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The classic Chinese garden first appeared in the Qin and Han
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| The cover of the Craftsmanship of Gardening. |
Dynasties, was founded in the Wei-Jin and South-North Dynasties, developed in the Tang Dynasty, matured in the Song Dynasty and reached its peak in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. During the longstanding development of Chinese classical garden, countless talented artisans contributed their painstaking efforts to these beautiful landscape gardens, and Zhang Nanheng was one of them. Alternately named Zhang Lian, he was born in Huating in Jiangsu Province in the 15th year of Wan Li's reign in the Ming Dynasty. He studied painting in his early years and later he embedded the realm of Chinese landscape painting into his garden building practices.
A rock or a tree would show unique interests through his designing and arrangement. Being expert in making rockery, he didn't strive to simply imitate the shape of big mountains, but to seek the essences of the natural hills or mountains. An artificial hill with sinuous caves and distant peaks he created in a garden of a very limited space could evoke one's dream life of secluding in mountains and forests. His son Zhang Ran carried on his father's career, and was called in by Emperor Kangxi to Beijing to participate in the rockery project in the imperial West Garden, Jade Spring Hill Garden and the Chang Chun Garden. Later, family Zhang's descendants settled in Beijing and devoted themselves in creating rockery. With techniques handed down through generations, family Zhang gradually became famed rockery family in north China-Rockery Zhang.
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| This painting The Spring Field Trip created in the 6th century is a work of early Chinese landscape painting, which evokes profound artistic realm of the natural mountain and water. |
Scholars' participation in the making of gardens enriched the external beauty and the cultural connotations of gardens. Based on practices, they contributed a bulk of theoretic books on garden construction, which provided penetrating summary and elaboration on the Chinese garden art. Some important examples are One School's Opinion by Li Yu, Records on Surpluses by Wen Zhenheng and Craftsmanship of Gardening by Ji Cheng. Li Yu was born in the Qiantang River area of Zhejiang in the 39th year in Wan Li's reign in the Ming Dynasty ( 161 I ). He once visited scenic spots and gardens all over the country and also took part in the planning and designing of garden. One volume of One School's Opinion discusses the theory on architecture and garden construction. A descendant of famed Ming painter Wen Zhengming, Wen Zhenheng was born in Changzhou, (presently Wu county) Jiangsu province in the 13th year of Wan Li in the Ming Dynasty (1585). Four volumes of Records on Surpluses have contents related with garden making.
Born in the 10th of year of Wan Li in the Ming Dynasty (1582), Ji Cheng was from Wujiang,
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| The painting of Nanjing Zhan Garden by a Qing painter. | Jiangsu Province. He was lond of art when he was a child and later became expert in calligraphy and painting, which helped him accomplish great artistic achievements in garden building. He traveled extensively in China and was a practitioner of garden construction. In 1634, the 7th year of Chong Zhen in the Ming Dynasty, at the age of 52, he finished the writing of Craftsmanship of Gardaning, a monograph about garden construction. This book comprehensively elaborates the theory and practice on Chinese garden, including planning, designing, construction of houses, forms of door, window, wall and floor, choosing of the stone materials, making rockery, etc. It is the most important ancient theoretical book on garden building in China. The book is divided into three volumes and can be summarized into contents of the following three fields:
Contents on garden building techniques and garden-related knowledge occupy the largest proportion of the book. For example, in the chapter of"Zhuang Zhe", he listed 62 types of wooden door leaf in words and illustrations; in the chapter of "balustrade", he listed more than a hundred forms of balustrade; and in the chapter of "wall", he introduced the forms, features, materials used, building techniques and the applicable occasions of all different types of wall. Illustrations of some wall forms were attached. These vivid and concrete materials with excellent pictures and accom-
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| The Ruyu Pavilion in the Yipu Garden in Suzhou. | panying essay were the result of long-term collection of practical resources and systematic sorting and generalization, which is hardly seen in other theoretical books on gardening.
Summary of garden building experiences, another important part of the book, appears in the beginnings of almost all volumes and chapters. In the piece of writing called "analyzing the environment" in the first volume of Craftsmanship of Gardaning, Ji Cheng analyzed the characteristics of different garden-building environment such as mountain forest, city, village, fields, place beside the residence, and brought forward corresponding garden-building principles. In the chapter of "wall", the author summarized that the building materials for outer and inner walls of the garden should be refined and appropriate and selected flexibly according to the change of locations. More were written on "making rockery" and "stone selection". He summed up 17 optimal shapes of rockery. He also listed 16 types of stone materials including the most precious Tai Hu
Rock, moor stone and common yellow stone, and further explained their morphological features and optimal ways of using.
Theoretical elaboration on garden making is the essence of this book. Ji Cheng made pointed theoretical summarization on garden composition, the principles and techniques of scenery creating. He brought forward the important principle that "there are general rules, but no fixed formulae". He believed that construction of a garden should conform to its own features, but should not adhere to any fixed pattern, and orderliness should be contained in complexity. He also pointed out that the building of a garden should follow principles of nature. No matter in city or village, each step of garden construction should try to be "'much more natural, though man-made", which is to say that the uppermost realm of Chinese gardening is
to achieve the illusion of real nature in man-made landscape gardens.
This garden-building master made systematic theoretical summarization and elaboration on practical experiences of the past in Chinese garden art. He pinpointed the relationship of essential elements such as style, form, color, texture and types of scenery, so that there were rules to follow in scenery creating, spatial relationship arrangement, scenic spot composition and almost all other fields in garden making. These theories on garden making are regarded as the most reasonable and effective principles and techniques in creating a Chinese classical garden. Garden builders consider it the highest realm to skillfully master all these garden artistic rules.
The summarization and elaboration on theory of garden- making of course mark the high level of the artistic achievements in Chinese garden art, but when these creative artistic principles become conventionalized techniques that people of later generations have to follow, rules of art would become fixed patterns of art. Over-ossified and over-artificial works of low quality would then inevitably appear because of the substantive increase in philistinism and disharmony, which are elements against the natural charm of garden. |
