Canary in the Cage
Interactions between Women and Gardens in Ming and Qing Dynasties
Master’s thesis, 45 credits Author’s name: Gu Yun Name of supervisor: Gudrun Andersson Semester: Spring 2020
HISTORISKA INSTITUTIONEN
Abstract: This paper attempts to find out the relationship between women and gardens which has been neglected in the past through the research on the historical materials related to women. Since the middle and late Ming dynasty, the emergence of a large number of Jiangnan gardens have coincided with the emergence of a large number of female poets in the late Ming and Qing dynasties in terms of time and region. It is not difficult to find designs full of female colors in typical Ming and Qing gardens, and the works of female poets always take the garden as the writing object, it seems that garden and woman had influence each other in that period. This paper tries to reproduce the interaction between women and gardens in Ming and Qing dynasties from three aspects: the limitation of women's exploration of space outside the garden, the possible influence of women on the garden, and the connection between the garden and the emergence of poetess.
1 Contents: 1 Introduction: ...... 3 1.1 Sources and method: ...... 4 1.2 Previous research ...... 8 2 Restricted female space ...... 11 2.1 Middle door as the separation of internal and external space: ...... 12 2.2 Rebellious Jiangnan woman ...... 14 2.2.1 Women need to hide themselves when going out: ...... 15 2.2.2 Only go to local and public spots: ...... 16 2.3 Beauty in painting: chaste woman in fantasy: ...... 17 Summary ...... 24 3 Influence women could have on gardens: ...... 26 3.1 Taoist gardens for women to enjoy: ...... 26 3.1.1 The view of equality between men and women in Taoism helps women to exert influence on gardens: ...... 27 3.1.2 Flowers planted in gardens for women: ...... 29 3.2 Gardens constructed at the rear of residences: ...... 32 3.3 The trend of building gardens in Jiangnan: ...... 37 Summary: ...... 40 4 More gardens, more talented women: ...... 42 4.1 The scenery of gardens stimulated women to write poems: ...... 42 4.1.1 Reason for men willing to educate women: ...... 43 4.1.2 Women compare themselves to flowers in poetry: ...... 44 4.2 Talented women had larger social circle and wider social space: ...... 46 4.2.1 Jiaoyuan poetry club ...... 47 4.2.2 Yuan Mei’s female disciples: ...... 49 4.3 Limitation of writing poetry based on garden scenery: ...... 50 4.3.1 Confucian scholar’s criticism on the ethos of women writing poetry: ...... 50 4.3.2 Talented women's works are of low literary value: ...... 51 4.4 Liberation or Burden ...... 53 4.4.1 Beautiful ideal, cruel reality ...... 54 4.4.2 Asking for high walls ...... 55 Summary: ...... 56 5 Conclusion ...... 58 Appendix: ...... 60 Bibliography: ...... 61
2 1 Introduction:
In Wei, Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589), private gardens started to emerge in Jiangnan1, the richest region locates at lower Yangtze River of China. During the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, with the initial economic development of Jiangnan, the quality and quantity of private gardens were improved and began to surpass other areas in China. Due to the suppression of Han nation’s culture by the Mongols in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), and Ming dynasty’s (1368-1644) founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s (1328-1398) forbidden on constructing gardens, Jiangnan garden culture declined for a time. In the middle of Ming dynasty, extravagance began to be in vogue, and the culture of private gardens became extremely rich. In the Qing dynasty (1636-1912), although it was also under the control of the non-Han nationality, the garden culture was not hit as much as in the Yuan dynasty. On the contrary, it was appreciated by the emperors of the Qing dynasty and had an impact on the imperial garden style in Beijing.2 Garden is often regarded as a space designed for male scholars from the history materials about it, or perhaps it is because people take it for granted that ancient women had no rights in all aspects of their lives and could not enter gardens, so they could not have a direct impact on gardens and gardens cannot be regarded as women's spaces. However, as most common form of the gardens in this period were residential gardens,3 it was possible for women to enter gardens as long as the garden of their residence belonged to inner space, and gardens can also be found some feminine design, as if women had influenced the garden in a subtle way. According to the theory of Linguistic Relativity, language has an effect on our thinking.4 The space created by people can also be regarded as a kind of language.5 As a space, gardens could also influence women as long as women can enter gardens. We can find that, coincidentally, the emergence of a large number of female poets in the Ming and Qing dynasties, took place at almost the same time and same region as the increase in the number of gardens. Landscapes and natural scenes are the eternal theme of poems written by male poets, while female poets are more likely to express their emotions through the scenery of gardens, perhaps because their passion for writing poems is also ignited when women are more likely to enter gardens easily. In this thesis, I hope to reproduce the interaction between women and gardens through the study of historical data with women as the main characters.
1 In most cases, Jiangnan region includes Zhenjiang, Yingtian (Nanjing), Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou. 2 Gu Kai, Jiangnan Sijia Yuanlin 江南私家园林 (Beijing, February 2016), pp. 3–8. 3 Zhang Jianyu, ‘Suzhou Zaoqi Zhaidi Yuanlin Guanxi Kao 苏州早期宅地园林之宅园关系’, in ‘Suzhou Zaoqi Zhaidi Yuanlin Guanxi Kao 苏州早期宅地园林之宅园关系’ (Beijing, 2007), pp. 95–109. 4 Sapir, Edward., Language: An introduction to the study of speech. (Boston, 1955), sec. 1. 5 Lawson, Bryan, Language of Space (Jordan Hill, 2001).
3 Since the purpose of my research is to rediscover the relationship between women and gardens during the Ming and Qing dynasties, I raise the following research questions: What kind of influence women could have on gardens? Whether there is a relationship between gardens and the rise of poetess in Ming and Qing dynasties？ My hypothesis is although gardens were mainly men’s space in Ming and Qing dynasties, women could enter gardens under certain circumstances and influence the location and design of gardens, making the gardens more possible for them to enter and enjoy; the space of gardens enriched the emotion of women and encouraged them to write poems, the trend of constructing gardens during this period contributes to the emergence of talented women.
1.1 Sources and method:
Although China's economy has developed enormously in recent years, the cost of such development has been the demolition of a large number of ancient buildings, and the few that remain have been ruined by the government's neglect of culture. With the gradual improvement of people's material living standard in Jiangnan region, people's demand for culture is also increasing, and governments of each city are rediscovering their local cultural characteristics. As a cultural business card of the Jiangnan region, gardens can tell the past social life stories to this country and the rest of the world. In the restoration of the garden, sources governments rely on are mostly male scholars’ notes of their garden construction, which seldom refer to the influence of women, and makes people believe that ancient gardens were male space. Researches about gardens are always carried out under the perspective of male scholars’ activities,6 or according to Chinese culture and philosophy,7 which systems were founded entirely by male scholars. It is almost inevitable to study the garden as a male space if scholars' notes and theories of garden construction, their paintings and poems are still used as the main research materials. In order to ensure that their works are elegant and professional, serious literati try to avoid the appearance of women in their works. Therefore, in order to reproduce the scenes of women's daily life in the garden, it will be necessary to rely more on the works of those literati who were regarded as talented and dissipated at the same time.
6 Xu Mei, ‘Mingqing Suzhou Wenren Yuanlin de Jiangou Yu Zhuanxing 明清苏州文人园林的建构与转型— —以士大夫交友活动为视角’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, Fudan University, June 2013); Zhong Shujuan 钟 淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州园林图示中文人活 动空间研究’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, Huazhong Agricultural University, June 2016). 7 Cao Lindi, Jingdu Yuanlin 静读园林 (Beijing, June 2006); Gao Jie, ‘Mingdai Zhongwanqi Suzhou Sijia yuanlin Jianzhu Buju Yanjiu 明代中晚期苏州私家园林建筑布局研究’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, Huazhong Agricultural University, June 2011).
4 Talented men like Li Yu (1611-1680), Yuan Mei (1716-1797), Shen Fu (1763-1832) and so on were degraded by their intimate relationship with women, and mention too much about women in their works. But it is also because of this that their work can be a good study of women's history. Li Yu was a famous writer in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, but his character was criticized by other scholars because he was engaged in business in addition to being a scholar. His most famous work is the Record of Leisure Feelings (Xianqing Ouji), in this book, he used eight chapters to discusses all aspects of daily life, including opera, singing and dancing, women's appearance and behavior, gardens and architecture, art, diet, flowers, and health. This book can be a very good source to study aesthetic theory and people’s requirements of women and gardens at that time. Yuan Mei’s book Notes on Poetry from Sui Garden (Suiyuan Shihua) provides more examples to support the abstract aesthetic theory and the requirement of Li. Yuan Mei is famous for his talent at writing poems and was regarded as the leader of poetry circle of that time. He praised women’s talent at writing poems and even took many female poets as his disciples. In this book, he collected many talented women's poems and recorded their life stories, his book made many women's voices heard by people then and later, while a large number of female poems were lost because they were not valued. In addition, his selection and evaluation of the poems written by talented women would not change with the status of women. As women often recorded their daily lives in their poems, it enabled people to have a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of women of different ages and classes at that time. Although Shen Fu's literary achievements were far from those of the two scholars mentioned earlier, his book Six Records of a Floating Life (Fusheng Liuji) was not appreciated and was not published in his lifetime, this autobiographical work had a profound impact on later generations, all of whom were moved by the love he recorded with his wife. Shen Fu's works restore the real- life scenes of husband and wife, recording many details of his wife's daily life. At that time, only the life scenes of prostitutes were recorded, and recording the life of a gentlewoman was considered a breach of Li. From his book, we can understand specifically the free boundary of women and the interaction between women and gardens. Although these authors are all supposed to be close to women, they are not women per se, and they document women in the eyes of men. In addition to searching for female figures in the works of male writers, the poetry collections of female poets can more objectively find out the inner activities of women, how they view the restrictions on women by ethics, their expectations of their own free boundaries, and their views on gardens. I mainly refer to Oriole’s Sing (Lichui Ji) by Shen Yixiu (1590-1653), and The Collection of Polite Poems Written by Gentlewomen in Qing Dynasty (Guochao Guixiu Zhengshiji) compiled by Wanyan Yunzhu (1771-1833) in the late Qing dynasty.
