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"Although all it is only a human creation, she can appear work of the Sky" Ji Cheng.

The art of the garden belongs for the same reason as the calligraphy or poetry to the Chinese sacred arts. The garden is all at once a place of life and entertainment in which one likes strolling and a "magic" place, a midget cosmos in which one tries to recreate the picture of an ideal nature. He presents himselfself therefore like a constant compromise between the aesthetic and symbolic measurements. The Chinese gardens answer a certain number of codes that underestimated thus return in the very fragmentary understanding.
Historic

The history of the garden in China is more that millennial.

The first garden has a mystical origin: Zhuang Zi returns a speech that he assigns to Conficius noting the park of Xiwei, legendary sovereign previous to the Yellow Emperor (II before our millennial era. The traditional Chinese garden symbolizes the paradise in the world. According to the former legends complicate this paradise sits to the summit of the big mountain, in the faraway islands in the middle of the sea. There be the elixir of long life that permits to reach immortality. This legend explains the major role that the mountain, the sea and the islands play in the symbolic of the Chinese garden.

 

 

More prosaically, the garden itself probably developed during the dynasty of the Hans. He was not then the object of an aesthetic research but was dedicated to relaxation (The Garden without worries – Mianyuan) and to the practice of hunt. So the Shuowen jiezi, compiled in the second century of our era, mentions the terms you (park), been able to (vegetable garden), yuan (garden) and yuanyou (park). The Becha? park, enlarged and transformed since, was created under the Hans in -104.

From the Tang and the Song, the environment that it is like outside interior begins to play a major role in the design of the gardens. It is under the Ming and the Qing that he acquires hiss artistic dimension and reaches his fullness. When one evokes the art of the Chinese gardens, it is at the gardens conceived during this period that one refers. If one believes him the popular adage that of it is at the south of the blue stream or in his most beautiful delta that were imagined

At the sky exists and the paradise on the earth, Suzhou and Hangzhou

Since the third century the garden is going to leave the imperial sphere thanks to the development of a lucky class of merchants and especially of literate civil servants (shidafu) that want to benefit from the kindness of nature without leaving the city and their business. The styles of gardens are going to increase then according to the use that is devolved to them. Some are measurements of big and very opulent. They are then open to the public in order to show their owner’s power. Others are going on the contrary to close itself to the outside and looks to enter in the family’s intimacy. Essentially property of the shidafu, they are the reflection of the humanist culture complicates. She pushes them to associate to the acquired social success while serving the state and the emperor and rather raising Confucian values, the spiritual success that acquires itself while cultivating his interior life and that raises her of the taoist values. While appropriating the gardens, they are thus going to add them a symbolic dimension, to make a place of shelter and meditation, to tempt to recreate a nature there or even an idealized world, of it.

The development of the Buddhism and the taoism is going to allow the garden to win the religious world in the temples that the monks constructed aside from the cities.

The art of the Chinese gardens is thus going to evolve in three different surroundings (emperor, bourgeoisie bargains and monkish world) improving until the eighteenth century. The western penetration (missionary, colonizers) introduces the culture of the western garden then. The French garden conceived with the help of the French missionaries in the garden Yuanming Yuan is one of the most striking examples of this import. Nevertheless she also signs the end of the traditional Chinese gardens.

To the look of their wealth old at the time, well few traditional Chinese gardens subsist today. Most were victim of accidental fires or voluntary. As the traditional Chinese buildings were not even constructed in wood, no vestige, architectural, do not subsist.

Let’s note to finish the decisive contributions of the Chinese garden opposite the Japanese and Korean gardens that developed their own aesthetics then.
Main aspects of the Chinese garden

Ji Cheng, the author of the Yuanye, considered that the success of a garden depended on two essential principles: the adaptation to the environment and the loan to other landscapes.

He could be added the creation of a world there in miniature. the world in a grain is thus an expression boudhique that reflects one of the major preoccupations of the Chinese landscapist. The smallness gives the value to the object. More the natural reproduction of the object moves away, by his measurements, the reality of it and more dons a magic or mythical character. This point is to bring closer the precedent. If to arrange a park that contains the suit to all gases and all beings of the universe already constitute an act of magic, to reduce it at the state of miniature comes back to remove him the last semblance of reality and there by the pupil above this Last.

We will see in the few points that follow how these different aspects are put in practice in the realization of a garden.

