Classical Gardens of Suzhou

There are many features of the gardens which carry the message of traditional culture. Inscriptions, carvings, choice of trees and plants, and garden layouts ali illustrate beliefs and philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism, or Buddhism. The four gardens included in this nomination - the Humble Adrninistrator's Garden, the Lingering Garden, the Garden of the Master of Nets, and the Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty - represent the acme of Chinese landscape garden design. Complex landscapes of pavilions, terraces, towers, rocks, hills, streams, and pools are formed with great subtlety and skill in a small area, re-creating natural Identification beauty and harmonizing natural and human aesthetics. Much of this is attributable to the fact that Nomination The Classical Gardens of Suzhou the two great masters of Chinese landscape gardening, Ji Cheng and Wen Zhengheng, were Location Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province natives of Suzhou and based their fundamental treatises on the gardens of the town. State Parly People's Republic of China Criteria i, ii, and v Date 26 July 1996 Category of property In terms of the categories of cultural property set out in Article 1 ofthe 1972 World Heritage Convention, these gardens are sites. Justification by State Party Chinese classical gardens form a system of art that History and Description takes pride in its high artistic achievement and unique style. The classical gardens of Suzhou History represent the most refined form of Chinese classical The city of Suzhou is situated in the Lower Yangtze garden. Basin alongside Lake Tai. It was founded in 514 BC These gardens reflect the development of politics, as the capital of the Wu Kingdom, and has remained economy, and culture in ancient China. The gardens the political, economie, and cultural centre of the of Suzhou represent the development of Chinese region since that time. landscape garden design over more than two The earliest gardens in Suzhou date back to its thousand years. Their perfect structure and high leve! foundation in the 6th century BC, but it was during of preservation result from the involvement of many the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and in particular the branches of the natural and social sciences and 16th to !8th centuries, that the city's prosperity therefore contribute greatly to the study of Chinese resulted in the creation of as many as two hundred architecture, humanities, aesthetics, philosophy, gardens within its walls. Their quality and profusion botany, hydraulic engineering, environmental eamed Suzhou the title of the "Earthly Paradise." science, and folklore. The oldest of the four gardens that form this The art of landscape gardening in China stems from nomination is probably the Mountain Villa with painting, and in particular the freehand brushwork of Embracing Beauty, whose origins go back to the end the Tang and Song periods. Two types of garden have of the 16th century, wh en it belonged to the Royal developed over the centuries. On the one hand there Academician Shen Shixing. are the magnificent Imperial gardens around Beijing, and on the other the private gardens to be found in The Humble Adrninstrator's Garden has been the site Suzhou. The quiet elegance and subtlety of the latter of the residence of Suzhou notables since the 2nd contrast strongly with the grandeur of the former. century AD. It was the Ming Imperial Inspector Wang Xianchen who built the present complex, The classical gardens of Suzhou form an integral part when he retired from public life in 1509 and retumed of the ensemble of house and garden. They succeed to his native city. in combining two apparently irreconcilable human aspirations - to live in a comfortable house and to The Lingering Garden dates from the end of the !6th live close to nature. The buildings with which the century and is the work of Xu Taishi, also a high gardens are associated, are typical of those in the Imperial official. Its present name was given to it in region south of the Y angtze river in the Ming and 1873 by the Zhengs, who paid a graceful tribute to Qing Dynasties, and illustrate the high leve! of the former owners, the Liu family, since the Chinese civilization in this region. They had a profound word for "lingering" is similar to the name of this influence on house styles in the whole region. fami1y. 13 Wh en Deputy Minister Shi Zhengzhi lived in Suzhou The highest feature of the garden is the Cloud in the late 12th century he called his house "The Capped Peak, a limestone hill rising to a height of Fisherman's Retreat," and this idea was picked up in 6.5m in the north-eastern corner of the garden. This late 18th century by Song Zongyuan when he created is one of the fine arti.ficial limestone bills of great the Garden of the Master of the Nets. beauty that are a