5 Oriole’s Sing was written by Shen Yixiu and compiled by her husband Ye Shaoyuan (1589-1648) in 1636, and collected in the Collection of Wumeng Hall (Wumeng Tang Ji).8 This collection of poems is a record of Shen Yixiu's daily life and her own feelings, it can reflect the life of talanted women in the late Ming dynasty. Shen Yixiu was born in a scholarly family, and there were nine Jinshi9 in her family, the family had a strong literary atmosphere. At the age of 16, she married Ye Shaoyuan, also a member of a prominent local family, with seven Jinshi from his family.10 Ye Shaoyuan believes that his wife's talent is even higher than his own. Although her early life was very happy, her life since her marriage was full of sadness. Her mother-in-law forbade her to write poetry, and was very strict with her, and in order to meet the needs of Li, she was very tolerant of her mother-in-law, suffered a lot of anger. Although her husband encouraged her to write poetry and tried to protect her, her life became less pleasant when he left home. In her middle age, two daughters and a son died of illness, and made her devastating, so her poems are often tinged with sadness in this period.11 Although Oriole's Sing is the representative work of a talented woman in Ming dynasty, it only records the life of one poetess, single situation may not be enough to explain the overall situation. In order to show a more comprehensive life and ideological world of talented women, I will also refer to The Collection of Polite Poems Written by Gentlewomen in Qing Dynasty. It contains more than 1,700 poems from over 900 female poets, the volume is huge and comprehensive. The disadvantage is that this high-born editor deleted most of the excellent works written by such people as courtesans and nuns, because the editor believed these people did not deserve to be called gentlewomen and their works were not classy.12 Whether it is the work of Shen Yixiu alone or the collection of 900 female poets compiled by Yunzhu, they all have one shortcoming in common: their poetry is easy to be stereotypical, the objects described and the emotions expressed are very similar, full of melancholy. If you hide the women's names, you sometimes can't tell the difference between the poems written by different poetesses. This may be because women are required to conform to the same rule of Li, receiving same education and having similar living environment, but such similarity also allows us to better depict the image of women in the past. In order to avoid a lot of repetition, I will try to choose the representative poems as the analysis object. Another kind of material I turn to is painting: paintings of beauty and painting of city. Before Tang and Song dynasties, female paintings had a transformation. Before Seventh century, women in paintings always appeared as goddesses, and these paintings were endowed with high value.
8 The collection of Wumeng Hall not just include Shen Yixiu’s work, but also her three daughters’ poem collections. 9 Jinshi is a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations. 10 Ye Shaoyuan was also a Jinshi. 11 Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集 (Beijing, January 2015). 12 Yun Zhu, Guochao Guixiu zhengshi Ji 国朝闺秀正始集 (20+1+1+1 vols, 1831) preface 5a.
6 However, since the Tang dynasty, landscape painting had replaced beauty painting as a medium for literati to express their noble moral character, and the painting of ladies had gradually changed from a work of art to a commodity.13 Since the Ming dynasty, the beauty painting became a popular visual object of consumption. The commodity status greatly increased the number of beauty paintings, and they appeared in different lengths and subjects, with the background of beauty painting always been the garden.14 Through the beauty paintings painted by the most famous painters in the Ming and Qing dynasties, we can have a more intuitive understanding of the activities of women in the garden, and how men, as creators, imagine the relationship between women and gardens. The second kind of painting material I use is city painting, and the main reference object is Suzhou’s Golden Age (Suzhou Fanhua Tu) in Liaoning Provincial Museum. It was painted in 1759 by Xu Yang, a court painter in the Qing dynasty, he used 24 years to finish this work. It is a long scroll depicting life in Suzhou city. The scroll is more than 12 meters long, with more than 12,000 people and 2,000 houses in it. By analyzing the characteristics of gardens and buildings and the distribution of women, we can see the relationship between the residences and the gardens and the free boundary of women. I will divide the thesis into three parts. I will build a cultural background frame in the first part. I need first explain the question that under what circumstances could women enter gardens. I will discuss the restrictions of Li15 on women in space and the relationship between gardens and women when their freedom was restricted. I will take the mainstream Li books of the society at that time, the works of male literati and the beauty paintings as the source of cultural background for context analysis. Chinese society is run on the basis of Li and morality rather than law, and the Li that must be followed constitute the framework of people's thinking and action. When we have a better understanding of the social norms at that time, we can better understand the value orientation of the male literati's description of the interaction between the garden and women in their works, and the emotional attitude of women in their poem sentences. By comparing the actual behaviors of women with the requirements of Li, we can find the influence of Li on women in reality. The second part will discuss how the women as the actual users of the garden influence the garden from the position, decoration and quantity. In the second part, I will make a qualitative analysis of the notes of the literati and the paintings with the theme of gardens. Through the content research on the part of literati's notes about women and gardens, this paper analyzes the attitudes of men who hold the right of speech towards the relationship between gardens and women, and how women passively influence gardens through men.
13 Wu Hong 巫鸿, Zhongguo Huihua Zhong De Nvxing Kongjian 中国绘画中的“女性空间” (Beijing, January 2019), pp. 235–236. 14 Wu Hong 巫鸿, Zhongguo Huihua Zhong De Nvxing Kongjian 中国绘画中的“女性空间”, pp. 331–333. 15 Li 礼 can be understood as ritual or rite, it is a series of codes of conduct formulated according to the requirements of morality and rationality. It is used by the rulers to maintain their own rule and social stability, and makes strict regulations on various aspects of social life such as hierarchy, family ethics and so on.
7 In the third part, I will discuss the influence of gardens on women's spiritual world and real life. By analyzing the description of talented women in male literati works, we can find out their comments on the group of female poets. Through the poetesses' own works to analyze how they view the meaning of gardens. The period I focus on is from Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty. The Ming dynasty was an era of great economic, social and cultural changes in China. Although the Qing dynasty underwent a dynastic change, the culture of the Qing dynasty basically inherited the Han culture of the Ming dynasty and further developed the economy. There was no obvious fracture between the two dynasties and it was suitable to study them as a whole.
1.2 Previous research
Researches about gardens are always focus on male scholars’ activities in the gardens and their relationship with it.16 The study of the relationship between women and landscape architecture has been neglected by scholars until recent years. Most of the research focused on this issue has been short and shallow, with similar results. Scholars basically believe that although women had no right to the garden, garden owners would arrange many places for women to spend their time in the garden in order to make the female family happy, so women would still have a certain degree of influence on the garden. The influence of gardens on women was that they have relatively free activity space when they are restricted in the internal space, and the landscape in the gardens became the material for women to write poems. One of the more noteworthy articles is Discussion of The Effect That Classical Gardens Act on Chinese Feminine Literature Li Guilian published in 2008. Through the analysis of the female poets' lives and the historical materials about them, he found that before the Tang dynasty, women's thoughts were severely oppressed, and the relatively open atmosphere of the Tang dynasty led to the emergence of a small number of female poets. However, the code of Li in the Song dynasty was further strict, so that female poets in the Song dynasty were rare. Although the requirement of Li in Ming dynasty was stricter than that in Song dynasty, female poets began to appear in large numbers due to the trend of ideological liberation in late Ming dynasty. The author finds that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the free space for women's activities was basically limited to their own gardens, which became the space for women's spiritual activities, as well as the space for female poets to write poems and exchange works.17
16 Xu Mei, ‘Mingqing Suzhou Wenren Yuanlin de Jiangou Yu Zhuanxing 明清苏州文人园林的建构与转型— —以士大夫交友活动为视角’; Zhong Shujuan 钟淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州园林图示中文人活动空间研究’. 17 Li Guilian, ‘Shilun Yuanlin Dui Zhongguo Gudai Nvxing Wenxue De Yingxiang 试论园林对中国古代女性 文学的影响’, Mudanjiang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao (August 2008), pp. 34–37.
8 More research has focused on the influence of women on landscape design. Through beauty painting and poetry study, the authors of Spatial Research Based on Women's Psychology and Behavior in Chinese Ancient Private Gardens found that the deep and tortuous characteristics of Chinese gardens came from the requirement that women should not be seen by others, which was different from the previous research on gardens, which believed that the tortuous paths in gardens were to make the space of gardens appear larger. They boldly put forward the idea that the spatial arrangement of gardens is to constrain and discipline women, but the length of the article prevented the author from making a thorough demonstration of this idea.18 More scholars believe that women have a greater influence on the location and interior layout of Chinese gardens than they do on the fact that women are responsible for the unique tortuous character of Chinese gardens. Qiu Qiaoling and Li Haoyang conducted field inspection of the gardens and found that because women were oppressed by the regulation of Li and could not go out, they became the main users of their own gardens, which passively had an impact on the garden design. The main influence is reflected in the location and entrance of the garden, they are designed in the living area of the women's family. Many gardens have built a stage for women to enjoy the drama at home. The benches everywhere in the garden are convenient for women with bounded feet.19 James Cahill, Huang Xiao and Liu Shanshan may have the opposite view of women's passive influence on garden space. In their book Garden Paintings in Old China, authors try to recreate old Chinese gardens that had disappeared in the long history with garden paintings, In chapter 3, authors analyze women in gardens in detail, they try to find the relationship between women and garden through many pictures of beauty in gardens. They believe that the garden at the back of the house is dominated by women and is a feminine space. In consider of the location, these gardens were mainly built for women rather than for men, thus they naturally have power over this space, women who have the highest status at home are likely to have power to direct the design of the garden.20 As for the activities of women in the garden, Research on The Activity Space of Suzhou Garden in Ming Dynasty Based on The Garden Diagrams has a comprehensive analysis. Through the analysis of a large number of garden paintings, Zhong Shujuan found that the garden paintings in the Ming dynasty were more life-like than those in the previous generation, and the garden paintings with female as the leading role were more common. In contrast to previous paintings in which women were disciplined, women in the Ming dynasty often appeared in garden paintings in a similar
18 Wu Ruobing 吴若冰 and Du Yan 杜雁, ‘Zhongguo Gudai Sijia Yuanlin Nvxing XInli Ji Xingwei Kongjian Tanxi 中国古代私家园林女性心理及行为空间探析’, Zhongguo Yuanlin, 34 (March 2018), pp. 81–86. 19 Qiu Qiaoling 邱巧玲 and Li Haoyang 李昊洋, ‘Shi Tan Zhongguo Gudai Nvxing Dui Sijia Yuanlin De Yingxiang 试探中国古代女性对私家园林的影响’, Zhongguo Yuanlin, 29 (August 2013), pp. 40–44. 20 James Cahill, Huang Xiao 黄晓, and Liu Shanshan 刘珊珊, Buxiu De Linquan : Zhongguo Gudai Yuanlin Huihua 不朽的林泉：中国古代园林绘画 (August 2012), sec. 3.
