Place and Memory in the Singing Crane Garden. Vera Schwarcz
of the new Beida. Even when nostalgia for pre-liberation garden design was forbidden, he found a way to argue for and record the reopening of a Qing dynasty water channel in the early 1950s. Beijing University had just been moved out of the center of the city to Yan Yuan (the garden name for Yenching University). Hou Renzhi mobilized and joined a group of students to dredge one of the rivers of Haidian:
I myself took part in the action and remember that in one afternoon when the filthy mud in the opening had all been out, a young student was so excited that he went voluntarily on all fours through the opening from the west side to the east. His passing through proved that the waterway was completely cleaned. Although he was covered all over with mud, he jumped and laughed jubilantly together with us. This little but dramatic scene of joy impressed me so much that it remains fresh in my mind. The upper part of the river has now changed direction thus enabling the water to flow into the campus.15
Hou Renzhi’s own delight in the muddy student reflects the commitment of a historical geographer to the unique qualities of the ground beneath his feet. It was still more than three decades before his views would be consulted in the design and naming of the Sackler Museum gardens built upon the site of the old Ming He Yuan. This celebration of physical labor also took place a half a decade before the eminent scholar would be condemned as a “rightist” (in 1957) and almost a decade before his own incarceration in the niu peng.
In the early 1950s, it was still possible for intellectuals to savor connectedness to the soil. Traditional Chinese culture had long sanctioned the scholars’ interest in water, in rocks, in trees, in the simple life that so attracted Yihuan when he longed to leave entanglements behind. Tuan Yi-fu, a Chinese geographer who developed his career in America, summarized this attachment to the local in terms of the character tu, meaning connection to locality, to hearth, to a world bounded by physical boundaries. Far from being opposed to “cosmos,” this tu can help us “appreciate intelligently our culture and landscape.”16 Tuan, unlike Hou Renzhi, lives in an intellectual environment in which he is free to advocate the ideal of a “cosmopolitan hearth.” Scholars in Mao’s China—even when willing to get down into the mud to clear old water channels—were condemned for the knowledge that linked soil, culture, and tradition to the legacy of artful garden design.
In the late Ming dynasty, by contrast, when the political fate of the rulers of Beijing looked quite bleak, Ji Cheng found an opportune moment to sum up the art of gardening and its connection to local resources. His Yuan Ye dwells on many details about “borrowed” scenery and how it could be used to design contemplative spaces. The starting point of all garden craft, according to Ji, lay in the same element that Hou Renzhi still treasured in the 1950s—water: “Before beginning to dig one should investigate the sources and note how the water flows. Where it flows in an open channel one builds the pavilion on posts. If one throws a bridge over the water one may erect the study pavilion on the opposite bank. If one piles up stones to form a surrounding wall, it may seem as if one lived among mountains.”17
The goal of the garden was to create a connection to the realm of nature beyond its gates. Ji Cheng, mindful of the worldly cares of his wealthy patrons, understood how they longed to live as if they were among the mountains. He did not need poems, like those that Yihuan composed in the nineteenth century, to understand the crushing burdens of politics. His Yuan Ye brought to life a vision of refuge alongside the realities of obligation that surrounded late Ming scholar-officials. From bamboo, which symbolized strength in the midst of adversity, to the evergreen pines that conveyed moral rectitude, the classical Chinese garden was filled with elements designed to comfort the mind’s eye in times of distress.
Even such a small feature as a bracket that sustained the corner of a pavilion roof had a name that served to wake the mind. If the joint faced in one direction only, the bracket would be called tou xin, or “stolen heart.” If the joint completed a well-balanced square under the eaves, it was called ji xin, or “accounted heart.”18 Since classical Chinese makes no distinction between “heart” and “mind,” these brackets underneath the roof (like the garden as a whole) provided a well-informed gentleman with an opportunity to balance inner and outer worlds.
“Stolen heart,” like “accounted heart,” was a design element that linked garden culture to the predicament of scholars in need of spiritual and physical refuge from the din of political entanglements. Few expressed this need as artfully as Mi Wanzhong (1570–1628), the famous scholar-official who designed Shao Yuan—the most renowned garden in the hamlet Haidian. At the height of his fame, Mi reigned almost like an emperor in the realm of painting and calligraphy. A common saying paid homage to his reputation: “Dong in the south, Mi in the north.” This was an appreciative statement acknowledging two unrivaled masters: Dong Qichang in Jiangsu province and Mi Wanzhong in the Beijing area. At the height of his reputation, Mi needed no retreat from politics; he had not yet turned his artistic attention to details such as “stolen heart.”
This discovery came as a result of his fall from political grace. An outspoken opponent of powerful court eunuchs, Mi was removed from office in 1600. There were no ox pens in China in those days for a scholar who defied the will of the powerful. Exile to the far corners of China was the common fate of lesser luminaries. A disgraced courtier like Mi was left to nurse his wounds near the city of his former glory. The beauty of Haidian suddenly took on fresh appeal. Mi Wanzhong had more spiritual and material resources than other critics of Ming corruption. He knew the history of gardens. He was a skilled and famous painter. He knew how to entice the eye, the heart, and the mind away from disaster.
In 1612, Mi Wanzhong began the design and building of his Haidian garden. By the time it was completed two years later, its fame rivaled the admiration once garnered by his paintings and calligraphy. The name of the garden, like its design, was meant to create an alternative vision to the desiccating squabbles at court. Mindful of the importance of water in northwest Beijing, Mi decided to use it skillfully to embellish the symbolic destiny of his family line:
Because there was only a ladleful of water in the garden and because he thought that a ladle was a suitable container for the Rice (Mi) family, he named his new garden Shao Yuan—Ladle Garden. Shortly after this, Marquis Li Wei, whose family name meant Plum, established his beautiful and famous park just west of Ladle Garden . . . both parks were so beautiful that a certain Grand Secretary of the Ming Dynasty is reported to have praised their delicious flavor, saying: “the Rice garden is not tasteless nor the Plum garden sour.” Long after the Ming dynasty had fallen and the Plum family’s garden had become an imperial park, the Rice family still lived prosperously in their delightful Ladle Garden.19
Mi Wanzhong was not content to design a garden to perpetuate the family name in times of political disgrace. He was not soothed by the waters of Haidian and the opportunity to dip his “Ladle Garden” into the refreshing source springs.
Once the splendid Shao Yuan was complete, Mi Wanzhong proceeded to grace it with his painterly talent. The result is one of the most gracious, lush, detailed hand scrolls in the history of garden art. A copy of this scroll can be found in the rare book collection of the Beijing University library. One of the few scholars who had access to the fragile remnant was Hou Renzhi, the scholar who knew how to cherish the same waters, the same landscape that had inspired Mi Wanzhong at the end of the Ming dynasty.
Professor Hou has written extensively about the history of Shao Yuan and was kind enough to share with me one of the few color reproductions of the Beida hand scroll (which is no longer available for scholarly perusal). In this painting, the eye of the viewer is invited to travel slowly from the serpentine island on the left toward a central pavilion where scholars gather for the savoring of cultural arts (figure 13). An arched marble bridge is the first man-made element a guest would encounter, a concrete reminder that this is not the effete world of the imperial palace in Beijing but rather a wondrous refuge, a place where thought can take its shape at ease. As if echoing the mind’s call, a boat called the Barge of Tranquility (Ding Fang) ferries guests slowly across waters named the Waters of Linguistic Refinement (Wen Shui Po).20 This barge and these waters were meant to aid the mind in focused contemplation. Having reached