Chinese Garden Art and Culture

Chinese Garden Art and Culture

Chinese classical gardens are one of the greatest achievements of Chinese traditional architectural culture and also one of the Chinese cultural quintessence. Taking natural landscape as their basis, ground vegetation covers as their decorations, mountains, waters, flowers, trees, stones and architectures as their means of expression, Chinese classical gardens use the limited space to create a refined, summarized and typified nature, which creates an artistic effect of being natural without any artificial decoration.

The essence of Chinese gardens is that it can express the visualized and typical natural environment of garden landscape and the poetic prospect, which they expose, through the design and creation of garden creators, which is the highest realm pursued by garden creators. People usually combine Chinese gardens with poetry, calligraphy, traditional Chinese paintings and Chinese couplets, which greatly increases the poetic and pictorial splendour of the gardens.

Chinese gardens contain different architectural types, including the palace, hall, lounge, lodge, pavilion with windows, pavilion on the terrace, pavilion, platform, storied building, loft, corridor, bridge and various integrated forms. No matter what their properties and functions are, they all form an organic combination with mountains waters and trees, which are in harmony with each other, set each other off beautifully, integrate into each other harmoniously and bring out the best in each other naturally. Some constructions become the subject of Chinese gardens and the centre of the layout, and some buildings add the finishing touch to the natural scenery.

The Classifications of Chinese Gardens

According to the identity of their possessors, Chinese gardens can be divided into royal gardens and private gardens.

Royal gardens are gardens that are specially built for emperors’ relaxation and entertainment. Royal gardens are characterized by their large scale, abundant natural mountains and waters, majestic colors and magnificent constructions. The existing famous royal gardens include the Palace Museum, the Winter Palace, Xiangshan Park, Beihai Park and Summer Palace in Beijing and the Mountain Resort in Chengde in Hebei Province, and so on.

Private gardens are those which are built for imperial princes, court ministers, rich merchants and tycoons to relax. Therefore, they are characterized by their small scale, artificial mountains and waters, small and exquisite constructions to create a light, elegant, plain and neat tone. The existing private gardens include the Prince Gong's Palace ( Gongwangfu Garden ) in Beijing, the Humble Administrator’s Garden (Zhuozhengyuan Garden), the Lingering Garden (Liuyuan Garden), Canglang Pavilion, the Garden of Master of the Net ( Wangshiyuan Garden)in Suzhou, Yu Garden in Shanghai, and so on.

According to the geographical locations, Chinese gardens can be divided into northern gardens(gardens in northern China), Jiangnan gardens(gardens in regions south of Yangtze River) and Lingnan Gardens(gardens in scenery south of the Five Ridges).

Northern gardens are characterized by their large scope and magnificent constructions for the spacious lands. However, being limited by climate conditions, there are fewer rivers, lakes, stones or evergreen woods in northern gardens. Northern gardens are lacking obsequious beauty in aesthetics due to their rough and straightforward architecture styles. The representatives of northern gardens mostly gather in Beijing, Xi'an, Luoyang, and Kaifeng, especially in Beijing.

Jiangnan gardens are usually small because of the intensive populations in South China. However, Jiangnan gardens are characterized by their exquisite and elegant landscapes for the reason that there are plenty of rivers, lakes, stones and evergreen woods in the South. On one hand, for the conditions mentioned above, Jiangnan gardens are bright, beautiful, plain, elegant, tortuous and deep. On the other hand, due to their small size, Jiangnan gardens take on somewhat a sense of constraint. The representatives of Jiangnan gardens mostly gather in Nanjing v Shanghai, Wuxi, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Yangzhou, and so on, especially in Suzhou.

Located in the subtropical areas with many evergreen kinds of wood and rivers, when creating gardens, Lingnan has better advantages richly endowed by nature than that of in north and south. Lingnan gardens are characterized by their tropical scenery, tall and spacious constructions. The existing Lingnan gardens are the famous Qinghui Garden in Shunde, Keyuan Garden in Dongguan, and Yuqian Mountain House in Fanyu of Guangdong Province.