9 manner to men. They sometimes read books, sometimes play the Guqin21, and appear in the garden with an elegant attitude. On the one hand, it reflects that women became the masters of the garden space. On the other hand, it also shows that the education of women in the Ming dynasty was valued and women's artistic cultivation was constantly improved.22 Garden Gatherings and Women Groups focuses on elegant gathering in the garden and talented women group. Huang Yiguan believes that the garden provided talented women with the creation space to express their feelings towards nature, which promoted the development of the female literature in the Qing dynasty. Gardens located in the corner of the private residences but had the nature of public space, the duality of the garden allows women to interact with the outside world, thus they could hold elegant gathering in the garden, expanded their social circle, even interacted with male scholars directly. The author takes Yuan Mei and his female students as the main object of analysis, and studies the creation space and social scope of female poets at that time by combining their poems and articles. The author believes that in the Qing dynasty, women were actively encouraged by male poets to receive education and create works, and they also communicated with the outside world through male poets.23
21 Guqin is a popular stringed instrument in ancient China. 22 Zhong Shujuan 钟淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州 园林图示中文人活动空间研究’. 23 Huang Yiguan, ‘Yuanlin yaji yu guige shequn 园林雅集与闺阁社群’, Journal of Anhui University(Philosophy and Social Sciences), 38 (March 2014), pp. 58–68.
10 2 Restricted female space
When communicating with other civilizations, Chinese always pride themselves on coming from a state of Li. It can be said that the code of Li makes strict regulations on every aspect of social life. If people’s behavior violates Li's requirements, they will receive moral condemnation, which will seriously affect their future development and family harmony, it inevitably sets the mind and action frame for the people who receive the education of Li. The Book of Rites (Li Ji) can be regarded as a textbook of Li. According to this book, men should stay outside while women should stay inside. In order to meet the requirement of separation of men and women, it is necessary to distinguish between inside and outside when building a house. In the house, middle door (Zhongmen) is the boundary dividing the internal and external, public and private fields. The space division inside the building entity is relatively clear, but the garden outside the building is more like a semi-public and semi-private space. Here, the boundary between inside and outside begins to become blurred, which also gives women more possibilities to have access to the outside world. In imperial China, women's rights were restricted, one of which was reflected in their limited living space. Although the saying "never go outside the house but stay at home all day"24 was used to describe the ancient women who obey the rule of Li, in literary works, the figure of women seems to be found in other places besides the home. If we want to study the extent to which women can be influenced by garden space, we first need to understand the question: can they often leave home and go outside? This determines how much time they would spend in the garden. If their actual living space did not fully comply with the requirements of Li, then the influence of limited garden space on them may not be noticeable, because they would not devote enough time to the garden to cause an influence on it, and they would not have the opportunity to let the garden space have an impact on them. I will discuss this question in three parts in this chapter. The first part is about the middle door. The limitation of social norms on women's space is viewed through the study of requirement of Li. By discussing the orientation of the garden relative to the middle door to see whether women can enter the garden. In the second part, I will look at the active space of women in real life through the figures of women found in folklore ethnography, men's notes and poems. The third part looks at the spatial boundary of female activities in social imagination through the beauty paintings created by male painters.
24 Original text: “大门不出，二门不迈。”
11 2.1 Middle door as the separation of internal and external space:
The tradition to separate man and women can firstly be found in the Li book of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) called The Book of Rites (Li Ji):
Men don't talk about inner affairs, women don't talk about outer affairs…When a woman goes out, she must cover her face and light a candle if it is night; otherwise she should not go out……A strict distinction should be made between inside and outside when building a palace. The man lives outside and the woman lives inside. There should have many gates and each guarded by gatekeepers. Men do not enter the inner room, women do not enter the outside.25
In this explanation of Li’s rule on the relationship of men and women, we can find that men and women in a family are required to avoid contact with each other as much as possible. In order to achieve this goal, when building a residence, it is necessary to separate the inside and outside in terms of space. Women need to be inside, and men need to be outside. Although a woman is discouraged from going out of the door, she can still do so if she meets certain conditions, such as covering her face and lighting a candle. The door is not the door to the space outside the home, but the middle door that separates the inside from the outside inside their residences. The internal and external boundaries of the residences were known as middle door. The location of middle door was not fixed, but in most cases, it located behind the main gate and front yard. After the middle door is the central yard or the central hall, and then the back yard and east and west yard.26 Women who strictly followed the rule of Li seldom came to the middle door. The Book of Rites, considered one of the five classics, was the subject of imperial examinations throughout the dynasties, and the influence of the separation requirements nominally continued for more than a thousand years. But we can see that from the Song dynasty to the Ming dynasty, there was some change in the social practice of Li. In the Song dynasty, gardens were considered as external space, while from the Ming dynasty, gardens became an internal space that women could enter. Guo Tuan (lived around 1165) of Song dynasty recorded a supernatural event in his literary sketch A Car Full of Ghosts (Kui Che Zhi), it is easy to find out how the structure of the residence was in his story:
Wang Gai……has many maidservants and concubines, so in the evening, they always sleep with their hall door locked. One night, an old maid seemed frightened in a nightmare, her voice was weak at first, yelled for a long time. The other maidservants were roused, they looked around in
25 Original text: 《礼记·内则》“男不言内，女不言外…… 女子出门，必拥蔽其面，夜行以烛，无烛则 止。……礼，始于谨夫妇，为宫室，辨外内。男子居外，女子居内，深宫固门，阍寺守之。男不入，女 不出。” 26 Li Zhisheng, ‘Zhongmen He Zhongtang: Tangdai Zhuzhai Jianzhu Zhong De Funv Shenghuo Kongjian 中门 和中堂：唐代住宅建筑中的妇女生活空间’, Zhongguo Shehui Lishi Pinglun, 14 (2013), pp. 198–223.
12 bed but couldn’t see her. The whole family was terrified and light the candle to find her around, but they still couldn’t find her, so they unlocked the middle door and tried to find her outside. The old nurse was found by the pool pavilion in the western of garden...... there residence was surrounded by walls and the middle gate was locked, so the inside and outside was separate, no one knows how she got out.27
From this story, we can find that the garden in the Song dynasty should be regarded as the outer space in the residence. Only when the middle door was opened, was it possible to enter the garden, indicating that the location of the garden should be in the front of the residence. At first, they never thought of opening the middle door to find the old maid, which meant that in the minds of the people of the time, women were not allowed to leave the middle gate and enter the garden in general. The story of the old maid being found in the garden was recorded in the author's book as a mystery novel, it seems that it was widely believed that it was a strange thing and that women should not and could not enter the garden without permission. By the Ming dynasty, the middle gate was still regarded as the boundary of the inner space, but some gardens were started to be regarded as inner space. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, a talented woman surnamed Song wrote her thoughts on the wall of the postal kiosk: “Looking back on the past life in the inner hall, my trip would not go out of the middle door. The warm sun shone on the railings, the flowers fell and the birds sang in the garden.”28 The woman, surnamed Song, is not a well-known figure, but it also means that the content of her poem can show more details of ordinary people's daily life. In the poem, which is more than 800 words long, she tells the story of her life. Her husband offended his colleagues because of his integrity, he was framed and convicted by his colleagues, and starved to death in prison, then his wife Song was sent to the frontier as his family. In the poem sentence listed above, she recalled the happy life in the past during the long and painful journey. She could enjoy the sunshine, appreciate the flowers and listen to the birds in the garden without leaving the middle door. In the poem, it can be seen that the women had no resistance to not being able to go out of the middle door, but consider it as a symbol of a happy life, because she can enjoy the garden space behind the middle gate. The above example seems to show that from the Ming dynasty onwards, the garden was built behind the middle gate. But such examples were not very common, and in the early Ming dynasty there was still controversy over whether the garden belonged to the internal space or the external space. In the early Ming dynasty, Xu Yikui (1315-1400), a teacher from Hangzhou recorded a story of a mother in the epitaph he wrote for her. The mother, surnamed Zou, move from Dengzhou (now
27 Original text: “王陔……其家婢妾颇众，夜则扃锁堂门而寝。一夕，有老乳婢梦中若惊魇，其声初甚 微，叫呼不醒者久之。婢辈惊起，就榻视之，则无见矣。举家惊骇，明烛四索，无所得，乃开扃，偏索 于外，得之西圃池亭之侧……其宅墙垣四周而中门扃锁，则不通内外，不知何从而出也。”Guo Tuan, Kui Che Zhi 睽车志 (1985), p. 28. 28 Original text: ‘翻思昔日深闺内，远行不出中门外。融融日影上栏干，花落庭前鸟声碎。’Song Jinhua, ‘Ti Youting Bi Ge 题邮亭壁歌’ (Ming dynasty),.
13 belongs to Shandong) in the north to Hangzhou in the south with her family. Hangzhou has beautiful sceneries with mountains and lakes. In spring, both men and women liked to travel. Her two sons wanted their mother to enjoy the same pleasure and they invited her to travel around the city. Such invitation violated the internal and external rule she had always followed, so she lessened them: “you are my sons, but you do not treat me with Li. I heard that women should not even visit gardens in the daytime, how can I enjoy lakes and mountains in the distance?”29 Although garden was a part of their house, she treat their garden as an external space, and believed women were not allowed to enter. This might because in the early Ming period, the trend of constructing gardens was not as popular as later on, the forms of garden were relatively simple, there was not many gardens constructed behind the middle gate. But as we will see in next chapter, from the middle and late Ming dynasty until the end of the Qing dynasty, gardens were not only in front of the middle door of the home, but in many cases were built at the back of the home to facilitate the access and use of female family members.
2.2 Rebellious Jiangnan woman
Compared with the previous dynasties, the requirements of Li in Ming and Qing dynasties were also strict. However, in practice, especially among the more developed Jiangnan region, many women do not follow such a code of Li, the phenomenon of going out was not uncommon. Before quoting the mother’s criticism of her sons, the author mentioned the background that, both men and women liked to travel in Spring.30 In recording her words that women should not go out to enjoy the outer natural environment, and even should not enter the garden in her epitaph as the highlight of her life, Xu was actually using the mother's words as a critique of every unruly young daughter, it can be seen that the trend of women entering the gardens and going out for sightseeing had arouse the vigilant of scholars. The old lady’s view might not be consistent with people's thoughts in reality, but it should be in line with the official requirements of Li. The author of the epitaph Xu Yikui participated in the compilation of ritual books at the command of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty, Xu’s views should be consistent with those of the court.31 This mother came from Dengzhou, Shandong, as the hometown of Confucius, the influence of Confucianism is much greater in Shandong than in Hangzhou. In fact, since the Qin and Han
29 Original text: “尔为我子，乃独不能以礼事我。吾闻妇人昼不游庭，而可远适湖山，适逸乐耶？”Xu Yikui, Qinding Siku Quanshu-Shi Feng Gao 钦定四库全书-始豐稿 9. 30 Original text: “方春時邦人士女競事游衍以為樂”Xu Yikui, Qinding Siku Quanshu-Shi Feng Gao 钦定四库 全书-始豐稿. 31 At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, emperor Zhu Yuanzhang paid great attention to the establishment of the Li system. When the Han nation regained its dominant position, the Li system of the Han people needed to be re- established to maintain his rule.
