The Gardens of Suzhou

Introduction

INTRODUCTION FIRST, THE LAND The land—topography, waters, stones, vegetation, and climate— bestows the framework and materials of the great garden traditions of the world. Persian gardens amplify scarce water resources into fragrant courtyards. The Renaissance gardens of Italy negotiate the hills around Rome and Florence with terraces from which prospects are revealed, grottoes are embedded, and watercourses flow. The basins of water in French Renaissance gardens stretch across the level plains of central and southern France. The eighteenth-century English landscapes of rolling hills and shallow lakes were constructed on soft, chalky soils criss-crossed with gentle streams. The gardens of Kyoto benefit from a propitious climate for broadleaf evergreens, an abundance of moss spores, and a territory rich with both mountains and rivered plains. Similarly, the gardens of Suzhou are born of their region. Suzhou is situated in the alluvial plain of the Yangtze River which spreads across eastern China from Zhejiang Province in the south to Shandong Province in the north. This great delta—a fecund land of water, rice, and fish—provides the foundation for one of the world’s great garden traditions —one that has been cultivated for over 2,500 years. Mark Elvin, in his environmental history of China, reassures, “Here we are at last in the good part of China. . . . It is fifty leagues from south the north, and there 2 the gardens of suzhou is no question of mountains. This landscape is as level as a mirror all the way to the horizon.” Twenty thousand years ago, the area that is now Suzhou was a shallow sea where coral flourished. Rivers brought sediment from the western loess plateaus and deposited it on the ancient shores while the ocean slowly receded—water giving way to low-lying flat land. Today, Suzhou is still only about thirty-five miles, or sixty kilometers, inland from where the Yangtze River meets the Pacific Ocean. The oceanic coral metamorphosed into limestone that was subsequently carved by the rivers that stream across the plain. This water-carved formation —the porous limestone from Tai Hu, or Tai Lake, would become one of the most prized materials for the construction of the gardens of Suzhou Yangzhou Nanjing Wuxi Hangzhou Ningbo Suzhou Tai Lake Tongli Approxim ate Route of Grand Canal Nanxun Shanghai Yangtze River Pacific Ocean Figure 2. Suzhou sits between the Yangtze River delta to the north, Hangzhou Bay to the south, Tai Lake to the west, and the Pacific Ocean to the east. This land of shallow, slow-moving waters and temperate climate establishes the framework of natural history from which the garden traditions of Suzhou grew. introduction 3 and throughout China. These limestone rocks are preferred for the piled rockeries and specimen stones that are unique features of the Chinese classical garden. It is the masculinity of these stone rockeries contrasting with the limpid shallow waters of the region that establish the framework of mountains and water, or shanshui, for the gardens of Suzhou. GARDENS IN CHINA The earliest description of a garden in China is contained in the Book of Songs, the fourth-century b.c. collection that is regarded as the first book of Chinese literature. In it, a wall encloses a residence as well as specimens of useful trees such as mulberry and willow. The description closely resembles the Chinese character for garden. In a poem dating from about the same time and later compiled in the Songs of Chu, an imaginary garden is described in a passage where the soul of a dying king is being coaxed back to his body by describing the place where he will find a princess: a garden where linked corridors capture the aroma of orchids, streams meander past halls, pavilions rise above palace roofs, balustrades support the king to lean over and look into lotus-filled ponds, and a tall mountain provides a prospect to look down on the garden and out to distant hills. THREE TYPES OF GARDENS There are three types of traditional gardens in China: the monastic courtyards , the imperial gardens and hunting grounds, and the scholar gardens such as those in Suzhou. The monastic courtyards are distributed throughout hills and mountains where the Buddhist and Daoist doctrines establish the idea of hermitage or retreat. The imperial gardens and hunting grounds that remain are in and around Beijing (including the Mountain Resort in Chengde), although evidence remains of them in many...