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Moving Gardens y a n g z h o u r e p r e s e n ta t i o n s i beyond the capital, there was also a resurgence of architectural painting in urban centers . As explained earlier, I decided to focus on Yangzhou as a parallel study because Yangzhou ’s private patronage of the arts, especially by rich merchants, had reached such an impressive scale that it could almost rival imperial patronage in Beijing. The existence of the Yuan school—which involved two generations of jiehua specialists—further indicated that the production of architectural painting in Yangzhou was sustained by market demand. Because there are numerous surviving works by Yuan Jiang and Yuan Yao, I will focus on their works. There are certain notable differences between imperial and private patronage, such as a change of patron from the Qing rulers who oversaw the whole empire to an individual who took pride in possessing a private estate as well as a change in power from supreme imperial authority to the status invested in any social class. Although architectural images still offered sites for social and cultural engagements, the nature of meaning construction varied . The choice of themes also varied, and because of this, it is difficult to give every theme a parallel study. My studies of court and Yangzhou architectural representations are therefore confined to contemporary, historical, and mythical themes. Ritual Activities in Private Gardens In Qing Chinese hierarchical society, the emperors performed state rituals to reiterate political authority, whereas the social elite (including gentry, officials, and wealthy merchants) engaged in refined activities and lived a luxurious cultural life to assert social importance. The latter invited famous personages, poets, and artists to elegant gatherings in which they 5 tasted good tea or wine, composed poems, and enjoyed works of art in refined environments . These cultural practices were not ceremonial rituals that involved a fixed sequence of prescribed actions. Nevertheless, they were purposeful activities that occurred customarily in specially designed environments. While conducting cultural activities in private gardens, individuals played visible roles in the creation or affirmation of their social images. In that sense, elegant gatherings were similar to state rituals, as both reinforced status distinction in a hierarchical society. Whereas state ceremonies in imperial settings were superpersonal and emotionally charged, literary and artistic gatherings in private gardens were informal and relaxed. Elegant gatherings also enabled selected members from the lower social strata to gain acceptance from the intellectual elite and to achieve upward social mobility. Shared interests in the arts as well as practical concerns for social networking brought the participants together in these gatherings . If similarity of culture was the basic social bond within the enclosure of a private garden, then dissimilarity of cultures differentiated these participants from those who were excluded. So while some of these participants were enjoying the benefits of fluidity of social boundaries, most of them were conscious of the need to guard their status. Implied here are the notions of upward mobility and cultural differentiation in Qing society, notions that were especially valid in the garden city of Yangzhou. The quest for upward social mobility also created tensions between different social groups. The old gentry and scholar-officials often assumed leadership in literati culture, setting an example for rich merchants who, being motivated by the desire for upward social mobility, supported cultural activities in order to buy their way into the social elite.1 Garden construction became their means to achieve the ends. So when the famous scholar Li Yu (1611–ca. 1680) talked about garden design in his Xianqing ouqi, he made clear conceptual distinctions between “refined elegance” (ya) and “vulgarity” (su), between “technical awkwardness” (zhuo) and “craftsmanship” (gong).2 The boundaries between these contrasting terms might be blurry in practice. Yet these distinctions revealed two important social phenomena: first, the literati concerns with maintaining a distance from the “vulgar” merchants; second, the social tensions that resulted from the rise of the merchant class. The merchants in Qing Yangzhou were wealthy enough to direct the course of the city’s cultural life, and a group as vast as this could give rise to a rich variety of cultural expressions. In addition, the merchant community in Yangzhou was diverse. Although the majority came from Anhui province, others came from other provinces such as Shanxi and Shaanxi. The formation of different native-place associations was a concrete expression of the diversity of...

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