14 dynasties, northern Chinese’s behavior had always been considered more correspond to the requirement of Li than people from the south. Strictly observant northerners who come to the more open south will naturally be impacted by different customs and ideas. Not just Hangzhou, but the whole region of lower Yangtze river had a more open social climate. In the folklore ethnography of Suzhou, in some solar terms, especially those in Spring and Autumn, and other traditional festivals, both man and women would go out and get close to nature.32 However, it is important to notice that such openness was only relative to other regions and periods, and based on two premises: women keep themselves hidden, and the location needs to be public and close to home.
2.2.1 Women need to hide themselves when going out:
Although it can be inferred from Zou's epitaph that it was not uncommon for women to go out in Jiangnan region in the early Ming dynasty, which caused criticism from conservative people, there were still restrictions on women's going out. The first point was to hide themselves and not let men know the real identity of the uncivil girl. Therefore, in the outer space, men and women needed to act separately and not have close contact with each other. In order to practice the requirements of Li, a woman needed to be accompanied by female elders or men to go out, which was on the one hand a kind of protection, to protect her from being molested by the loafer man, on the other hand, was also a kind of surveillance, to prevent the woman from any improper behavior. We can see from the poems of male poets how cautious women were when they went out. Yuan Mei (1716-1797) included the poems of Yang Ciye about the view Yang Ciye saw when he traveled in the West Lake in Yuan Mei’s work Notes on Poetry from Sui Garden (Suiyuan Shihua):
The old maidservant took the lead, her mother walked last, and the young lady was in the middle…Keep her own trail hidden and alert, the sedan chair made of wisteria has green eaves. But the breeze was hard to guard against, and it always lifted the curtains of sedan chairs in crowded places.33
In this poem, the poet describes a young girl who goes out in a sedan chair. Her figure is covered by curtain of the chair, and her mother and old maid try to prevent others from coming into contact with her. It can be seen that women take this matter very seriously, because the lady is likely to be criticized on if she is recognized and thought to be indecorum. But Yang thinks that no matter
32 Gu Lu, Qingjia Lu 清嘉录 (1986); Yuan Jinglan, wujun Suihua Jili 吴郡岁华纪丽 (Nanjing, 1998); Zhang Dai, Taoan Mengyi 陶庵梦忆 (Beijing, 2017). 33 Original text: 《西湖竹枝》“老婢当头娘押尾，垂髫娇女在中间”“悄密行踪自戒严，朱藤轿子绿垂檐。 轻风毕竟南防备，故拣人丛揭轿帘。”Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话 (December 2009), pp. 86–87.
15 how careful you are, as long as you young women come out, there will always be times when you can't take precautions, even the naughty wind may make the preparation of women fall short. Another poet, Chen Mengxing, who wrote a poem while visiting a scenery spot in Yangzhou called Hongqiao, said that not only the body could not be seen, but more importantly, the name could not be known: “Please do not whisper the name of the flowers, the person behind the curtain will not let others know her nickname.”34 At that time, the name of the woman was often the same as the name of the flower, if the woman misunderstood others was to call themselves and promised, then her real identity would be known. It can be speculated that women at that time would not let each other call their real names when they went out. These two poems show how much attention it needs to be taken for a woman to go out. For women, traveling could be a dangerous behavior, there were many places to pay attention to, an oversight could cause irreparable damage to their reputation, but the desire for natural scenery and freedom made them willing to venture out.
2.2.2 Only go to local and public spots:
In addition, women could only go to public scenic spots close to home. In the semi-public and semi-private space like others’ gardens, there were more aspects to consider and more restrictions. When the garden was predominantly male, women were not allowed to enter the garden, whether it was private or public. Shen Fu (1763-1832) once attended a very interesting gathering. He and some friends arranged flowers, sang songs, and played musical instruments in the garden. When he went back home and told his wife Yun about the experience, Yun sighed: "It's a pity I'm not a man, so I can't go."35 This was not because Yun as a woman could not enter gardens, for many times, her husband visited gardens with her: In Spring, after they visited the grave, they visited a public garden called Ge garden with her husband sister; in Mid-Autumn Festival, they and another sister of Shen Fu visited their neighbour garden called Canglang Pavilion and asked the guard to keep other guests out.36 Yun said she couldn't go because when the garden was used by men to hold the gathering, it became a space belonging to men. According to the requirements of Li, women should not enter such a male space. Aside from the requirement for the nature of space, the distance was also important. Although women's long-distance travel cannot be said to be completely non-existent, they must have proper excuses and be accompanied by a male family member, such as a male family member who travelled for business or went to be an official in another place. No matter how much men loved their female
34 Original Text: 《虹桥竹枝》"梨红杏白休轻唤，帘底防人认小名。" Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, pp. 86–87. 35 Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记 (Renming Wenxue Chubanshe, 2010), 16. 36 Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记 (April 2010), pp. 10–12.
16 family members, and were willing to challenge the rule of Li for them, men needed to consider the inconvenience women had when they went out. On the one hand, they cannot be seen by outsiders, on the other hand their bounded feet make them difficult to walk or ride a horse, so can only sit in the sedan chair, which greatly slow down the speed of a journey. Besides his talent of writing, Shen Fu was also famous for loving his wife. They lived in Suzhou, When Shen Fu was going to pay homage to his deceased friend in their neighbour city Wujiang, Yun asked if she could go together because she wanted to view the Taihu Lake on the way. Shen Fu agreed, and Yun pretended that she was going back to her parents’ home in order to go with her husband. After visiting Taihu, Yun sighed: “Is this what people call Taihu? I see the vastness of the world today, then my life is not meaningless! Think how many ladies in the inner hall can never see such view throughout their lives!”37 She was lucky to have a husband who was willing to accompany his wife on a tour of the garden, and also willing to take his wife on a long trip to visit the great rivers and mountains, but how many women's misfortunes were implied by her fortune?
2.3 Beauty in painting: chaste woman in fantasy:
Their high demand for keeping oneself hidden, rather than just not interacting with men, may because it prevented women from being confused with courtesans who don’t usually care about internal or external separation. Courtesans were more common in gardens than gentle women. When scholars held activities in the gardens, they always invited courtesans to join them. From a record of local chronicles of Jiangnan during the Qianlong period (1736-1795) “Jiangnan people like to travel…because they like to travel, their landscape gardens and pavilions are more than other regions…when they travel, they choose to go with courtesans, who can sing and dance and are beautiful.”38 Many literati choose to go with courtesans because they believe that the talent of courtesans was much higher than that of ignorant gentle women who seldom leave their residence, so it was an interesting and elegant thing to bring courtesans to join their elegant gatherings.39
37 Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记, p. 18. 38 Original text: ‘吴人好游……游地则山水园亭多于他郡……游伴则选伎声歌，尽态极妍。’Wu renshu, Shechi De Nvren 奢侈的女人 (August 2016), p. 98. 39 In Zhang Xuecheng’s famous article The Study of Women (Fu Xue), after belittling the works of good women for their lack of substance and these women had limited talent, he expressed his belief that the truly talented women of today were the courtesans who spend their days with the literati exchanging ideas and reciting poems, they were both intellectual and emotional.
17 Figure 1: Portrait of Kou Mei. Figure 2: Red Landscape Self Portrait Painter: Fan Qi, Wu Hong. Painter: Xiang Shengmo 1651. 1644 Nanjing Museum, Nanjing.
Courtesans would even take the initiative to build gardens to attract literati to associate with them, and they would write poems and draw pictures in the gardens. For instance, in late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Kou Mei (1624-?), who used to be the most famous courtesan of Nanjing, “built gardens, invited guests, and interacted with the literati every day.”40 Courtesans did not care about the nature of the space and the internal and external boundaries. Kou Mei once asked two painters to paint a portrait of herself in her garden (Figure 1). From this painting, we can see that Kou Mei is located in the natural landscape, and the boundary of the private garden cannot be seen in the picture. This arrangement is very rare in female garden paintings, and are usually seen in the paintings with male scholars as the main characters, such as the self-portrait made by Xiang Shengmo (1579-1658) for himself (Figure 2). Xiang Shengmo's self-portrait is a very typical literati painting. The literati were supposed to indulge in the landscape, so unless the subject was a male figure painting in a private garden, there was usually no railing to symbolize the private garden. The two are very similar. The most obvious difference is that in Kou Mei's portraits, the characters' subjects are painted in a very ethereal manner, contrasting with the surrounding trees and stones. The figure of Kou Mei is depicted with traditional Chinese line drawing method to
40 From the preface of Portrait of Kou Mei.
18 show that she is thin and quiet. she raised one hand as if to hide her face. The background of the painting was a tall, inky tree, against which the figures looked very small, highlighting the weakness of the woman. In Xiang Shengmo's self-portraits, the characters are depicted in black, which is different from the red background, highlighting the characters themselves rather than the surrounding environment. This is because men have always been the masters of space. According to Zhan Zhenpeng's research, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, male painters often placed courtesans in an open space without railings in the paintings.41 In the beauty paintings, we can find that the women of good character are tacitly located in the private garden rather than outside, and the women who can care as less about the internal and external boundaries as the men are courtesans. Gentle women may worry that they might be mistaken for a courtesan if they want to visit an external space like a garden. After all, such examples were not non-existent. In Notes of Lv Gardens (Lvyuan Conghua), Qian Yong recorded a misunderstanding happened in Yongzheng period (1723-1735). There was a salt merchant in Guangling (now belongs to Yangzhou, Jiangsu province) who had a very beautiful daughter. Once, while visiting Pingshan Hall (belongs to Daming Temple), she met a local official, who was drunk, mistaking this lady for a courtesan, and beat her indiscriminately.42 The official made such a ridiculous mistake because he was drunk, but at the same time, this beautiful woman did not do anything out of line, just because she was in a temple garden43, she was mistaken for a courtesan, so it can be seen that the association between courtesans and the garden is a subconscious reaction of people at that time. Since women couldn’t resist the temptation to go out and play, in order to protect themselves, they at least needed to hide themselves and shape themselves as polite women to avoid misunderstandings. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, beauty painting had become a best seller, the most common form was to paint a lady in the garden and surrounded with flowers, trees and other natural elements. From plenty of beauty paintings, we can see that when depicting gentle women in the garden, painters usually explicitly place a railing in the painting to show that the women have not crossed the border. If the railing is not placed in the painting, stones, trees and flowers are likely to appear in the external natural environment, which may mislead the viewer into thinking that the woman is not staying politely in the private garden.
