The Gardens of Suzhou. Ron Henderson
by the end of the 1940s following invasion by foreign nations, the internal Taiping Rebellion, the fall of the Qing Dynasty, and the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century. Most of the gardens and pavilions are, thus, recent restorations or reconstructions. Yet the desire to restore the gardens of Suzhou affirms that gardens are one of the highest cultural accomplishments of humankind, and they persist in both the imagination and in material culture despite their neglect or destruction.
The Song Dynasty
Surging Wave Pavilion, the garden with the longest history in Suzhou, was first built during the reign of Emperor Qingli (1041–1049) of the Northern Song by Sun Shunqing. It exemplifies the fleeting nature of gardens for, although it maintains the general layout from the Song Dynasty garden that was built on the site of an earlier residence, it has been repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. It was fully destroyed in the nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion and rebuilt in 1927 as part of the adjacent art college.
The Master of the Nets Garden was first built as the Ten-Thousand-Volume Hall in 1440 by Shi Zhengzhi. It was abandoned after his death and was rebuilt in 1770. The current garden is largely the result of a fine restoration in the 1940s by the He family.
The Yuan Dynasty
Among the characteristics of the Yuan Dynasty, founded by Kublai Khan, was a cultural polyglot that provided freedom for various religions—including the flourishing of Buddhism in China. It was in this context that disciples of the Buddhist monk Zhongfeng built the monastery Shizilin, the Lion Grove, which subsequently became a private garden.
The Ming Dynasty
In the Ming Dynasty, the Han Chinese regained power and a flowering of culture ensued that led to the creation of elegant painting, poetry, furniture, calligraphy, architecture, and gardens. There were more than 270 gardens in Suzhou during this period.
Gardens which were founded in the Ming Dynasty and still survive include the Humble Administrator’s Garden, Garden of Cultivation, and Lingering Garden. The Garden of the Peaceful Mind in Wuxi, the Garden of Peace and Harmony in Shanghai, and the Garden of Ancient Splendor in Nanxiang also date from this period.
The Qing Dynasty
Among the 130 gardens that were founded in Suzhou in the Qing Dynasty, those that survive include: the Mountain Villa of Embracing Beauty, the Couple’s Garden, Garden of Harmony, Zigzag Garden (former residence of Yu Yue), Mountain Villa of Embracing Emerald, Crane Garden, and Carefree Garden. The Garden of Retreat and Reflection in Tongli also dates from late in this period.
Contemporary Suzhou Gardens
By the middle of the twentieth century, domestic and foreign unrest had wracked China. In a period of more than one hundred years, much of the knowledge and skill of building the gardens was lost. Chinese landscape architects and garden designers continue to struggle with the lost construction skills and extension of the ideas embodied in these gardens. Contemporary Chinese garden design is in a crisis of poorly built reproduction gardens on a grand scale.
Figure 6. Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Lofty Mount Lu (1467). Water spills into a rocky waterfall and into a calm stream. A trail winds up the left side, across a bridge, and leads to a small hermitage tucked behind a peak in the center right. National Palace Museum, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Some recent gardens, such as the ones at the Suzhou Museum, point to possible directions. However, the central garden is poorly scaled, among other shortcomings. The bamboo courtyard off of one of the north galleries, however, is exquisite. Suzhou remains a center of garden scholarship and talent with many elegant private gardens constructed in recent years which provide promise for the continued vitality of Suzhou, a modern city of four million people, as one of the world’s great places for gardens.
LANDSCAPE PAINTING
Chinese landscape painting has expressed the place of humans within the world for centuries. By the late Tang Dynasty (618-907), landscapes had emerged as their own genre and have remained a central subject of painting in China since. The Tang paintings depict vast mountains and watersheds with sparse evidence of human inhabitation. These mountainwater, or shanshui, landscapes depict places of retreat for men in times of political upheaval or personal quests for understanding and enlightenment.
The landscape painting of the ensuing Song Dynasty (960–1279) reflected the more strict Confucian social order initiated during this time. The image of the private retreat, or hermitage, emerged as well-educated—but disgraced or retired—officials retreated into poetry and an expressive painting style that shared its emotional force with calligraphy.
The Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), begun under Mongol ruler Kublai Khan, expelled the educated Chinese officials from service. Many retreated into garden residences where they continued, with their friends and colleagues, to practice the life of the courtly scholar. The model of the domestic retreat flourished in this short, but dynamic, period. From these urban retreats, the scholars produced paintings that began to represent idealized versions of a cultivated society where thatched cottages and fishermen became metaphors for a humble life.
Figure 7. Wang Hui (c. 1632—c. 1717), The Kangxi Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour, Scroll Three: Ji’nan to Mount Tai (Kangxi nanxun, juan san: Ji’nan zhi Taishan). Qing dynasty, datable to 1698. Handscroll; ink and color on silk. 26¾ in. × 45 ft. 8¾ in. Detail. Purchase, the Dillon Fund Gift, 1979. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY.
When Han rule was restored under the Ming Dynasty, (1368–1644), there was a return in the imperial courts to Confucian orderliness in all aspects of society, including painting that represented a benevolent, well-governed, hierarchical government. However, the personal expression of the scholar-painter endured, especially as officials suffered political setbacks or retired from imperial appointments to return to their native cities and towns. Among the places that had sent many scholars to the imperial court, and was therefore a place of retreat for retired officials, was Suzhou.
When China came under the rule of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), many scholars lived in self-enforced retirement. Lacking court access to the vast artistic holdings of the government, these scholar-painters were forced away from the common process of copying master-works. The result was an emphasis on local scenes or landscapes and a wide ranging invention of subject matter. In this period, the gardens influenced the subject of paintings where previously gardens were influenced by the paintings.
In contemporary China, the landscape genre remains central to the emergence of international Chinese artists. Among them is the expatriate Zhang Daqian (1899–1983) who, with his brother Zhang Shanzi, lived for a period of time in Suzhou's Master of the Nets Garden, where the current Peony Pavilion served as their studio.
SPACE IN THE GARDENS OF SUZHOU
The gardens of Suzhou neither recede from the visitor nor spread out in repose. The elements of the gardens confront the visitor—pushing rocks, trees, and walls into the foreground—compressing and compacting space—is if great hands gathered a mountainous territory with rocks, forests, and streams, then squeezed it tightly—and ever more tightly—until the entire region would fit into a small city garden.
Peter Jacobs, the Canadian landscape architect and educator, remarked to me that his photographs of the gardens of Suzhou were predominantly oriented vertically—in contrast with his photographs of most gardens elsewhere in the world, which were oriented horizontally in so-called landscape format. The modern instrumentality of the camera assists us in interpreting the movement of our gaze rising from shallow waters, up stream banks, and high to distant peaks. A similar analysis is often undertaken in the study of Chinese landscape paintings, many of which are also oriented vertically. Common among many is the division of the painting into three zones: at the bottom, a foreground of water; at the center, a small sign of human habitation in a wide landscape; and at the top, the craggy outlines of folded mountains. The viewer’s