ON GARDENS 4
Department of Architecture, Tongji University, October 10, 1981
A year of rambling has brought me in intimate touch with quite a few scenic sights across the land. As my feelings keep changing with what I have seen, I have the urge to share my humble opinions even though they might be interpreted in different ways to meet different needs. Like an armchair strategist's prattle about the art of war, my views can probably do little to remedy what has gone wrong today. After all, I am just offering some food for thought and discussion. I title this article "On Gardens 4," as a sequel to the three previous instalments of this ongoing discourse.
As a discipline of learning, the craft of gardens is predicated on the crafter's own intentions. On this basis, he sets a conception and comes up with an intricate layout. He will be extolled if his garden is a success, and derogated if it flops. Be it a success or a flop, a garden without a personality is devoid of life.
Waters are the eyes of land. A garden having lots of land should keep water behind its walls; a garden having a lot of water should have it scattered. If water is pivotal to a garden's views, it should also be made to ameliorate environment and climate. Rivers, lakes and ponds in the countryside, lotus ponds and water-caltrop marshes, crab-catching weirs and fishing villages—these bodies of water, no less productive than fertile land once they are devoted to aquiculture, not only augment local earnings but also beautify local landscape. Just as Wang Shizhen (1634-1711) puts it,
On the river many a fishermen's abode
Is clustered around a caltrop pond
Or scattered by a path willow-lined.
When the sun slants and the wind settles,
Perches are hawked under red maples
Halfway down the river shoals.
Nothing endears itself to man more than the divine verve of this everyday natural scene.
In days of yore there was a city where the paths were fringed with weeping willows, the riverside patches of pollia ran for miles on end, the jagged city-wall ramparts were faintly visible in the distance, and architecture and nature were meshed to present a picture-perfect cityscape. But what city is it anyway? Wang Shizhen lets the cat out of the bag in the following line,
The city with its walls lost in the green foliage of willows is none other than Yangzhou.
Alas! This picturesque view has gone for ever since Yangzhou lost its city wall to demolition. A topography complete with scenic mountains and rivers can be a city's salient feature, but it is the flowers and trees that often hog the limelight. This shows why visitors are impressed indelibly by what they see in Chengdu, the "City of Hibiscus Flowers," and in Fuzhou, the "City of Banyan Trees."
Yun Ge (1633-1690) says of coloration in painting,
Blue and green are heavy colors. They gain richness easily, but are difficult to achieve lightness, and even more difficult to attain richness upon hard-to-come-by lightness.
This observation is particularly pertinent with the craft of gardens. To search for intangibles from tangibles and vice versa, and for colors to be light without being flimsy, and rich without being stiff—this rule of the thumb, if followed to the letter, can yield natural fascinations. Today, however, there is no lack of garden-makers out to abandon nature and embrace forgery. They destroy real mountains and rush to pile up artificial ones, and block up placid brooks to make room for artificial fountains. Natural springs and rocks of top-notch quality are often changed whimsically as a result. In their eyes, a garden without a spurting fountain cannot be counted as a famous one. In his notes on the Cork Tree Mountain Abode on the Dragon-Sleeping Mountain in Tongcheng county, Anhui province, Qian Chengzhi (1612-1693)1 writes,
People from the former state of Wu love making artificial mountains. They flatter each other on their creations while jeering at the gardens and pavilions in our rural areas for being shabby. To this phenomenon I retort, "Given all the real mountains and waters in the country, why should we need artificial ones? Because we believe in things real and do little about it, our gardens and pavilions look a bit too simple. Indeed, we are no better than the Wu people when it comes to fakery."
About the Cork Tree Mountain Abode, Qian says,
The views are not patterned after each other, so that every one of them is a study of perfection and exudes the essence of real mountain and water.
The merit of this comment boils down to a single word, "essence."