41 Zhan Zhenpeng, ‘Fan Qi, Wu Hong Hezuo
19 Lv Tong’s most famous painting called Read in the Shadow of the Banana Tree (Jiaoyin Dushu Tu) (Figure 3) depicts a lady reading a book outside. The artificial hill and banana tree often appear in
Figure 3: Read in the Shadow Figure 4: Beautiful Woman Figure 5: Beautiful Woman of the Banana Tree Under a Banana Tree Painter: Under a Banana Tree Painter: Painter: Lv Tong Gai Qi Sha Fu Qing dynasty 1819 1894 Academy of Arts & Design, Tokyo National Museum, The Palace Museum, Beijing. Tsinghua University, Beijing. Tokyo. the garden, and these two sceneries are restricted by the railing in a space, we can infer that the woman is in the private garden in her house. She leans on the rockery, is reading a book. Perhaps it is because she is reading something miserable, or because she is thinking of something uneasy, that she looks sad. In this painting, we can easily distinguish the boundary of the garden. The painter frames the boundary of the garden almost in the middle of the painting with a railing. It cuts the picture into two parts in the middle of the painting, and the upper part is the endless outside world. The tall and vigorous banana tree fills the empty feeling of the picture and also make the two parts connected. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, beauty painting became a commodity rather than a work of art. Whether it is the female posture, appearance or landscape as the background of the painting, all show similar characteristics. For example, the painting of beautiful women created by Gai Qi and
20 Sha Fu, two other commercial painters (Figure 4, 5), is very similar to the painting created by Lv Tong. Both of them use banana tree as the background and have railings placed in the painting. Lv Tong is not famous in the history, the relevant information is also very few, only can know that he is a professional painter, by selling paintings for a living, his paintings are very similar to other beauty paintings as commodity. Gai Qi and Sha Fu were very famous painters, and their paintings were even offered to the royal family, but it can be found that their beauty paintings are nothing new except for their slightly different techniques. This may be because, as a commodity, beauty paintings need to be recognized by consumers. A large number of beauty paintings of this pattern can show that people's aesthetic and value orientation was the same at that time. In addition, the art and creativity of the works produced under the strict ideological restrictions would be affected. Placing women in private gardens and using soft lines to depict images of gentle women is a very safe way to paint beautiful women without attracting criticism and damaging painters’ reputation. From beauty paintings we can find that, in addition to women being expected to stay in private gardens rather than public ones, male painters also try to avoid having what they consider to be gentle women in the same gardens as men other than their husbands, because gardens are naturally thought to have romantic and sexual metaphors. In the eyes of that time, Yuan Mei's behavior was really disgraceful. He was constantly attacked by other moralists at that time and for the next hundred years, believing that he had seduced those virtuous women into making mistakes and corrupting social morality. Although he was talented and succeeded in becoming an official, he did not try to make progress in his career. After a few years, he quit his job and made a living by selling his works by fame. He was regarded as the leader of the poetry circle at that time. He not only associated with male poets, but also attracted many female poets. Although there were other male poets who had female students, more of the male poets had female students who were their relatives, so the requirements of Li were not so strict, or they mainly communicated with the female poets by writing letters rather than actually meeting them. The female disciples of Yuan Mei were famous for their talent, and most of them were born in the upper class and had great influence. He not only met these women disciples alone for many times, gathered many of them to hold gatherings in the garden, and even recorded the grandest one through painting Thirteen Female Students Seeking Guidance at Hulou (Shisan Nvdizi Hulou Qingye Tu) (Figure 6). He did not paint on his own, but invited the masters of the time to create, which means that the creators of the paintings did not see the scene of their gathering with their own eyes, so they could not know the behavior and spatial distribution of people in the garden. Therefore, painters created this painting according to their own imagination and the social norms of the time. From such a painting, we can better understand the attitude of the time people towards virtuous women and men staying in the same garden space.
21 Figure 6: Thirteen Female Students Seeking Guidance at Hulou Painters: Wang Gong, You Zhao Qing dynasty Shanghai Museum, Shanghai.
Yuan Mei and his nephew's wife are alone on the far left of the picture (red circle). Yuan Mei is sitting upright, his nephew's wife is standing behind him on the left, and another child is standing in the corner. The three are isolated from other women in a single space. It is worth noting that his nephew’s wife did not attend this gathering, and painters still place this lady with Yuan Mei in the same space, and separate them with other talented women with the border of building. Evidences have not been found yet that the requirement for adding this lady in this painting is by Yuan Mei, but the possible reason for this is to avoid suspicious. Aside from this lady, having a young kid with them in this semi-closed space can make them less possible to be morally criticized. Another painting that is somewhat similar to Thirteen Female Students Seeking Guidance at Hulou is the Fuzhuang’s Confession of Debauchery (Fuzhuang Chanqi Tu) (Figure 7) painted by Fei Danxu in 1839 in the Qing Dynasty. This painting also has only one man and twelve women in the garden, aim to show that the man Yao Xie’s44 regrets for past debauched lives, whether this painting wants to recreate the scenes of Yao Yong's past life, or to show that he would not be distracted by the woman beside him even if he is still in such a scene is still uncertain, but in general, this painting implies that there is a kind of “sex” in the garden. The meaning of "sex" will not disappear, even though in this painting Yao Xie himself has no interaction with these women. the closest to him is
44 Yao Xie’s style name is Fuzhuang.
22 Figure 7: Fuzhuang’s Confession of Debauchery Painter: Fei Danxu 1839 The Palace Museum, Beijing.
a male servant who bent over to help him organize books. Other women are either separated by objects in the garden, such as stone tables and trunks, or separated by male servants. The connection between Yao Xie and other women is that they are in the same space in the garden. In the imagination of literati, garden is a space where love naturally occurs, this may can explain why there is sexual implication in this painting. If men want to have real spiritual communication with women, “how can face each other compare with look into the distance, stay in the same hall is not as good as in different yards…Once (men and women) sit together, it becomes tacky.” 45 Avoid getting along with women in the same space, especially in garden that can produce romantic, can avoid women’s sexual temptation. To make their relationship pure and elegant, Figure 8 Tao Gu give Poetry spatial separation is necessary. Painter: Tang Yin The Ming dynasty painter Tang Yin use one Ming dynasty painting to show that woman who stay with a Palace Museum in Taibei man in the same garden space should be a
45 Original text: ‘晤对何如遥对，同堂未若各院，毕竟隔水闲花、碍云阻竹，方为真正对面。一至牵衣连 坐，便俗杀不可当矣。’Wei Yong, Yuerong Bian 悦容编 (1991), 1, p. 84.
23 courtesan. The painting Tao Gu Send Poetry (Figure 8) depicts a historical story: Tao gu (903-970), a scholar living in the Later Zhou dynasty (951-960), visited the Southern Tang dynasty (937-975) as a state ambassador. After arriving in Nanjing, he met a beautiful woman named Li Ruolan in the garden of an inn. He had a one-night stand with her and gave her a poem after that. When he met the Southern Tang emperor the next day, he found that this woman was actually the emperor's favorite courtesan, their meeting was also guided by the emperor in order to let Tao Gu show his nasty nature, to let Southern Tang occupy the moral high position. The emperor ask the courtesan to pretend to be the innkeeper's daughter and attract Tao Gu by taking care of the garden every day. The reason for Tao Gu being attracted was because this woman is very scheming to let them meet in a suggestive space. In order to highlight the ambiguous mood between the two, painter tang Yin even used two screens, rockery, banana trees and tall trees to narrow the space between them. This historical story was recorded in the notes of a monk in the Northern Song dynasty. It is not official historical data, and there is a possibility that this historical story is not a real event. Tang Yin based the painting more on his own imagination, women, who stay together in the garden, especially in the narrow space without isolation, would be a loose whore rather than a good woman, and that is what people should learn from Tao Gu’s bad ending story. The understanding of women and space is reflected in the works of these male painters, therefore, in addition to the works specially depicting literati and prostitutes, most of the paintings of women are single portraits or group portraits of women in gardens.
Summary
From the discussion in this chapter, we can find that the requirements of formal Li for women have not been relaxed with the passage of time. Women were always required to stay at home instead of leaving, and the range of activities in the home is also limited behind the middle door. But we can see that people's practice of rites changed with the different dynasties. By the Song dynasty, gardens were still considered to be external spaces, but by the Ming dynasty, women began to be allowed to enter gardens. Ladies' paintings popular in the Ming and Qing dynasties were also mainly set in gardens, which meant that women's entry into gardens was not only no longer considered as a violation of the requirements of Li, but also considered as an elegant thing to be presented in paintings for people to appreciate. There is also much evidence that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, women were not only able to enter their own gardens, but also to visit public attractions during certain festivals. But we can see from the poets' poems and the literati's sketches that there are still many restrictions and great risks for women to go out. In people’s imagination, women were nither supposed to be in the external natural environment nor to stay in the garden with men unless he is her husband.
24 To sum up, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, even though the space restrictions were relaxed in the practice of Li, going out was not a normal life, and women would spend most of their leisure time in gardens without the accompany of any male figure aside from their family members.
25 3 Influence women could have on gardens:
Wu Hung believes that a feminine space is “an artificial world comprised of landscape, vegetation, architecture, atmosphere, climate, colour, fragrance, light and sound.”46 We can see that when these key elements are combined, it constitutes a classical garden. However, Wu Hung added that it is not enough to have only female objects in the feminine space. What is more important is that there are female figures in it. As we have seen from the previous section, since the Ming dynasty, private gardens have in fact become a space for women to enter. In this part, I will discuss the influence of women on gardens, how they turned the garden into a feminine space. I will first elaborate on the influence of Taoism on gardens to analyze why women can transform gardens into women's space. The second and third parts discuss the influence of women on gardens from the position and quantity of gardens.
3.1 Taoist gardens for women to enjoy:
From the early Taoist mythologies, which keep the earliest records of Chinese gardens, we can find that those powerful gods often lived in gardens that were impossible to find in reality. Such gardens were the fantasies of early humans about the ideal living environment. As the supreme goddess of longevity, marriage, fertility, and the protection of women, the Queen Mother of the West (Xi Wangmu) lived in Yaochi, this legendary place was located in the Kunlun Mountains, and had grand palaces, lakes, trees and flowers, this is the early prototype of Chinese gardens, and the form and content of the garden for the next two thousand years followed this pattern. Even in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the main elements of the garden were inseparable from pavilions, artificial hills, ponds, flowers and trees, but the specific design and details were different. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, more than half of the gardens in Suzhou were residential gardens, it could be large or small, some located in the rear of the house, some on the side of the house, or in some rare cases, separated from the house.47 The shape of the gardens are mostly irregular, unlike buildings, which were square and symmetrical. All the sceneries in the garden are required to conform to the nature, rockery is required to have a unique shape to imitate mountains, the pond is also required to be constructed like the natural lake, in a word, no artificial traces should be seen in the garden. This is very different from the structure of a residential building. China's traditional dwellings are required to be square in shape, sitting north to south and symmetrical along the central axis. One explanation for the huge difference between a garden and a house, which is supposed to be same, is that the residence is built on Confucian principles, while the garden is built on Taoist
46 Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (1996), p. 211. 47 Zhang Jianyu, ‘Suzhou Zaoqi Zhaidi Yuanlin Guanxi Kao 苏州早期宅地园林之宅园关系’.
