Why Chinese Gardens Are Landscape Gardens

Prof.Dr.-Ing.WANG Xiangrong

Gardens came into being when mankind ended its fishing,hunting or nomadic life and began to settle down to farming and building homes.Some of the man-made environments that can be considered as prototypes of gardens were first utilitarian,either courtyards where crops,vegetables and fruit trees were grown to obtain the basic means of living,or special places built for rituals and religious ceremonies.These are the origins of gardens and what they were originally like.

As a whole,the course of garden development is the process of decreasing utility and increasing ornamental value.After the garden needs more appreciation function,the garden will bear the significance of people's desire for a better life that is difficult to achieve in reality,and the purpose of building gardens is to build people's ideal world on the land.However,after all,human beings can hardly imagine things they have never seen before,and any utopian ideals are in fact best ideas based on the reality.Since the natural conditions and geographic environments are different,the expectations of the ideal world of the early human from different regions are also different,and the gardens they built must also be very different.

The regions of the world that have long history of garden construction and brilliant achievements are located in Eurasia and North Africa.Ancient Egypt was arid and had little rain,fertile land concentrated in the Nile River floodplain valley,surrounded by vast deserts,several large woodlands,less beautiful mountains,and the ideal world there was the rich and fertile farmland on both sides of the Nile River.From the ancient Egyptian tomb murals,it can be seen that ancient Egyptian gardens are fruit and vegetable ones on the flat land,with wall,square pools,aqueducts,and pavilions,combined with food production and recreational activities.In the open and flat terrain and arid climate of Mesopotamia,hunting was once a necessary means of survival,and gradually the royal hunting garden came into being.In ancient Persia,there were many mountains but few rivers,and water was very precious,so people's ideal paradise was naturally farmland irrigated by clear springs.The four-fold garden in Persia is a distillation and reproduction of the ancient irrigated agricultural landscape.The Egyptian fruit and vegetable gardens,the Mesopotamian hunting gardens,and the Persian four-fold gardens,as widely spread types of landscapes,continued to influence the emergence and development of European and Islamic gardens in later times.

Compared to the Nile Valley,Mesopotamia,and Persia,China was a land of clear mountains,beautiful rivers,and rich land.The mountains,plateaus,and hills that make up nearly 70% of the country's land area gave birth to countless rivers and streams,and the mountains and water constituted the Chinese people's first knowledge of nature,and inspired them to worship and yearn for nature.Appreciation of landscape is deeply imprinted in the cultural genes of Chinese people,and the beautiful lakes and mountains are the ideal living space for Chinese people.When the garden evolved from the practical to the ornamental,the nature of the garden is to imitate the natural landscape,so there have been woods,hillocks,ponds,and lakes in royal gardens,and rocks,springs,and ponds in private gardens.

For the ancient Chinese,landscape was not only a material space,but also a spiritual world.In the long history of coexistence with mountains,rivers and lakes,the ancients have long been putting the land,mountains and rivers,trees,flowers,and plants into poetry and paintings,landscapes and gardens fed Chinese philosophy,culture and art,and also shaped the calm and quiet character of Chinese people.Ancient Chinese people not only loved the natural landscape,but also took the high mountains and deep waters to symbolize human character,morality,spirit and ideals,as the saying goes,"noble character is like a lofty mountain for people to admire,and bright words and deeds are like a heavenly road for people to follow.Although I cannot reach such a state,I know in my heart the direction of my endeavor".