A wooded mountain looks good on account of its affinity to nature. To keep it natural is to preserve what is real in it. Buildings play a role in "view highlighting," a role that somehow sets them apart from gardens. This is like "adding a flower to a piece of brocade," but the flower can never steal the show from the brocade. A hotel is designed for guests to stop over and take a break. It should guarantee the needed peace and quiet, and provide a scenic setting in which the guest can loiter for a look around. There should also be ample space within and without, with the interiors and exteriors echoing and connected to each other, so that the guest can bask in the morning sun while having breakfast, and lay his head on the pillow while luxuriating in evening glow and get a feel of nature's immensity from inside a tiny room. If a mountain is weighed down by a tall building, and drowned in road traffic and the din of honking automobiles, even the bravest of all birds could be startled away. Observed from the top floor of the building, people on the ground are reduced to tiny beans and houses shrink to a few cubic inches—to discover smallness in a large world like this, what meets the eye is too small to be of any account. To erect buildings that otherwise belong to cities on a wooded mountain can do nothing but rob it of its idyllic appeal, mar the beauty of the landscape, and discourage the travelers. Ravines and hillocks that are levelled to look as flat as a whetstone, and tall buildings that jam the space between sky and earth are commonplace in scenic resorts today. It is reported that some planners are going so far as to remove every indigenous dwelling from the mountains, heedless to the fact that these dwellings are essential to a scenic spot—dwellings that are picturesquely scattered can always make a mountainous area look charming, which is why they are often spotted in landscape paintings handed down from antiquity. During my sojourn in Geneva, I saw every visitor fall in love with the bright and clean homes that adorn local mountains. I believe the buildings in a scenic resort should be low-key rather than high-profiled, scattered rather than clustered, low rather than tall, on foothills rather than on mountaintops, and in rich and varied designs, with adorable delights camouflaged in unaffected ruggedness. They should also be laid out in conformity to topography and "borrow" vistas cleverly, but at the same time their identity as indigenous dwellings should not be compromised, so that the eye can be delighted by the sight of their tiny courtyards gleaming bewitchingly amidst whitewashed walls and flowers' shadows. Visitors can be pampered in the convenience afforded by such a "wooded urban mountain"—where they can either come to lose themselves for a while in solitude or entertain guests. In Dreamy Memories of Tao'an, Zhang Dai (1597-1689) describes Fan Yunlin's2 Garden at the Tianping Mountain, Suzhou,
Winding on the lake beyond the garden is a dyke bordered with peach and willow trees, which conducts to the garden at the other end of a zigzagging bridge. The garden's front gate, set deliberately low and narrow at the bridgehead, opens onto a long roofed causeway by the side of a double wall that meanders its way to the foot of the mountain, where painted lofts and curtained pavilions, secret chambers and obscure rooms are all hidden lest they be seen by outsiders.
In Gleanings from Female Scribes' Records of Daily Lives Inside Imperial Chambers, Mao Qiling (1623-1716)3 talks of a Yangzhou native who was the Ming emperor Chongzhen's favorite concubine,
[She] was so tired of the lofty living quarters reserved for the empress and imperial concubines locked behind heavy door bars and large windows that she made do in a side chamber fixed with a low threshold and curving balustrades, screened with wide latticed windows, and furnished with a motley of utensils, beds and mats procured from Yangzhou.
The royal concubine's preference for simple buildings echoes my penchant for hotels in wooded urban mountains.
For obvious reasons, the space in gardens and buildings can look deep with partitions and shallow if left unimpeded. Artificial mountains, roofed walkways, bridges, latticed walls, screens, curtains, latticed windows, and shelves for books or curios can all serve partitioning purposes, and so can mosquito nets and green-gauze floor-length latticed windows in bedrooms that were common in old days. The Japanese sleep on the floor in tiny rooms segmented with small paper screens. At the West Lake today, newly built hotels and restaurants are often as grand as palaces, so much so that the freshly built Louwailou (Loft-Beyond-Loft) Restaurant4 at the Gushan Mountain ought to be renamed "Tower of Supreme Harmony" because it is already larger than the Palace of Immortals Lining Up in Clouds5 in the Summer Palace of Beijing. Even the interior of the Palace of Supreme Harmony in Beijing's Former Imperial City is segmented with screens and pillars, but our large restaurants nowadays are easily mistaken for gymnasiums. In a scenic resort, stones were quarried and a mountain was levelled as if to make room for new barracks, but all the fuss was actually about making room for a grand banquet hall to be erected on the spot. Huge amounts of money and manpower went down the drain like this, not to mention the threat such construction spree poses on nature's scenic beauty. There may be eastern and western parlors in old gardens, but grand parlors are unheard of. However, grand hotels, grand restaurants, grand murals, grand miniature landscapes, grand vases, and so on are everywhere nowadays, and the tendency to go big and grand seems to have become the fad. If this is allowed to run unbridled, all I can say is, "Well done! Well done!"