26 ones.48 This embodies Chinese people's world view that Confucianism is responsible for external expression, while inner thought is Taoism.49 The building of the residence should reflect the Confucian family philosophy, it should reflect the age hierarchy and distinction between the inside and outside, these are the rules that must be observed. But for private gardens, they have been built by officials and scholars to create a space to enjoy nature for their own enjoyment in their own homes since the earliest days. Many of the owners of the garden were not satisfied in politics, wanted to get spiritual satisfaction in the garden, but Confucianism is opposed to this practice. The Confucian belief is that a man of noble character should use his talents to help the sovereign govern the country, instead of selfishly considering his own spiritual satisfaction and escape the responsibility. They believed that everyone should follow their rules, because that were the foundation of human’s life. However, their rules cannot be applied to the free and wild nature. Therefore, the construction of gardens depends more on the idea of Taoism that obey nature. Tao is unspeakable, because the interpretation of Tao is the interpretation of the universe and life. There are also not many rigid rules for gardens built according to Tao, which gives women room to exert their own subjective initiative. Although Taoism has a history as long as that of Confucianism, the expansion of its influence on the people began in the Ming dynasty. Before the Ming dynasty, Taoism mainly served for emperors and aristocrats. Taoist practice and the pursuit of immortality led wealthy nobles to use precious materials to take alchemy. However, since the Ming dynasty, Taoism accelerated its secularization process. The rulers of the Ming dynasty believed that Taoism was an ideological tool that could help them rule. Therefore, they paid more attention to Taoism and promoted the transformation of Taoism itself. The requirement from the imperial court, combined with the integration of Confucianism and Buddhism, made the people more willing to accept the ideas of Taoism, which enabled Taoism to have a greater influence on gardens since the Ming dynasty.50
3.1.1 The view of equality between men and women in Taoism helps women to exert influence on gardens:
There were some women who built their own gardens to live in, but they were all courtesans, such as Liu Rushi and Kou Mei. Compared with the virtuous women, the courtesans, on the contrary, have more freedom in economy and spirit, can design gardens by themselves, and hold poetry
48 Patrick Nuttgens, The story of architecture (London, 1997). 49 Han Baode, Zhongguo Jianzhu Wenhua Jiangzuo 中国建筑文化讲座 (January 2006). 50 Chao Zhongchen, ‘Mingdai Huangdi de Chongdao Zhifeng 明朝皇帝的崇道之风’, Wen Shi Zhe (2004), pp. 35–41; Geng Xing, ‘The Reasons of the Secularization of the Taoism in Ming Dynasty 明代道教世俗化成因初 探’, Journal of Foshan University(Social Science Edition) (2014), pp. 34–37.
27 meetings and elegant gatherings in the gardens with male scholars. Their gardens are the embodiment of their spiritual will. Except for a few gardens built by courtesans and those built by men for their female family members, almost all the owners of the gardens were male. It is interesting to note that the theory of constructing gardens mainly comes from the two kinds of literary works: one is romantic novels, in which the gardens were always owned by the ladies’ family, and men were just guests; the other is the literary sketches of the literati, who often recorded their experiences in building gardens and their ideas, but almost none of their female family members ever offered suggestions on the construction of gardens according to men’s works. In reality, it was possible for women to give suggestions and influence the design of gardens,51 but the case is rare and women's voices were so often not recorded that the contribution of women to the art of gardening is overlooked. Compared with the active influence on the construction of gardens, the passive influence of women on the construction of gardens is more common, which is attributed to the equality between men and women pursued by Taoism. Unlike Confucianism, Taoism advocates gender equality. Taoism believes man is Yang and woman is Yin,52 the male is the god of heaven, the female is the mother of the earth, the Yin and Yang of heaven and earth have no superior or inferior. Laozi founded the school of Taoism. In his book the Daode Jing, he advocated the harmony between Yin and Yang, the equality between men and women, "everything carries the Yin on its back and the Yang in its front, and the two collide, the harmony achieved."53 Yin and Yang coexist, and in order to achieve harmony, they should be equal. In the Taoist garden, there is no space designed deliberately to discriminate against women. Although in the article Spatial Research Based on Women's Psychology and Behavior in Chinese Ancient Private Gardens, the author thinks that the winding and deep path in the garden is to deepen women's consciousness of hiding themselves and to discipline women.54 But considering that such gardens can also be found in gardens that men have built for themselves, such as Su Shunqin's Canglang
51 Shen Fu would always listen to his wife’s advice about how to design a proper garden. Although they were not rich enough to buy land to build their garden, their habit was to create a miniature garden in a bonsai, just like other ordinary people did. But such case was rare, and that is why Shen Fu could be famous in history. 52 Yin 阴 and Yang 阳 , the two opposing principles in nature, the former feminine and negative, the latter masculine and positive 53 Daode Jing, chapter 42, original text: “万物负阴抱阳，冲气以为和。” 54 Wu Ruobing 吴若冰 and Du Yan 杜雁, ‘Zhongguo Gudai Sijia Yuanlin Nvxing XInli Ji Xingwei Kongjian Tanxi 中国古代私家园林女性心理及行为空间探析’.
28 pavilion55 and Wang Shizhen's Yanshan garden56, this explanation seems unconvincing. Compared with the space in the house where men and women live separately, there is less obvious gender oppression in the garden where both men and women can enter. Women can better enjoy the freedom of space and feel the rare equality when they enter the garden built according to Taoist ideas.
3.1.2 Flowers planted in gardens for women:
Flowers were regarded as a symbol of female reproductive ability in primitive thought, while Taoist thought attached great importance to the power of reproduction. The garden style is full of lives, no matter the plants, fish, birds and other animals in it, all make the garden become vitality. A variety of flowers appeared in the garden may be influenced by Taoism. Taoism worships the power of reproduction, believing that the Tao "appeared before heaven and earth... it can be regarded as the mother of the world,"57 and "Tao gives birth to one, two gives birth to three, three gives birth to everything."58 Thus, the meaning of Tao is to keep the world alive, and the power of reproduction comes from the female who can be a mother. This may be because the belief in Taoism also combined with the belief in early folk witchcraft.59 Professor Zhao Guohua studied the patterns on the pots unearthed from the sites of primitive societies including Hemudu and Banpo, and found that the patterns of plants such as flowers were the worship of female reproduction in the early matrilineal society in China.60 Flowers symbolize the female vulva, because their shapes are similar. In ancient times, the female genitals were called "flower heart" and venereal diseases were called "flower and willow disease". The annual flowering and bearing fruits of plants coincided with the unlimited fertility of women. In early society, people naturally associated flowers with women through simple association.61
55 It was originally built by a Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) official named Su Shunqing (1009-1049). After he was banished from the court, he came to suzhou, where he bought and renovated a garden that had been abandoned for about 120 years, and named it Canglang Pavilion in line with his relegation. The name of Canglang comes from a poem recorded in Mencius that Confucius heard a child recite during the Spring and Autumn period (771 BC-476 BC): "if the water of Canglang is clear, it can wash the lacings on my hat. If the water of Canglang is dirty, it can wash my feet." As a typical male literiti’s garden, it is full of towering old trees and bamboo. Winding and deep path can also be found in this garden. 56 Yanshan garden was first built in 1566 when its owner, Wang Shizhen (1526-1590), returned home after a failed political struggle and was deposed, he built this garden to reliease his stress. 57 Daode Jing, chapter 25, original text: “先天地生……可以为天下母。” 58 Daode Jing, chapter 42, original text: “道生一，一生二，二生三，三生万物。” 59 Zhao Guohua, ‘Shengzhi Chongbai Wenhua Luelun 生殖崇拜文化略论’, Zhongguo Shehui Kexue (1988), pp. 131–156. 60 Zhao Guohua also found that in the Indus Valley, western Asia and ancient Greece, flowers and plants were used as female symbols for reproduction worship. It can be seen that the connection between flowers and women is not unique to China, but comes from the simple association of early humans. 61 Zhao Guohua, ‘Shengzhi Chongbai Wenhua Luelun 生殖崇拜文化略论’.
29 Early Taoist classics such as the Daode Jing and the Taiping Jing often mention the importance of reproduction, and this view is summarized in the Duren Jing as "the way of the immortal is about Sheng"62. Gardens built under Taoism also show the importance of life and fertility. One of the most important expressions is that there are always many flowers in the gardens built for women. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, scholars influenced by Taoism would emphasize in their works the importance of planting flowers for women in gardens. Wei Yong of Ming dynasty wrote an article called Beautiful Face (Yue Rong Bian), he believed that the connection between women and house was that:
where the beauty live, should be like the flower bed or the vase, those luxurious houses are where beautiful women should live. Those poor Confucian scholars, even if they do not have the money to build a golden house for the beauties to live in, should also create a space for them to decorate their own beauty. Either it is the tall building, or is the inner room, or is the country house. Do not let any vulgar thing appear in beauty’s space, only places a few decorous apparatus, and calligraphies and paintings that are suitable for ladies in it. Outside the room should have winding railings and slender paths, and planted with famous flowers. If there is no spare space, there must be bonsai. Beauty is the true body of flowers, flowers are the shadow of beauty.63
The author first put forward a point of view: women are flowers, so the places where women live are vases. From the author's later discussion, that is, where the women live need to have buildings, railings, paths, flowers in it, it shows that he believes that the garden is the place where women should live. He concludes by emphasizing that even if everything else is not arranged in the garden, flowers are a must, for a vase is created to have flowers in it. Although the author does not explain why he compares women to flowers, nor does he mention the connection of his view and the Taoist concept of reproduction, in another section of his article, he writes that a woman at the age of about 16 is like an orchid, and by the time she reaches the prime of life, she is like a peach blossom or a peony. But when women are middle-aged and old, he no longer uses the flower metaphor to describe women, but to compare them to old wine.64 Apparently, he thought that only young women of childbearing age would be like flowers. Considering that he gave himself the style name "Lazy Xian" 65 , he should have believed in Taoism. It is possible that his words were influenced by the worship of female reproductive power by Taoism.