General principles

The artist must show his capacity to use the natural environment to create his. work rather than of the one to master it. The symmetry is not erected in principle as in the western garden, looking for the artist rather to clear a general harmony that can have natural appearance. It is in some sort about to give an ideal representation of the nature, to sublimate it.

The habitat is composed of buildings separated by race, disposed according to a conventional order, in principle along an axis (yang). The gardens, them, have a free and asymmetric plan (yin). In all composition there is an opened space in which the hands are put decors and the most important pavilions in place to contemplate them, to the c.ur of an interlacing of galleries, paths and groves.

A garden is an element that lives itself in the time. The garden must know how to pull party of the alternation of the seasons and the succession of flowerings that comes with it, of the games of light and shade procured by the solar cycle, of the diurnal and nocturnal alternations. Through the unceasing and multiple transmutations, the garden acquires a new dimension, the one where every moment defines itself by ephemeral visions and the fleeting impressions, in an universe in perpetual to become.

The landscapes borrowed

The loan of stages as he is determinant in the quality of the garden. Since the dynasty of the Jins of the East, multiple documents mention this practice. It is not about copying as faithfully as possible but to recreate in the spectator’s mind the feeling that he could feel at the sight of the stage represented. Chen written Chongzhou: The whole subtlety resides in the word "I see": the loan itself achieved between intention and luck in a completely natural and elegant manner.

The garden then becomes the place of the shared look, the place of two spaces. One also recovers in this design the necessary spatial continuity between interior and outside space.

The border between artifice and reality is sometimes fine, testify the lamaseries of the garden in which had been detached of the priests or the rice fields in which worked of the peasants of it.

Feng Shui

The feng shui (literally wind and water) consists to examine the constituent elements of the environment in view of the establishment of a building, the pomp or the ominous of a site determining the prosperity or the decadence of the master of the places.

The feng shui carries up at least in the third century and his ideological roots are even older. He aims to develop a harmonious manner to live assuring prosperity and happiness. The energy vital qi (literally air, breath, energy, temperament or atmosphere) must be captured and controlled to beneficial ends. According to the philosophy taoist this invisible energy carrier of flux is a vital strength. Progressively the fengshui is going to incorporate some elements as the geomancy or the horoscope.

From the third century, it is more and more frequent to call on experts in feng shui to determine the site or the orientation of a house or a tomb. The application to the gardens of these precepts is then quite natural.

The Chinese garden must to reflect the nature. As one already mentioned it the general harmony is well sought-after more that the symmetry and the order. The fundamental principle of the feng shui, "are less better" becomes famous in the gardens, the quality having to prevail on the quantity. The Chinese garden is not like a botanical collection therefore. The trees planted there are thus in an asymmetric manner, they have value of structural elements and permit to create interesting perspectives or to put in value of other elements of the garden (stone, spread of water).

According to the taoist concept of the yin and yang, the harmony is born and lives by the presence of opposite elements like beauty and ugliness, clear and dark … These balances between opposite elements are evidently enhanced in the gardens. The rocks tormented by their shapes constitute yang whereas the water of the basin or the pond by the balance that she procures stands of the side of the yin.

The mountain and water constitute the two essential elements to take in account at the time of the exam of the site, the first exercises its influence on the man’s destiny the second on his good fortune pécunière. If one can see an obvious report there with the Chinese conception of the gardens, the feng shui and his good founded has often been interrogated by the big treaty of landscaping.

The fundamental elements: water and the mountain

As we saw it previously water and the stone are carriers of a big symbolic value. They are also essential pillars of the aesthetics of the Chinese gardens.

The stones can be arranged of different manners. They can be accumulated to give the picture of a mountain (shan). In this case, they have a symbolic role as much that structural. Structural, because they form the back-cloth of a natural perspective, while separating it of the following without any artificial element. While concealing, they contribute to clear an impression of space in spite of the narrowness of the garden.