I have not been to Suzhou for well over a year now, but I am so haunted by its celebrated gardens and scenic attractions that I often dream of them. However, my friend Wang Xiye (1914-1997)6 has this to say in a recent letter to me,
A "miniature landscape garden" of an unrivalled size is being laid out on the ruins of the East Hill Shrine at the eastern corner of the Tiger Hill. Dedicated to the memory of Wang Xun (350-401)7, the shrine was also called "Memorial Temple for the Short Magistrate" on account of the man's short stature and official title, "assistant magistrate." Wang Wan (1624-1691)8, "[His] home was in the Long Isle Garden beside an emerald river, but his person was in the Short Magistrate's Temple beside a green hill." Chen Pengnian (1663-1723)9, "A spring breeze wafted across Daosheng's Stone Terrace again, yet the setting sun still clung to the Short Magistrate's Temple." Both lines are still very much on the lips today for their nostalgia for a man long gone and their vivid depictions of the scenery in that part of the Tiger Hill. Today, however, the celebrated natural wonder is thoroughly erased with the completion of a giant mountain built of yellow stones. A tiny mound though it is, the Tiger Hill could still rival all the famed mountains under heaven, and for good reasons: firstly, it is hidden in the Tiger Hill Temple where visitors can see grand views from this tiny mount; secondly, the inscription-bearing cliffs of the Sword Pool10 are constructed in such a way that one can perceive depth in their shallowness; thirdly, numerous poetic inscriptions contributed by celebrities through the ages have added to the luster of the scene. Today, however, a sham mountain is being piled up in front of the real one—indeed, a typical case of "making a mountain out of a molehill" or "going for wool but coming home shorn." When you have a chance to see it, I am sure you will wring your wrists in despair and cry out loud over this futile undertaking.
I cannot agree more with my friend's comments. I am afraid that because of their ignorance of literature and history, those responsible for the project in question have overlooked the historical factors in that famous scenic spot, while their minds are possessed with the desire to "go big."
The constructor of a scenic resort must learn to woo visitors not only with fabulous scenery and but also with comfortable climate. In many cases nowadays, however, scenery is favored over the need to preserve the microclimate, so much so that by the time such a resort is completed the local climate has already turned nasty. In July this year, when I was visiting the West Lake of Hangzhou, the municipal garden administration invited me for a tour of the Golden Sand Harbour. It was late afternoon of an early summer day, and the heat wave was not gone yet when I arrived. As I strolled leisurely into the woods, however, the humid heat instantly gave way to a gentle breeze generated by the lake's vast body of water, making me wonder if I were rambling a celestial world. Everywhere I went, water kept gurgling and green bamboos presented an ocean of lush green, while on the opposite side of the lake the southern hills took on a dark green hue as they shimmered in misty clouds so pale and light that they evoke an ink and wash painting wrought ever so gently with the brush. This scenery is recaptured in the lines,
I jeer at fuming south wind for being too clamant,
Forcing Xi Shi11 to dance "Rainbow-Feather Raiment."
I came from a family living on a lake, but never had a chance to enjoy the leisure and bliss of such a lifestyle. If its unusually cosy environment can be made to last, the Golden Sand Harbour will live up to the conception of its original creators. Were this environment allowed to fall apart, the harbour would become nothing but an empty shell even with the ostensible presence of a storied building within every five steps and a pavilion within every ten steps—the original conception would be brutally blasphemed. In a water-bound environment like this, buildings and bridges ought to snuggle up to the water surface and be silhouetted in it, so that the breeze from the nearby woods and bamboo groves can keep the place cool and refreshing. In the midst of swaying verdure, the air will be filled with lotus-flower aroma, and the entire place will be brimmed with idyllic appeal.
With tanglehead-thatched pavilion, tiny room, deck,
Pains should be taken to mesh mountain and brook.
The lotus flowers would look exceptionally graceful if mat sheds and bamboo pavilions can be added to the fold like the subtle makeup the legendary stunning beauty Xi Shi is wearing. If this summer resort on the West Lake can be made to last, then when I come to rove it with a walking stick in hand some day, I can really take my time for a blissful rest.