62 Sheng, 生, can both refer to lives and reproduction. Original text: “仙道贵生”. 63 Original text: “美人所居，如种花之槛，插枝之瓶。沉香亭北，百宝栏中，自是天葩故居。儒生寒士， 纵无金屋以贮，亦须为美人营一靓妆地。或高楼，或曲房，或别馆村庄，清楚一室，屏去一切俗物，中 置精雅器具及与闺房相宜书画。室外须有曲栏纤径，名花掩映。如无隙地，盆盎景玩，断不可少。盖美 人是花真身，花是美人小影。” Wei Yong, Yuerong Bian 悦容编. 64 Original text: ‘少时盈盈十五，娟娟二八，为含金柳，为芳兰芷，为雨前茶。体有真香，面有真色。及 其壮也，如日中天，如月满轮，如春半桃花，如午时盛开牡丹，无不逞之容，无不工之致，亦无不胜之 任。至于半老，则时及暮而姿或丰，色渐淡而意更远。约略梳妆，遍多雅韵。调适珍重，自觉稳心。如 久窨酒，如霜后橘。知老将提兵，调度自别，此终身快意时也。’Wei Yong, Yuerong Bian 悦容编. 65 To go from being an ordinary person to being a Xian 仙 means to have eternal life, this is the ultimate pursuit of those who believe in Taoism.
30 Li Yu (1611-1680), a master of constructing gardens, had the same views on women, gardens and flowers as Wei Yong. In his most famous work the Record of Leisure Feelings (Xianqing Ouji), he says:
I say, you can choose not to build a golden house, but you must decorate the railings and buildings with flowers. If a wealthy family find a beauty, they should find all the famous flowers, and plant it in the inner hall, let them stay together all day long, it is an honor to be surrounded by these flowers. In the morning, she can pick a flower as her hairpin as she wishes…if a poor family find a beauty, as if they have any space around their house, they should plant trees and flowers to decorate her hair. You can save money on their affairs, but you must not save money on planting flowers.66
Although it can be seen from the passage that he believes that flowers should be planted for women in gardens in order to decorate women’s beauty, rather than because women are flowers themselves, Li Yu also believes that a woman must have flowers where she lives, just like Wei Yong. It seems that he did not associate flowers with female fertility, but it is not difficult to trace back to the root of his thought and find the shadow of Taoism: he regard himself as Taoist priest, and his pursuit revealed in his literary works was to live like wild birds, and not be bound by the cage,67 this is consistent with the Taoist belief of returning to nature and opposing human intervention. The femininity of gardens is certainly more than flowers. The Palace Museum in possession of the Qing dynasty court painter’s painting collection Visiting The Palace Garden (Yueman Qingyou Tu), it has twelve paintings depicting what women would do in twelve different months: Appreciate the plum blossom on a cold January night, swing by the willows in February, play chess in March, appreciate all kinds of flowers in April, make up in a building by the water, gather lotus flowers in a pond in June, have Chinese Valentine's day in July, watch the moon in a penthouse in August, enjoy chrysanthemums in September at the Double Ninth Festival, in October, embroider the landscape by the window, admire the antiques by the fire in November, hold a gathering in December when it snows, and seek for poems in the garden. There are many kinds of activities for women in the garden, and the design for these activities will be very diversified. In gardens in reality, we can also find buildings constructed for women to play instruments, to enjoy opera, to study, swing set for women to play, chairs allows the woman with bounded feet to rest. However, these designs cannot be seen in all gardens. Not all families have enough money to build a pavilion in a garden for the girls to walk in, to dig a pond for them to row in, or to build a stage for them to watch the play. Individual cases do not represent universality, but growing flowers in gardens is a common phenomenon, no matter what class they belong to, they can practice in their own gardens.
66 Original text: “吾谓金屋可以不设，药栏花榭则断断应有，不可或无。富贵之家如得丽人，则当遍访名 花，植于阃内，使之旦夕相亲，珠围翠绕之荣不足道也。晨起簪花，听其自择。喜红则红，爱紫则紫， 随心插戴，自然合宜，所谓两相欢也。寒素之家，如得美妇，屋旁稍有隙地，亦当种树栽花，以备点缀 云鬟之用。他事可俭，此事独不可俭。” Li Yu, Xianqing Ouji 闲情偶寄 (October 2012), p. 152. 67 Li Yu, Xianqing Ouji 闲情偶寄, p. 207.
31 Even ladies in the court painter Chen Mei’s painting would spend at least one-third of their time to organize activities around flowers, rather than some aristocratic activity. Famous garden theorists guide people in their books on how to build gardens, and their belief in Taoism leads them to intentionally or unintentionally place feminine features in the form of flowers in the garden, making the space feminine. I will argue later that flowers are attractive to women, and therefore, planting flowers in a garden attracts women to enter the garden to appreciate it. As the garden both has female elements and figures in it, the garden turned into what Wu Hung called the feminine space.
3.2 Gardens constructed at the rear of residences:
In order to better let the garden as a female space play its function and let women enjoy the garden, the position of the garden relative to the house changed after the Ming dynasty. Before Ming dynasty, gardens were constructed in front of the middle gate, hence it was possible for the old-fashioned mother Zou criticized that women should not enter gardens during the day. However, by the middle and late Ming dynasty, we can find that more and more gardens were built in the rear of the houses or have a door open close to inner hall, it was easy and sometimes 1. Entrance Hall unavoidable for women to enter gardens. 2. Sedan Chair Hall 3. Main Hall Take the Fei’s Mansion as an example 4. Two Storied (Figure 9). It was built in the Ming dynasty Hall 5. Mandarin Duck by the great painter Tang Yin (1470-1524), Hall and was bought by Fei Zhongchen in the 6. Flower Hall Republic of China (1923), so it changed its 7. Lady’s Hall 8. Boat Hall name to Fei’s mansion. 9. Gongshi Hall It locates in the center of Suzhou, covers an area of more than 2,000 square meters.68 Figure 9 Fei's Mansion The Entrance Hall (1), the Sedan Chair Hall copy from Ancient Residences In Suzhou (2) and the Main Hall (3) are closed for most (Suzhou Gu Minju)
68 Although the garden only covers an area of 2,000 square meters, belonging to the scope of a small garden, such a garden is not affordable for ordinary people to live. Its master in the Ming dynasty was Tang Yin, a famous painter, and the master in the late Qing dynasty and the Republic of China was Fei Zhongchen, a great aristocrat. It can be seen that this garden is for the upper class.
32 of the time, unless to welcome important guests and host large events at home. For family usage, they would turn to the alleyway69 on the far east of the mansion. The fourth courtyard of the main Luo70 is the Two Storied Hall(4), this is the living area of the whole mansion. At the north of the Two Storied Hall and Mandarin Duck Hall (5) used to have a larger garden, but it does not exist anymore.71 Fei Zhongchen’s son and daughter in law lived in the Flower Hall (6). The fourth courtyard of the side Luo is Lady’s Hall (7), women carried out their daily activities in this hall. Women have to walk through the garden to get from their bedrooms to the Lady’s hall where they carry out their daily activities. The south side of Lady’s Hall is a small garden, planted with Osmanthus and decorated with artificial hills; to the north is a larger garden, with begonia and other trees, a pavilion, a pond, some artificial hills, ladies could enjoy beautiful scenery from both direction of their Lady’s hall. The location of the middle gate should be behind the main hall, and gardens are all located behind of it, letting women living in the back to enjoy the garden without worrying about the restriction of the middle gate. Women’s living areas are surrounded with gardens in Fei’s mansion. As all the garden area lied at the back of the mansion, it was not suitable for male guests to enter because most men were not allowed to enter inner space if they did not belong to this family,72 garden becomes private space,
Figure 10: A family is holding marriage ceremony Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age Painter: Xu Yang 1759 Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang.
69 This kind of alley calls Preparation Alley (Bei Long), it’s a misrepresentation of the name Avoidance Alley (Bi Long), Preparation Alley is set on the side of the mansion for ladies and servants to avoid male guests and masters. Wen Zhenheng, Changwuzhi Jiaozhu 长物志校注 (1984), p. 38. 70 Each courtyard consists of some rooms and a patio, several courtyards along the axis consist make up a Luo. 71 Suzhou Fangchan Guanliju, Suzhou Gu Minju 苏州古民居 (January 2004), p. 173. 72 As the requirements from The Book of Rites that“men do not enter the inner room, women do not enter the outside.”Before Ming dynasty according to Li Zhisheng’s research Middle Door and Central Hall that men outside the family, including wife’s nephew, should not enter the inner hall unless they were old enough to ignore their sexuality or under emergency situation. Li Zhisheng, ‘Zhongmen He Zhongtang: Tangdai Zhuzhai Jianzhu Zhong De Funv Shenghuo Kongjian 中门和中堂：唐代住宅建筑中的妇女生活空间’; When it comes
33 female family can enjoy garden in the home more at ease without worrying about the invasion of the space by outsiders. In the painting Suzhou's Golden Age, we can see many examples of residential gardens. The residence in Figure 10 is close to Chang Men, the west gate of Suzhou ancient city. The distance between Chang Men and Fei’s Mansion is not very far, it only takes ten minutes to walk. There is also no boundary between the family's inner hall and the garden, because it is also designed for the family’s private use. This family does not seem to be very well off, for their house does not have two or three Luos, and only had three courtyards in total, much less than other residences in this painting. After entering through the main gate and the sedan chair hall, people would enter the main hall where the wedding was being held. After the main hall is the inner hall. The courtyard of this inner hall is not arranged on a central axis like other houses in this painting, the third courtyard has different orientation with other courtyards, such arrangement goes against the requirement of “Feng Shui” which means it is against nature. The construction of the house is rearranged according to the shape of the land they have, and under such limited conditions, they still built a relatively large garden at the back of their residence for family enjoyment, or to be specific, for ladies who spent most time in the house. Figure 11 is another residence in the painting Suzhou's Golden Age, it is very far from the city centre and should be a farmer’s house. It has two Luos, each Luo has four courtyards. It has two small gardens (circle 1,3) and is not as well designed as those in the city. The main gate of the house is on the right side of the painting, to the left goes into the interior of the house. One of the gardens locates in the front of the house and planted with bamboo (circle 1); the other is on the side of the inner hall (circle 3). There are only a few women and children in the courtyard of the inner hall (circle 2). Three of them are spinning, one is feeding pigs, an old woman is walking back with a small child, in front of the gate of the garden is two women, one holding a baby. The men can only be seen in the front half of the house, and the bamboo garden is also located in the front half of
3
2
1
Figure 11: A farmer's family is constructing their house Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age
to Ming and Qing dynasties, access to the inner hall was so restricted that women who were not friends or relatives could not enter. Yi Ruolan, Sangu Liupo 三姑六婆 (Shanghai, July 2019), p. 155.