The Important Elements of Chinese Classical Gardens

(l) Hill Making

Hill making is one of the most important components for Garden making. The purpose of hill making is to express the creators’ pursuits for fairyland. When making gardens, it is usual to build a pool and three hills. The pool symbolizes the East China Sea and three mountains represent three legendary holy mountains, namely Fenglai Mountain, Fangzhang Mountain, Yingzhou Mountain in the East China Sea. For example, Shanglinyuan in Qin and Han Dynasties is made of the soil dug out from Taiye Pool to symbolize the holy mountain in the East China Sea, which set a precedent of the hill making in Chinese history.

Sometimes, hill making is to imitate the natural mountains and waters. Turning from building hills in the garden by heaping up earth and stones to imitating natural scenes marks that the art of garden creation begins to take real-life as the starting point of creation. For example, Genyue, which is built by Emperor Songhuizong in Northern Song Dynasty, is an artificial hill mainly heaping up by stones with the largest scale and most elaborate structure in Chinese history.

Sometimes, hill making is just to imitate the shape and charm of the natural mountains and waters. The garden creators minimize the real size of the created mountains by largely generalizing and extracting just keeping the shapes and charms of natural mountains. The method of hill making, which just imitate the shape and charm of natural mountains has made a big step forward. The examples are the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, Yan Garden in Changshu and Yu Garden in Shanghai.

(2) Water Layout

Water layout is also one of the most important components for Garden making. There are generally three means for water layout in ancient gardens, namely hiding, separation and breakage.

Hiding is to use architectures and greening to shade the winding pool bank. For example, waterside constructions, whether pavilion, corridor, cabinet or shed, are all built on the water surface to form the optical illusion that water is flowing under them, which breaks the visual limits of the banks. We can also plant reeds and trees near the pool banks to make the pool boundless.

Separation means that the water surface is separated by dams or we can construct a winding bridge on it to increase the scenery’s depth and spatial levels, making people feel the water surface deep and quiet.

Breakage is that when water surface is small, for example, crooked creeks and streams or small pools, we can use some stones to form banks with fantastic stones spreading vertically and horizontally and plant thin bamboos, wild vines and put golden fish and green algae around or in iL Hence, although visiting a small pool, we can have aesthetic feeling as being in deep and wild mountains.

(3) Flowers and Trees

Flowers and trees are the indispensable elements for hill making and water layout Flowers and woods are like mountains’ hairs. Hill making without the foils of flowers and woods has no aesthetic feelings. Water landscape without the foils of flowers and woods also loses its aesthetic feelings. When making gardens, we should choose beautiful, flagrant colorful and meaningful flowers and woods.

(4) Architecture

Architecture plays a very important role in gardens. It can satisfy people’s desire to enjoy life and sightseeing. Architecture in Chinese gardens, on one hand, should have such functions as walking, looking, living and traveling, on the other hand, it can decorate and separate the landscape, making the scenery in the garden changeable, beautiful and mystic and also making the garden natural, plain, quiet and implicit The architecture forms in Chinese gardens are various and have such forms as palace, hall, mansion, lounge, storied building, loft, lodge, pavilion with windows, monastic room, tower, pavilion on terrace, boathouse, pavilion, corridor, bridge, wall, and so on.

The aesthetic characteristics of the palace are large, serious, spatial and beautiful and it is usually located on the central axis and occupies the central position. It is the main body of the whole garden and used especially as the place for emperors to live or for people to worship gods.

Hall has a serious atmosphere. Usually regarded as main buildings in the private garden, the hall is the center for the whole garden and used as the place for host to hold such important activities as family union, guest reception and banquet It not only has various functions to satisfy different needs but also embodies the host’s status, morality, and interests.

The storied building is built like a tall architecture in a spacious place. It can make people view the scenery in distance easily.

The loft is a common architecture type, which has double eaves with windows on its four sides and which is transparent and graceful structure. It has more than two stories for sightseeing and collecting books.