The town of Tongli in Wujiang county is an outstanding example of the idyllic beauty of water-bound country in the Jiangnan area. It is surrounded in all directions by five lakes, with houses facing each other across water surfaces. Everything in town, be it a street, a market or a garden, comes into being on account of the waters. Ren Lansheng (1837-1888)12 and his family blazed a new garden-making trail, and the Retreat and Reflection Garden they built beat all its counterparts in the area to become a unique water-bound garden. With artificial mountains, chambers, corridors, verandahs and waterside pavilions hovering just a few inches above water surface, the garden looks as if it had sprung up from water's depth. The Retreat and Reflection Garden of Wujiang and the Master-of-Fishnets Garden of Suzhou are both water-bound, but one has water in its embrace and the other snuggles up against it. Both have artificial mountains and buildings set around water, but at a close look, they can be told apart by their different vertical and horizontal distances from water's surface. Both are laid out in snug proximity to water, but each follows a different conception and plan and offers good lessons to be emulated. In my opinion, large gardens had better be nestled against water, and small ones should in the main be made to hug water. In both cases, the water level holds the key. What is used most often in the Chinese garden is still water. This is why Xu Zongyan (1768-1818)13 called the library he had built in Hangzhou "Studio of Tranquil Mirror-like Water," a name that stems from Chinese philosophy and gives expression to the dialectical viewpoint of "staying still to comprehend motion."
Water is made to twist and turn by embankments. It is segmented by dykes. Flowers are moved to attract butterflies. Fantastic rocks are bought and fixed for cloud and mist to hang around them. If used to their best advantage, ornamentations like flowers and rockery can yield bewitching views. The appearances of mountains and the hues of water can be put to best use if handled with facility. It would be wonderful if a medium-sized or small city can turn every mountain in its precincts into a garden and every body of water into a scenic attraction. It would be wonderful, too, if cities can look different from each other in cityscape and scenery.
The Pearl Spring of Jinan, Shandong province, is known under heaven for its sparkling, crystal clear water. I had, during a visit to the place, basked in morning sunlight as I drank dew drops and marvelled at the gurgling spring, feeling most relaxed and energized in its bright and tranquil atmosphere. But during a second visit I was utterly dismayed to see the place changed beyond recognition—a mammoth artificial mountain built of yellow stones looks ferocious and terrifying, and the spring itself is overwhelmed by tall buildings around it. Unexpectedly, the lines in Du Fu's poem "Gazing Mount Tai" flashed into my mind,
I am certain to mount the tallest cliff,
For a glimpse of the hills it will dwarf.
In this part of the world today, mountains are small and low while buildings are massive and lofty, and streams are small and shallow while bridges are big and tall, all the while automobiles running by the mountains kick up clouds of choking dust—such a vista is neither ancient nor modern, neither Chinese nor Western. Nondescript, that is what they really are. Can caution be tossed into thin air when creating gardens?
By contrast, the Garden of Ten S-Shaped Tablets in Weifang, Shandong province, is a small affair. This is probably why it is named after the scepters held in the hands of ministers when attending the emperor's court in the country's dynastic past. However, the only pond existing in this garden is encircled with a roofed corridor, with verandahs and gazebos seemingly floating on its rippling water. I was so touched by this lithe and delicate scenery that I improvised these lines then and there,
My love for landscape dies hard tho' I am ageing fast,
I can't help showering praises on the garden at its sight.
Though tiny, its pavilion and deck have charms limitless,
As they linger touchingly between waters and rocks.
Of all the small gardens in north China, the Garden of Ten S-Shaped Tablets is the most successful in combining water and rockery into an integral whole.
At Mount Tai a road conducts all the way to the Southern Heavenly Gateway at the mountaintop, where mountain after mountain lies under the visitor's feet while the vast land of QiLu14 extends magnificently for miles on end. Known as the Eighteen-Bend Road, with every bend offering a dainty scenery that changes with the shift of one's footstep, the road was built for emperors to be carried up the mountain for the holiest of all imperial sacrificial services. If the road were replaced with cable-cars that come and go at hastened intervals, the sightseers would be treated like commodities whisked up and down the mountain, not to mention the result that the mountain vista would be utterly spoiled. It is really beyond them why our ancestors should mount the Jade Emperor's Summit by way of the Eighteen-Bend Road simply to "dwarf the world." As to the relationship between travel and sightseeing, they are categorically opposed to each other—the former should be speedy and therefore defeats the purpose of a visit to the holy mountain, and the latter should definitely be kept at a slow pace. I do not mean cable cars are useless—they are suitable for travelers, but not for sightseers.