Thus,abandoning themselves to mountains and water,and advocating natural silence and free and easy lifestyle has become a kind of attitude towards life boasted by the literati throughout the ages.The mountains and water are the residence of life,and also the environment to evoke and express this spirit.Tao Yuanming,after experiencing the trouble of the city cage,could finally return to nature and indulge in the landscape joy of"picking chrysanthemums under the east fence and leisurely seeing the south mountain";Xie Lingyun built a mountain residence in the landscape of mountains,peaks,rivers,lakes,fields and paths,"with a lake to the left and an islet to the right…facing the mountains and backing the mound","openingthe south door to the distant ridge,and the east window to see the near field";Wang Wei built his villa in Wangchuan,a place with green mountains and ridges and peaks,where each small garden was accompanied by the mountains and water,including Huazigang where "birds go endless,and the mountains and autumn colors are in one",and Qi Lake where "looking back on the lake,the green mountains roll white clouds";in the Cottage on Lushan Mountain,Bai Juyi could "look up to see the mountains,down to listen to the springs,alongside to squint at the bamboos,trees,clouds,and rocks,and the eyes were busy in viewing the sceneries all day long".Life between the mountains and the water enable people to experience the free,quiet,noble and secluded life that "the drinker's heart is not in the cup,but in the mountains and water".

However,people living in city do not have many opportunities to enjoy this kind of landscape idyll,just like the Song Dynasty painter Guo Xi said:"The hustle and bustle locks,and people are often tired of this.Mist and clouds in the twilight are celestial,and they are what people always want to see but seldom see".If the city is not far from the natural mountains and rivers and lakes,the landscape outside the city might be "within the sight",but people could not be in the landscape "in person",which is bound to be a pity for the literati who love the landscape and appreciate the nature.

"Dreaming for forests,streams,mist and clouds",people bring the beloved landscape "into" urban residence,such as hanging the landscape scrolls in the hall,or setting up a landscape screen,in order to "be with springs and gullies without going outside the hall",but such landscape in painting is just to feed on fancies,for viewing,not for touring inside,either for living inside.So,people turn to pursue more real landscape interest in their residential courtyard.In a small courtyard,a reel could be regarded as the mountains,and a small pond as rivers and lakes,to "have the image of hills and gullies in the courtyard,and see and imagine the landscape",or "take a rockery as many mountains and a small pond as vast rivers and lakes",and "have the momentum of thousands of miles of landscape on the halfmu land".For larger courtyards,the natural landscape is the model,the vivid,picturesque hills,valleys,forests,and springs are deliberately built,the living environment is arranged in the "as if natural" artificial landscape,so that "the green hills are above the house,and water runs under the house",integrating the buildings in the garden into the elegant mountainous forest,bringing the owner to the world of mountains and water where he can observe,tour,and live inside,symbolically reproducing the realm of Zhuangzi's thought that one can be freely in the world outside of things."Though in the city,there is the interest of deep silence in the mountains and forests...the landscape is not far away,and quiet forest and clear water make people have the temperament and interest of living in the real landscape mountains and rivers".The "urban mountain and forest" realizes the ideals of seclusion,refuge,hibernation,and love of landscape in the downtown area,enjoying the realm of living in a mountainous area far away in the heart and boasting the independent personality value of the garden owner.

In the agrarian society that lasted thousands of years,high mountains and long rivers,and Wuling Peach Garden are the ideal home in the hearts of the Chinese people,and with them as the prototype,the Chinese people built countless landscape gardens,leaving behind rich gardening ideas and heritage.Today's society is completely different from the farming society,the scale,size,and density of modern cities are far beyond comparison to the cities of the pre-industrial period,the architectural forms are also vastly different,and urban gardens are no longer self-enclosed paradise.Compared with the historical landscape gardens,although today's gardens are still highly ornamental,the importance of practicality is constantly being strengthened.Gardens must meet the public's needs for fitness,exercise,leisure,learning,and viewing,while also possessing the more comprehensive values of climate regulation,rainwater management,bio-habitat construction,and urban resilience shaping that landscape gardens did not have in the past.Today,the social,economic,and cultural foundations for the emergence of traditional landscape gardens have disappeared,and the functions of modern gardens cannot be realized by arranging rockeries and streams,opening pools,or dredging gullies.The significance of traditional Chinese landscape garden today is not in its form,but in its idea,that is,through the integration of artifice and nature into an organic artistic whole,people living in the downtown area can still enjoy the interest of nature,which is also the ideal and goal of our present and future human habitat.