulous Lingering Garden has become fragmentary, which means damages, however minor, still spell doom for scenic wonders. In some well-known gardens today, everything is fine when no refurbishment is going on, but once refurbishment comes under way, it is often overdone. In the Humble Administrator's Garden, pond embankments used to be lined by interlocking earth and rock in a jigsaw fashion, but today not an iota of earth can be found there, so that the pond looks like a man flashing gold teeth in his mouth. When the Eight-Tone Gully in the Solace-Imbued Garden of Wuxi lost its tones, the garden is robbed of its former glory right away. We should be careful about all this, shouldn't we?
Scenery is brought into bold relief when its outline is drawn. Not long ago I was invited to Changzhou, Jiangsu province, for discussions about the design of a so-called "Red Plum Belvedere-Garden." Now that the garden was named after the Red Plum Belvedere on the premises, I suggested that red plums be its theme. But to my dismay, plum trees had been planted all over that garden—instead of "Red Plum Belvedere," it should be renamed "Plum Tree Nursery." In that way, nobody could turn such a place into a garden overnight. I remember that during the discussion session I suggested to run a corridor across the garden, with plum trees judiciously spread out on both sides. In this way, the trees could toss their slanting shadows to the scene, while the delicate aroma of plum flowers could waft along with the visitor's swinging sleeves. The presence of the red plum could be easily felt even if the garden were not named after it. The corridor could also serve to outline the garden's shape, with the scenery evolving into a montage of pictures wherever the visitor finds himself. Thus "the few can prevail over the many," and "from the minute detail one can see the big picture."
It is harder to make a garden look commodious by keeping its scenery well scattered than to crowd it with scenes and sights. In the same token, it is easy to be ornate and flashy but difficult to stay simple and in good taste—scenic vistas ought to be well scattered to prevent a garden from losing its spaciousness, and gardens should be kept simple and tasteful to avoid looking humble and shabby. The reason why the middle section of the Humble Administrator's Garden has been celebrated all over the Jiangnan area from the Ming to this day is exactly because it has maintained its simplicity and good taste through well-diffused attractions. Unfortunately, such reasoning seems to be lost on the gardener-makers of today.
Our forbears made a point of naming the gardens they had just built, but such names were invariably well-conceived rather than jumbled together. Yang Zhaolu (fl. 17th century)11 writes of the Approximate Garden in Changzhou,
Upon returning to my hometown on sick leave, I bought six to seven mu of wasteland behind the Sutra Annotation Hall. After five years of painstaking labour, I produced something that approximates to a garden. So I call it "Approximate Garden."
From this terse account of the origin of a garden's name, we come to know it was a product of a man's modesty and self-restraint. I remember seeing a poorly designed pavilion in the Rainy Lake Park in Ma'anshan, Anhui, a few years ago. At my host's request, I named it "Temporary Pavilion," a name that speaks for itself, that everyone understands, and that stands contrary to such big names as "Grand View Garden" and "Hall with Ten Thousand Willows."
The gardens of Suzhou have considerably influenced the stage design and decoration of the traditional Chinese theater. Of course, natural scenery cannot be mentioned in the same breath as stage property, but it is not uncommon to see garden buildings imitating stage settings, some looking like the intricately crafted paper models on sale in the City God's Temple of Shanghai, and some looking like facsimiles of old paintings, in the same way as a woman stroking her coiffure in coquettish provocation.
Latticed windows play an apparent part in "view diverting" and "view ushering." A large garden can have its views diverted, but for small gardens, scenery can only be ushered in. The Vernal Crabapple Yard in the Humble Administrator's Garden is actually a courtyard whose latticed windows help usher in views from the large garden beyond its walls. The Garden of Brotherly Indulgence of Suzhou is small, but the large lattice windows that flank its front gate are instant failures in that, aside from their ill-fitting size, they expose all the garden's views to the outside world, so that it has no implicit beauty whatsoever to speak of. The newly built front gateway of the Humble Administrator's Garden is another awkward structure, for its monastic design could likely lead visitors to mistake the garden for a temple. Another tendency that flies in the face of garden-making precepts is the erection of a grand building that overshadows or dwarfs the scenic resort or place of historic interest next to it. Examples like this are too many to be counted. As modesty is a celebrated virtue in this nation, only when a new structure is built to supplement a traditional garden can it draw rave reviews.
Having found ponds and chambers altered wilfully, and cultural heritages gone down the drain, my eyes brim with tears as I mount the tower.
This line is quoted from my poem dedicated to the late Liang Sicheng (1901-1972)12 and Liu Dunzhen. I wrote it a few years ago after I saw the damages done to some gardens that I had happened upon on a return visit to Yangzhou. Today, however, I am in a different mood as I finish writing this essay, "On Gardens 2."