On no account should the foothills of a holy mountain be encircled with buildings or factories, which can do nothing but sever the mountain's natural veins. Such flagrant constructions, however, are not uncommon nowadays. During a recent visit to the scenic zone of the Swallow-Shaped Boulder15 and the Evening Glow's Dwelling Temple in Nanjing, it turned out that people could not see the zone before they reached the Boulder or the Temple—the original "prelude" to the entire scene is gone forever, leaving the "protagonist" to put on a solo show amidst a cacophony of automobile din and traffic. Worse, sightseers to the scene find it impossible to take their time for a look around. At the Swallow-Shaped Boulder, only its waterside could be seen; the other sides were smothered in black smoke that threatened to swallow the entire Yangtze River. When I sat down on the boulder I came up with this doggerel,
Swallow, swallow, why don't you fly away?
You are courting death if too long you stay.
People hate to miss a scenic attraction like this, but once you've seen it you may never return for another visit. Now that it is a no-no to build tall buildings and factories at foothills, low buildings, however, cannot be dispensed with. When such low buildings are well scattered in a scenic resort, the vista appears to be deep and remote in multiple ways; far-off mountains that have no foothills can also be handled this way.
Recent years have witnessed scenic resorts locked in sharpening clashes with the mining industry. Incidents of "killing the hen to obtain the egg" are a dime a dozen. In Nanjing, iron ore is being mined at the Grand Secretariat Mountain, and silver ore exacted at the Rosy Clouds' Dwelling Mountain. Thus smoke-belching factories are erected at the expense of "smokeless factories," and exhaustible resources are being tapped while exhaustless resources are scrambled for in a tug-of-war in which both parties are losers. It is imperative to take a long-term view, and weigh up one thing against another—I would suggest that authorities should absolutely not take this lightly. The ancient looks of places of historical interests should be conserved. Ill-fitting buildings should never be built into them. The Northern Peak behind the Soul's Retreat Temple of Hangzhou and the television tower at the Drum Tower of Nanjing are dreadful eyesores. In this regard, it is necessary to stress that scenic resorts should live on dainty views, places of historical interest should live on cultural relics, and irrelevant things should never be imposed on them. Otherwise, the cultural heritages of our motherland shall be completely ruined.
When Bai Juyi (772-846) was prefect of Hangzhou, he dredged the West Lake and piled up mud to build the Memorial Causeway of Bai Juyi. In the course of it, he never built dykes to reclaim land from the lake. His legacies were inherited by Su Shi (1037-1101), who built another dyke in the same fashion during his stint as prefect of Hangzhou. Ruan Yuan (1764-1849)16 followed suit and built the islet known as "Ruan's Mound" on the same lake. Later generations built shrines south of the Gushan Mountain to commemorate Bai and Su's good deeds. The three names have been revered through the ages, which prompted the celebrated modern Chinese poet Yu Dafu (1896-1945)17 to chant,
The willows lining the causeway are still surnamed Su today.
Matters concerning life and death for a city should be handled with uttermost discretion. The West Lake is the life blood to Hangzhou. Once the lake disappears, the city shall go downhill. It is on its account that Hangzhou is designated a tourist and scenic city. Scenic views in a city cannot be treated individually. Mountain and water should be coordinated to contrast and augment each other. The mountains along the Qiantang River need be done up, for the most illustrious part of Hangzhou lies in mountains that are belted by the Yangtze and girdled by the lake. When planting trees on an ancient site, the word "ancient" must be borne in mind. The lintel of the front doorway of the Cool and Refreshing Mountain is inscribed with the words, "Former Site of the Six Dynasties,"18 but the road leading into it are flanked by cedars—was this species already there as early as those dynasties? The use of an alien tree species like this on a venerated Chinese site can do nothing but to satiate someone's curiosity.
The restoration of an ancient site should not be limited to buildings only—due attention should be paid to what is recorded in history books, such as its environment, ambience, and furnishing. Without these, there would be no "ancient site" to speak of; rather, we had better call such a place "scenic site."
None is more unfeeling than willows by palace walls;
Enshrouded in green mist the ten-li causeway stays.
Whoever can fathom out the connotations of these two lines, written by Wei Zhuang (836-910)19 on scenery around the imperial palaces in Nanjing? There is no lack of people today who are given to imposing their own will on our forefathers. The former residence of Pu Songling (1640-1715)20 was decked off like a landed gentry's manor. Were this celebrated author of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio still around, he would have a hard time recognizing his own humble cottage. The good news is that his residence is gradually being restored to its former looks.
