Abstract
Before discussing the rise of the Yuanming Yuan, the greatest garden the Chinese have ever built, let us first summarize traditional Chinese garden art. Garden design and construction constitute a vital part of the Chinese cultural tradition. Living in a beautiful and diverse natural environment with a unique landscape, the Chinese have developed a distinct garden aesthetic over the span of 3000 years. Generally speaking, Chinese artists, whether poets, painters, or garden designers, have emulated nature and appreciated the feeling of a genuine harmony between man and nature.
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- 1.
Elfland refers to Penglai, the legendary fairyland at the east seas. One of the earliest authors to write about the legendary Penglai is Wang Jia, in the third century A.D., in Shiyiji (A Book of Forgotten Events) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1981), pp. 223–224.
- 2.
Even though the existence of the Xia Dynasty has been established by archaeologists, its “historicity” remains in doubt among scientific historians for the lack of contemporary written records. The Jade Terrace was recorded in later sources.
- 3.
The character “you” first appears on oracle-bone inscriptions (cf. Luo 1912). Its meaning in ancient Chinese classics is often defined as “a place where animals are kept.” Hence, it originally referred to a zoo. Not until after the founding of the Chinese Empire in 221 B.C. was you renamed yuan, or yuanyou. Sima Qian, the Grand Historian of the Han, standardized the term in his Shiji, and yuanyou has since been identified as imperial garden.
- 4.
The Confucian classic Shijing (Book of Poetry) refers to “marvelous tower” as “divine terrace” (lingtai) and the “marvelous park” as “divine menagerie” (lingyou) (Legge 1935, 4:456, 457).
- 5.
Sima Qian writes: “He (the first emperor) had places constructed in the Shanglin Garden (the Upper Woods) south of the River Wei. The front palace, Epang, built first, was 500 ft from east to west, and 500 ft from south to north. The terraces above could seat ten thousand and below there was room for a banner 50 ft in height” (Szuma [Sima Qian] 1979, 179; Sima Qian 1975, 1:256). The rebel leader Xiang Yu burned down this gigantic imperial garden. “[Xiang] set fire to the Ch’in [Qin] palaces. The conflagration raged for three whole months” (Szuma 1979, 221; Sima Qian 1975, 1:315). The legend of Epang was further exaggerated by the Tang poet Du Mu, who in his famous “Lamenting the Epang Palace” asserts that “For building the Epang Palace, trees on the Sichuan hills were all gone. The Palace covered more than three hundred square li (thirty square miles), hiding from the Sun in the sky, facing Mt. Li in the north, and turning westward to the capital Xianyang. Two rivers ran through the palaces where stood a chamber every 5 ft and a pavilion every 10 ft…. In a single day and within the same Palace, the weather appeared not the same” (Du Mu 1978, 1). Epang Palace itself, however, is not a fiction. Archaeologists have located its ruin site near present-day Xian. The grounds cover about one mile from north to south (Meng 1993, 6–7).
- 6.
The noticeable exception was that of Liang Ji, the vicious grand official, who misused his power to build the huge Tu Yuan west of Luoyang. Its grandeur was comparable, if not superior, to an imperial garden (cf. Fan 1965, 5:1182).
- 7.
The Han historian Ban Gu, in his History of the Former Han Dynasty, described Jianzhang as the main palace in a huge complex of palaces, and Taiye situated north of Jianzhang was a large lake, on which stood many isles called “fairy hills” (shenshan) (Ban 1962, 4:12445).
- 8.
The most noticeable example was that of Shi Chong (A.D. 249–A.D. 300). As a result of its assistance in founding the Jin Dynasty in 265, the Shi family obtained almost unlimited power and prestige. Shi Chong followed his father to serve in the highest offices in the government and developed a strong passion for accumulating wealth. His famous Golden Valley Garden (Jingu Yuan) constructed in a scenic neighborhood of Luoyang was magnificent. In fact, the name was given to the garden because the Golden Valley River actually ran through it. Before his fall, Shi Chong often entertained famous scholars and literary figures such as Pan Yue and Lu Ji in the garden. He also invited beautiful women to live in the garden such as the legendary Lady Lv Zhu (the Green Pearl).
- 9.
The art of landscape painting emerged during the period of the Southern Dynasties, stemming in part from the rise of Neo-Daoism after the collapse of the Han Empire and the subsequent sociopolitical chaos and in part from the inspiration of the attractive southern landscape. The genre matured during the Tang Period. The landscape gardens fashioned during the same period of disunity can be described, as a recent writer put it, as “three dimensional landscape painting” (Huang 1986, 57). Perhaps not so incidentally, genuine landscape poetry also began at this time, with the work of such poets as Xie Lingyun (385–433) and Tao Yuanming (372–427) (cf. Qian 1983, 205–206). Landscape poetry may be considered the verbal expression of the painting and the garden.
- 10.
Li Jie’s book was reprinted in 1974, and the modern architect Liang Sicheng illuminated the text with annotations. For a Western sinologist’s analysis of this work, see Paul Demieville, “Le Ying-tsa-fa-che,” Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême Orient, (1925): pp. 213–264.
- 11.
- 12.
The modern garden scholar Chen Congzhou has made some very thoughtful general remarks on the Chinese conceptions of garden making, which are worthwhile to study (Chen 1980, 1–16).
- 13.
For useful descriptions of the subject in English, see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vols. 2–3, 4.1; S. Rossbach, Fengshui: the Chinese Art of Placement; S. Skinner, The Living Earth Manual of Feng-Shui; and Ernest J. Eitel, Feng-shui: the Science of Sacred Landscape in Old China.
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Wong, Yt. (2016). Provenance. In: A Paradise Lost. China Academic Library. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1881-7_1
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