The rocks presented alone are chosen for their tormented shapes. They evoke the uncertainty and the wei (precarious balance). They constitute the frame of the skeleton of the Earth symbolized by the midget mountains. Water (shui) is connected to this metaphor, since his movement within the rivers or streams that could browse the garden symbolize the living pulse of the Earth

Water is an essential element. She encourages by calmness that she transports the meditative contemplation. The sound of a water fall judiciously placed will reinforce this feeling. The basin, of natural shape, always in the worry to preserve the natural harmony, be at the center and unites the different elements of the garden. Water also symbolizes the strength that soft as following the slope of the land is capable to erode any rock. She illustrates it in one of the essential values of the taoism

The man of a superior virtue is as water. Water excels to make the good to the beings and do not fight. She lives in the places that the crowd hates. Among all things of the world, he is not of softer of it and of weaker, and however, to break what is hard and strong, nothing can prevail over her. For it nothing can replace water. What is weak triumph of strong that that is what is soft triumph of that that is hard-Lao Tseu, You Tao king

The place of the art in the Chinese gardens: the influences taoist

The expression of the taoist philosophy of the nature as well as the one of his tie with arts as the poetry and calligraphy constitutes a constant in the Chinese gardens. The Tao (literally the way) makes reference to a process rather than to a path to follow. This philosophy puts the emphasis on the unit with the universe, of which all elements are constituted of the same material, the qi. The Tao is the sum of all past, present and future things.

The huge rocks eroded by the time are a demonstration of the Tao in it that they represent the course of the time and our future decomposed.

The Chinese gardens have very deep philosophical roots. The natural elements are there carefully chosen for their historic, literary or symbolic significances The paintings of landscape and the art of the gardens developed himself in perfect symbiosis in China. This historic phenomenon drove to develop a ". It" very individual common to this two artistic shapes. The aspect "does not stamp any some Chinese gardens is therefore absolutely not the result of the luck but well the result of the combination of the looks of the painter and the landscapist. One could even put in parallel the arrangement of the gardens and the painting on roller (scholarly invented by Wang Wei of the Tang period), that permits not to unveil the. uvre that progressively to the spectator’s eyes. All as her, the garden is never visible in his whole. The game of the openings that we will examine briefly in the paragraph according to us will provide a new illustration of these ties.

A garden must reflect two breaths therefore vital. The one of the nature that is put in stage through the trees, the rocks or the extents of water that dot the garden but also the one of the gardener that represents the creation, but a creation that must approach the nearest to the most perfect of the balances, the natural balance.

The Spectator’s place

The garden is a. uvre, a spectacle that offers itself to the visitor’s eyes. One ever manages to seize it as a whole. The whole is rhythmized by a network of walls pierced here, of round doors there, of perforated windows, that end up transforming the garden in an infinity of courses and recesses. These partitionings that structure it and the openings that there is practiced aim to produce a set of visual sensations artificially. The drive the openings look like a setting would make it for a picture. The symbolic slips himself until in their shapes: the fishing for immortality or longevity (Qinghui yuan in Shunde).

She permits to put in value or to hide some elements. The most elaborate devices even take in account the visitor’s displacement inside the garden. The gardener can by this mediator, to play on the succession of the stages while juxtaposing them in a very determined order. It is thus possible to create a real race that, although constituted of multiple stages preserves the unit of the whole. In the Wangshi yuan in Suzhou, one can note the remarkable contrasts created by the artist. The walker passes thus in one instant of a restful stage dominated by bamboos to the dizzy one of a precipice represented by a cliff of which one can not see the foot. One of the stages the more récurentes of this place is without dispute the artificial mountain of stones (yang) trained above a pond (yin).

The garden is not only a spectacle it is also a complement of the house, that means a place of life. He must therefore allow the human beings to penetrate there as well as to propel himself of it.

The architecture

The archittecture holds an important place in the art of the Chinese garden.

The pavilions joined between them by a set of galleries allow the inventor of the garden to choose the ploints of view that he will give to see to the visitors. The galleries and the walls also permit to divide the garden in independent spaces.

One finds in the gardens of multiple shapes of traditional Chinese architecture:

     Pavilion kiosk * * * * pagoda gallery hall * * * ark boat bridge *

The plants and the animals

The animals can be present or can symbolize by sculptures.

The dragon represents the emperor and the qi when he dances. He does not have a negative connotation. The Phoenix symbolizes the empress, associated with the dragon China all whole. The Turtle is often a symbol of longevity and staying. Fish (Carp) represents the perseverance: the carp fights against the current toward the door of the dragon where she will turn into dragon. The Bat is a mark of luck or fortune.

The plants:

     * The willow (liu) constitutes the symbol of docility and the femininity. The swords of willow permit to move away the demons * bamboo (zhu) symbolizes the modesty as well as the straightforwardness (stem), the humility (hollow) and the eternal youth (green leaves). He also represents the often literate. He brings serenity to the landscape * The lotus (lian hooted) symbolizes the purity with his flowers that emerge the mud. He is also a metaphor of the junzi, the Confucian honest man.
     * The magnolia represents the beauty of the girls (in flower button).