Traditional gardens should be conserved rather than renovated; old trees should be pruned and maintained rather than have new ones added. Mountains must stay ancient, and waters must be scattered, so that grass and trees can be well nourished and birds' lovable warbling can be heard all the time. In this way the sceneries can look lovely in all four seasons. It is inappropriate to set up a market in a garden, where what is principal and what is secondary should be clearly distinguished. Garden buildings' functions should be commensurate with their characters. When our ancients built gardens, every pavilion or verandah, even the number of bends in a roofed walkway, was adapted to actual needs, and unnecessary structures were avoided. This is like composing poetry or verse, which tolerates neither wordiness nor laborious sentences. The ways of learning, be it creative writing or landscape gardening, are closely relevant to each other. An ill-conceived garden design is like a composition that lacks hammering out. A garden should be made to encourage sightseeing, and a composition is supposed to get its argument across. For the same reason, it is as painstaking to compose a five- or seven-character quatrain as to conceive a small garden.
In the "Record of the Estate of Suburban Delights," Wang Shimin (1592-1680) records,
It happened that Zhang Lian the supernatural garden crafter from Yunjian [present-day Songjiang county, Shanghai] arrived to promote construction of artificial mountains… Thus a pond was dug here, trees were planted there, rockeries erected and artificial mountains built. The plan was revised four times beginning from a year of geng-shen [1680, or the nineteenth year of the Kangxi reign (1661-1722) of the Qing] until the garden was completed years later.
He describes the same garden in another note recorded in Chronicle of the Respected Flagbearer21:
It looked like nature itself, with a winding stone trail and a placid, mirror-like big pond tucked away amidst thick foliage of bamboos and trees, whereas summering rooms and deep-set belvederes were laid out on account of the terrain, with flowers and trees framed in windows that set off each other delightfully—the entire vista partakes of the allure of woods and ravines graced with terraces and verandahs.
The fact that, even with Zhang Lian's unparalleled craftsmanship, the plan of the said garden went through four rounds of revisions bears out the importance of construction work to garden-making and the necessity to leave enough leeway for reconstructions and revisions. When we observe a famous garden, we have got to study its divine charms before looking into the period in which the garden was made, in the same way as we would a cultural artefact. However, none of the surviving traditional gardens could do without repairs in the intervening years. For this reason the overall vista of such a garden must first be examined before its individual segments are perused. To plunge headlong into details to the neglect of a garden's overall picture is to be penny wise and pound foolish—a convincing conclusion is hard to come by this way.
Divine charm is what matters for mammoth mountains, giant rivers, ancient sites, and celebrated gardens. The Five Holy Mountains22 establish themselves worldwide precisely with their respective divine charms. Any landscaping plan mapped out for a mountain with no consideration to its divine charms invariably ends up in vulgarity and lowliness; if put into practice, it will be a blasphemy against the Mountain God. In the grottoes of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, however, natural and impressionist mountain rocks are often distorted to assume images so disgusting and ugly as to prompt me to cry out loud, "Give nature back to me!" Problems like this can still be addressed with relative ease, but utmost caution must be applied when it comes to construction of huge buildings, wide highways, mid-air cableways, and high-voltage electricity towers, because every one of them, if mishandled or misplaced, can become an "arch foe" to the divine charms of our landscape. A casual oversight may compromise the "perpetrator" to angry condemnations by posterity.
Gardens differ in character because of their differences in locality and microclimate. Every garden's character stems from the peculiarities of its location, which gives rise to diverse garden styles. There can be urban gardens, suburban gardens, level-land gardens and hillside gardens in the same place, and, therefore, uniformity is out of the question for gardens. Local culture and art, folkways, tree species, and landscapes can all be employed to make gardens look different from one another in myriad ways. Whether these elements can be used to best advantage depends on the designer's ingenuity and conception. For those engaged in the art of landscape gardening, knowledge cannot but be comprehensive, and conception cannot but be profound.
Yun Ge (1633-1690) says again of painting,
Charm lies in natural grace and elegance,
Delight stems from wonderful variations.
This saying not only applies to painting, but can also be referred to in garden-making and scenery arrangement. If someone is insatiable for view highlighting in a garden, the garden thus created will invariably be devoid of charms; if he is insatiable for bigness, his garden tends to be lackluster. Charms may be derived from books, but luster can only be perceived through a garden's distinctive personality. So much for my comments and appraisals on the gardens and scenic attractions that I have encountered during my year-long rambling of the land.