Mansion both refers to the architecture used for living, Yan music, sightseeing and overlooking and to the building host uses to receive and accommodate guests.

Pavilion with windows is usually built on waterside or high place and used as a small single architecture for sightseeing.

The Zhai (studio) is a small yard in a garden. It is used for self-cultivation and usually located in a quiet place shaded by stones and plants. Its environment is elegant and silent and it is suitable for learning.

The tower is a multi-story building that is usually built in the winding water or the top of the mountains to control the situation. Tower also connotes that it can guard the safety and peace of the place where it locates.

The shed is a sightseeing platform set up by water. One part of the shed is on the bank and the other stretches into the water. The shed’s four sides are open and its platform is very free, usually combined with the corridor and stand.

The boathouse is mostly built beside pools with its three or four sides facing the water and it is a boat-like architecture specially provided for viewing.

The four sides of the pavilion are usually above the ground and it is mostly built at hillside or hilltop for people to have rested.

The corridor is one of the most unique architectures in classical gardens. It usually refers to the passage with a roof to shelter people from wind, rain, and sunshine. It is characteristic of beautiful and lively and it is used as the vein to connect buildings and also used as the tour guideline.

Bridge’s types include vaulted bridge, flat bridge, corridor bridge, curved bridge, and so on. It can be made of stone, bamboo or wood, which not only beautifies the scenery but also separates views to enlarge the space visually.

The Means of Landscape Design in Chinese Classical Gardens

In garden landscaping, many means of landscape design are employed to express nature in order to make people appreciate the scenery gradually, get the big picture from small details, and see changeable scenes in different places to achieve the natural, plain, quiet and implicit art effects. The common means of landscape design are the layout, view in opposite place, enframed view, leaking through view and view borrowing.

(1)    Layout

Some Layouts regard artificial view as subject and natural view as supplement These gardens, for example, the Wangshiyuan Garden, the Lingering Garden and the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou and so on, are not the places for sightseeing directly but highly generalize and extract natural views. With such natural elements as hills, stones, pools, woods, flowers, and grass, these gardens form symbolic landscapes to give people aesthetic feeling.

Some Layouts regard natural view as subject and artificial view as supplement Most royal gardens and temples, for example, the Summer Palace, the Mountain Resort in Chengde, Leshan Giant Buddha Temple, Putuoshan Guanyin Temple, and so on, are actually built in the beautiful places for people to enjoy nature’s true features. Meanwhile, architectures are only embellishments for scenery. The characteristic of those gardens is that they regard to water and mountain as the subject but regard artificial architectures and yards as foils for nature. Both complement each other so that natural beauty and artificial beauty could integrate harmoniously.

(2)    Opposite View

Opposite view refers to the scenery that when we stand at the pavilion, stand, house, and cabinet or shed, we can view the hall, hill, bridge, and woods. And when we are in the hall, bridge or corridor, we can see pavilion, stand, house, cabinet, and so on.

(3)    Enframed View

Enframed view refers to the confined picture formed by tree branches or architects’ doors, windows and holes, usually enframing natural beauty or artificial landscape in distance into it

(4)    Leaked View

Leaked view refers to the designing means that on walls or on one or both carve geometric shapes with ethnic features, or carve such common folk plants as grape, pomegranate, plum, and fixed bamboo, or carve such animals as deer, crane, and rabbit Through ornamental windows, people can see beautiful scenery outside gardens or yards. That is called a leaked view.

(5)    Borrowed View

Borrowed view means that when making the garden, we consciously borrow scenery outside the garden into it, in order to make tourists expand their sight and imagination horizontally or vertically in a limited space. Thus, the artistic effect in which people could predict the whole scenery from a small angle can be achieved Borrowed views include far borrow neighboring borrow, upward borrow, overlook borrow and seasonal borrow. Borrowing mountains in distance are called far borrow; borrowing trees nearby is called neighboring borrow; borrowing birds in the air is called upward borrow； borrowing fish in pools is called overlook borrow; borrowing seasonal flowers or other natural phenomena is called seasonal borrow.