The Yuanming Yuan the quintessence of the garden to the Chinese Historic

The garden of the Yuanming Yuan (The garden of the summer palace or literally the garden of the perfect clarity) constitutes the apogee of two thousand years of evolution of the art of the imperial gardens probably.

It is in 1677 that emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) decides to restore inherited a garden of the fallen dynasty of the Ming, situated close to the capital. Renamed glorious Spring, the park becomes the residence of the sovereign pleasure of the forbidden that deserts reign City where a stuffy heat in summer and an icy cold weather in winter. In 1709, Kangxi offers its son, the future emperor Yongzheng (1723-1735), an adjoining garden to the domain that he baptizes Yuanming, "Clarity perfect."

Since his accession to the throne, Yongzheng makes this place of his main residence. The site is enlarged and is remodeled according to the geophysical configuration of China in order to constitute a microcosm of empire of which it becomes the political center. Elevated to the Yuanming Yuan, his sound, the future emperor Qianlong (1736-1796), be passionately fond for the garden. Him completes l ‘. while making work to construct, by the Jesuit artists to his service, a set of European palaces surrounded with fountains of water and games. To his apogee the garden of the gardens spread on 350 acres in the Northwest of Peking and contained priceless treasures.

The realization of this garden in the eighteenth century corresponds so much to the political apogee that economic and cultural of China. During the century according to the corruption does not linger to gangrene the power and the decadence gets settled among the Mandarins. The Second Opium war of the faces themselves where China and Europe explodes less than one century thus after the completion of the Yuanming Yuan. She will find hers tragic outcome there. The domain is then robbed by the Franco-British expeditionary body delivered to the flames by Lord Elgin in 1860. Today, he remains only only one garden restored after the fire, very modest testimony of the magnificence of the garden of the gardens.

Build a dream with marble, jade, bronze and the china, frame it drink some of cedar, cover it with stones, it drape of silk, make it here sanctuary, there harem, there citadel, put some gods there, put some monsters there , Varnish it, enamel it, gild it, make it up, make construct by architects who are poets the one thousand and a dream, of the one thousand and one nights, add the gardens, the basins, the spurs of water and froth, the swans, the ibises, the peacocks, in a word implies a sort of glaring cellar of the human fantasy of having a face temple and palace, it was there this monument. (Victor Hugo letter to Captain Butler)

The Garden of the Gardens

One recovers most characteristic elements of the Chinese garden there.

The Yuanming Yuan constitutes the creation of an universe above all in miniature. He can seem strange to choose an as vast and imposing garden that the one of the summer palace to illustrate the essential concept of microcosm. Nevertheless if one considers that as imperial garden, the microcosm corresponds at the entire empire, the paradox is only obvious.

The garden is entirely artificial until the relief and to the lake that characterizes it. All has been created by the man’s hand under the direction of an office dedicated to this effect. One recovers the natural fundamental elements of the Chinese garden, water and the relief, that structure there and divides the space.

The nature is represented or is rather idealized. His arrangement is the reflection of his owner’s personality, the emperor who has, it seems, worked personally to the development of his plans.

In the case of the Yuanming Yuan, the feng shui probably played a major role. So a non-dated report evokes a meticulous exam having permitted to show the perfect match between the interior elements (mountain and water) and the faces géomantiques. In particular proximity to the mountainous west of chains forms a screen of mountains that permits to preserve the qi, vital breath of the place.

Inside of the setting drawn by the mountain and the water, that the garden structure, multiple landscapes have been drawn evoking the most famous Chinese sites. In the garden of the perfect Clarity, rocks and plans of water have been arranged to answer the configuration of empire in "new regions and four seas." The culminating point represented the Kunlun mount, parent of the main chains of mountain in China. From there left the three big chains of the garden. Water divided in two main branches, one formed a pitchfork then converged toward a plan of water of four hectares, the other bifurcated several times before flowing in an immense lake of twenty-seven hectares, symbol of the sea of China. He is made there also thus reference to the prominent Confucian doctrine the imperial character of the place: the government of the state to the happy medium and the respect of the forebears particularly values is thus put in value. The landscape planning thus becomes the vector of political messages.

The Yuanming Yuan built on a perfectly flat plain did not have to adapt to the relief but his localization demonstrates the worry of the environment utilser preexisting respecting the precepts of Ji Chenh thus. So the sector of Haidan is extremely well so long as in water, essential element if it is in the Chinese garden.