special feature of this garden, and which were added by collectors over the centuries. Description The western part is, by contrast, a gentler landscape The classical Suzhou garden is a microcosm of the of rolling earthen bills covered with maples. The world depicted in the basic elements of water, stone, collection of inscribed stelae is outstanding, the work plants, and buildings. The Humble Administrator' s of fme calligraphers in the course of the past Garden, the Lingering Garden, the Garden of the rnillennium. The ancestral temple and bouse are Master of Nets, and the Mountain Villa with situated to the south of the garden. Embracing Beauty, which make up this nomination, Much smaller (5400m2) is the Garden of the !v/aster are the finest examples of the Suzhou gardens, and of the Nets. It is entered from the south through a hence of the art of the Chinese landscape garden. rare form of gateway flanked by enormous carved They are laid out in imitation of natural scenery to blocks of stone, which designate the court rank of the meet the intellectual and emotional needs of the owner. The fine house with its four successive Chinese people, in accordance with the metaphysical courts, built in strict conforrnity with feudal princip les of Laozi and Zhuangzi. They make full use regulations, must be traversed before the garden is of the natural topography, creating labyrinthine reached. Once again, the central feature is a pooL layouts of great complexity and continuai visual encircled by a covered walkway, and beyond is a surprises. series of pavilions and studios with elegant garden courts. The layout of buildings and gardens is The beauties of natural scenery are re-created by extremely subtle, so that a small area gives the means of arti.ficial hills and water courses planted impression of great size and variety. with tree, shrubs, and flowers. Using materials from the local landscape, their designers created miniature The Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty is the landscapes that seem to owe nothing to human smallest of the four gardens in this nomination 2 intervention. To quote the felicitous phrase in the (2180m ). Its crowning feature is the magnificent nomination dossier, they are "unnaturally natural." limestone mountain, the work of the Qing master Gu Yliang (1764-1830). Although it covers Jess than To complement the natural landscapes, the gardens 2 500m , it is intensively detailed, with bigh peaks also feature many human constructions. These take rising to 7m, dells, paths, caves, stone houses, the form of both small and large buildings, provided ravines, precipices, ridges, and cliffs, yet still gives for various purposes, such as meditation, reading and the impression of being spontaneous and writing, drinking tea, playing and listening to music, uncontrived. There are strategically sited viewing and other activities. The buildings are richly platforms at various points, enabling the visitor to ornamented and fumished in traditional Chinese appreciate the beauties of this superb creation. On style. Inscriptions in superb calligraphy referring to top of the mountain there is a pavilion, and two more Chinese philosophy and literature and ancient stelae are located at its foot. add a further dimension to the gardens. The Humble Administrator 's Garden is the largest of the four, covering 51,959m2, one-fifth of which is a Management and Protection lake. The central section of the garden is a re Legal status creation of the scenery of the Lower Yangtze. Rising from the lake are the tree-covered East and West The gardens are protected by a series of statutes. Hills, each crowned by a pavilion. To the west of the stemming from the Constitution of the People's lake there is a group of buildings with views of the Republic of China and including the Law of Cultural lake and its landscape, both direct and mirrored in Relies Protection, the City Planning Law, the the waters. To the east the landscape is one ofhills Environmental Protection Law, and the Penal Law. covered with pines and bamboo and encircled by The Cultural Relies Protection Law operates through streams. The variety of plant species is great, with a number of sets of regulations, and these are subtle use made of lotus, wisteria, forsythia, and reinforced by other regulations relating to frre other flowering trees and shrubs. The bonsai garden prevention, prevention of noise pollution, etc. has a large collection of fine examples of the Suzhou style, one of the four main Chinese bonsaï groups. The Humble Administrator' s Garden and the Lingering Garden were declared Cultural Relies of In addition to the many buildings in the garden, there National Importance in 1961, the Garden of the are forty stelae and over a hundred inscriptions. The Master ofNets in 1982, and the Mountain Villa with main house, consisting of four individual buildings, Embracing Beauty in 1988.

Load more