34 the house, belonging to the outside. Bamboo is endowed with manly integrity,73 and is in stark contrast to the feminine flowers in the back garden, the bamboo garden is built for men and the other is for other family members. This family is a typical peasant family in the south of the Yangtze river. Farmland can be seen on the right side of the house and above it. Women are reeling silk and feeding pigs in the back of the house. They may not have had a lot of money, they may not have had a lot of education, but they still built two gardens in their homes, which shows that the trend of gardening had spread to all classes. The construction of another garden at the rear of the house is not unique to this painting. We can also see such a design in the Wangshi garden in Suzhou (Figure 12). This garden is better preserved than other gardens, there hasn't went through much alteration, and the structure is still as it was hundreds of years ago, so it can be a good representation of the traditional Chinese residential and garden area. Two living areas for women can be seen in the main building, one is the Xiexiu Building (4) and the other is the Jixu House (11), both of which are located at the rear of the 1. Entrance Gate 2. Sedan Chair Hall whole residential space. 3. Main Hall 4. Xiexiu Building Xiexiu House is a place for 5. Xiaoshan Conggui women's daily life and will be House 6. Daohe House used to entertain other female 7. Instrument House 8. Diying Water House guests. The first floor of Jixu 9. Fengdaoyuelai House is the study of male Pavilion 10. Kansongduhua host, the second floor is House 11. Jixu House rumored to be the 12. Zhuwaiyizhi House embroidery space for young 13. Sheya Corridor 14. Wufeng Study lady,74 there is an veranda that 15. Tiyun House 16. Dianchun Side room can see the scenery of the 17. Lengquan pavilion larger garden directly. From Figure 12 we can see that this garden has two gates, Figure 12 Wangshi garden one locates beside the Sedan Copy from Classical Gardens of Suzhou (Suzhou Gudian Chair Hall at the entrance of Yuanlin)
73 Bamboo is often called a gentleman, because it has a hard, straight character, in line with the Confucian requirements of the gentleman. 74 Qiu Qiaoling 邱巧玲 and Li Haoyang 李昊洋, ‘Shi Tan Zhongguo Gudai Nvxing Dui Sijia Yuanlin De Yingxiang 试探中国古代女性对私家园林的影响’.
35 the house, and another is beside the Xiexiu Building (Figure 13). In this way, outsiders can enter the garden without going through the inner hall and meet female members, and when outsiders come in, women can close the door of their inner hall to ensure that outsiders will not enter inner hall via garden. In fact, not only the large garden on the left can be accessed from the inner hall, Figure 13: the main garden of Wangshi garden there is a smaller garden behind the inner Photo taken by author 2020.3 hall. Although we can see from Figure 12 Wangshi garden, Suzhou. that there is also an alley at the eastern end of the house that leads directly from the side door to the small garden, this alley just like the alley way in Fei’s mansion, was also provided for the family members and servants. Normal male guests would not pass through this alley, so the smaller garden can remain a private space. It was not rare to construct a separate garden especially for female family members to use, Yan Baoyong (1796-1854) of Qing dynasty carved out a space at the rear of his home for his mother's private garden, an area off limits to visitors.75 If women had already been tied to the inner space, it can help to relax their mood by surround their living space with gardens. If a family has only one garden, that garden, like the Wangshi garden, is located on the side of the house and extends from the front to the back, the inner and outer boundary of the garden would be relatively ambiguous, in order to facilitate women’s usage, door towards outside need to be closed. Figure 14 is another part of Suzhou's Golden Age, this residence is closer to the city center, with gorgeous buildings and delicate garden. The family is entertaining guests in the great hall, and
Figure 14: A family is treating guests in the great hall Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age
75 Yixueling, Suzhou Yuanlin Lidai Wenchao 苏州园林历代文钞 (January 2008), p. 126.
36 there is no woman at the feast. The female figures in the home can only be seen in the garden or the inner hall. There are two gates that can enter the garden, one is around the inner hall, another is in the front of this residence. The painter closed the garden gate to the outside, thus making the garden a temporary female space. In this way, the internal and external boundary of the home actually depends on whether the external door is opened or not. When entertaining male guests in the garden and opening the garden to the outside world, the garden becomes a blurry boundary between inside and outside, at this time, women are no longer allowed to enter the garden, and when the gate to the outside is closed, the garden becomes the internal space. No matter it is Fei’s mansion and Wangshi garden for the upper classes, or the gardens in the city center of Suzhou, or country house farmers lives in, they all have large or small gardens, and gardens are arranged in the back part of the houses or set doors that can change the nature of space between inside and outside. This makes it easier for women who lack the opportunity to go out and live in the back of the house. Of course, there were gardens in front of the houses in the Ming and Qing dynasties, but the situation was not as common as in the Tang and Song dynasties.76 This shift is inseparable from an emphasis on women’s needs, which will be discussed in the next part.
3.3 The trend of building gardens in Jiangnan:
In the documentary called Six Records of Suzhou Gardens (Suyuan Liuji), an old man recalls the gardens of Suzhou in his memory: When he was a boy, there were private gardens deep in every alleyway, but now tourists can't find them. He often visited his classmates’ house and did homework in their private gardens. He believes that gardens was a part of the life of everyone in Suzhou.77 When it comes to gardens, Chinese people always think of Suzhou gardens, the city has been tied together with the gardens, people think that the spirit of gardens permeates every corner of the city. Suzhou is the major city for building private gardens, but not the only city with many private gardens before the founding of the People's Republic of China. Private gardens can be seen everywhere in the Jiangnan region. Jiangnan has mild climate, fertile soil, numerous waterways and is suitable to construct classical gardens. Among all the gardens of Jiangnan, Suzhou gardens has the highest quality and quantity, and are better preserved. In this section, I will use gardens in Suzhou as a representation of the whole Jiangnan region. Most of the gardens were not very large, mainly for two reasons: Firstly, most of the owners of private gardens were literati with higher spiritual needs than other social classes. Among them, only a small part can become officials by taking part in the imperial examinations and become wealthy.
76 The oldest existing famous garden in Suzhou, Canglang pavilion, was built in the Song dynasty. It was built in front of the residence, while the famous gardens constructed in the Ming and Qing dynasties, such as the Liu garden, the Zhuozheng garden and the Wangshi garden, were all built at the back of the residence. 77 Suzhou Fangchan Guanliju, Suzhou Gu Minju 苏州古民居, p. 21.
37 Most of the literati had to rely on teaching and selling their paintings and poems, they can barely make a living, and the gardens they could afford were usually small. Secondly, aside from experiencing natural and man-made disasters such as famine and plague during the little ice age, and wars were waged year after year through the alternation from Ming to Qing dynasty for less than 50 years (1628-1662), Ming and Qing dynasties were a continuous flourishing period of Chinese history, the population was in a state of continuous growth, and the absolute number was not low. The population of the forty-eighth year of Wanli period in the Ming dynasty (1602) was the most populous year in the history of the Ming dynasty, and the population of Jiangnan region was about 20 million;78 according to the statistics of the second year of Jiaqing period in the Qing dynasty (1820), the population density of this small area in the lower Yangtze river was the highest in China, with a population of about 24.6 million,79 the population density of Suzhou was as high as 1073 people per square kilometer,80 and the per capita housing area inevitably decreased with the growth of population. Although the growth of population and the reduction of family size in the Ming and Qing dynasties increased the housing pressure, and the per capita housing area decreased, the trend of garden building increased instead of decreased during the Ming and Qing dynasties. According to Huang Wei's statistics, there were 798 gardens in Suzhou of all ages, 224 in the Ming dynasty and 369 in the Qing dynasty.81 Its popularity can be confirmed by Huang Xingzeng's (1490-1540) literary sketch The Ethos of Wu (Wu Feng Lu):
The rich in Suzhou competes to use Tai lake rocks to construct steep mountains and hidden caves. The nobles occupies the famous islands to construct strange landforms and decorate their gardens with precious flowers and trees. The common people also pretend that the bonsai is an island and decorate it to amuse themselves. They greedily do this, and saved money to satisfy their desires.82
People from different classes use different methods to meet their needs for gardens. An important reason for this is that the development of printing and the popularity of novels have led more and more people to regard the construction of gardens as a social trend. Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, only the literati had the desire to build gardens, and only they knew how to build and use gardens, so the number and scale of gardens were relatively stable. With the growing popularity of printing industry and popular culture in the Ming and Qing
78 Wu Jianhua, ‘Qingdai Jiangnan Renkou Yu Zhufang De Guanxi Tanlue 清代江南人口与住房的关系探略’, Zhongguo Renkou Kexue (2002), pp. 42–48. 79 Wu Jianhua, ‘Qingdai Jiangnan Renkou Yu Zhufang De Guanxi Tanlue 清代江南人口与住房的关系探略’. 80 Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo Lidai Hukou Tiandi Tianfu Tongji 中国历代户口、田地、田赋统计 (1980). 81 Huang Wei, ‘Suzhou Yuanlin de Lishi Wenmai 苏州园林的历史文脉’, Zhongguo Yuanlin, 10 (1994), pp. 5– 7. 82 Original text: “吴中富豪竞以湖石筑峙奇峰阴洞，至诸贵占据名岛以凿凿而嵌空妙绝，珍花异木，错映 阑圃，虽闾阎下户，亦饰小小盆岛为玩，以此务为饕贪，积金以克众欲。”Huang Xing, ‘Wu Feng Lu 吳 風錄’.
38 dynasties, more people learned how romantic it was to have a garden in their house and how a proper garden should look like from romantic novels, operas and paintings. The romantic novels of Ming and Qing dynasties, represented by the Story of the Stone (Honglou Meng) and the Plum in the Golden Vase (Jin Ping Mei), depict the gardens in detail. the Story of the Stone used more than one chapter, more than one person's perspective to introduce the appearance of the garden in detail, and, thanks to the Ming and Qing dynasties developed printing industry, some editions of these novels was accompanied by many illustrations, and popular novels such as the
Figure 15 Panorama of Daguan Garden One painting of the album of The Story of the Stone Painter: Sun Wen (1818-?) Lvshun Museum, Dalian
Story of the Stone, the Plum in the Golden Vase and Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang Ji) even published painting albums (Figure 15). During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the publishing industry in Jiangnan was very prosperous, and it was the center of the national publishing industry. The author, editor, publisher and the setting of the story are all located in the Jiangnan region.83 Liu Dajie summarized the routine of a romantic story, it always begin with a men "went out to a garden or temple one day, met a girl, 16 years old, beautiful, talented and sentimental, just like a goddess," and then the two fall in love.84 Guo Changhe was the first Chinese scholar to study traditional Chinese romantic novels. In his study, he came to the conclusion that, "these works only give men some mediocrity and prosperity
83 Yang Lin, Qingchu Xiaoshuo Yu Shiren Wenhua Xintai 清初小说与士人文化心态 (October 2017). 84 Liu Dajie, Zhongguo Wenxue Fazhan Shi 中国文学发展史 (Fudan Daxue Chubenshe, 2006), 198. Cited from Yang Lin, Qingchu Xiaoshuo Yu Shiren Wenhua Xintai 清初小说与士人文化心态.
39 imagination and dirty romantic thought, and give women some consciousness of the three obediences and the four virtues and humiliating personality."85 Liu Zhiping believed that the theory of garden building has been based on Cao Xueqin’s the Story of the Stone since this book came out,86 it shows how large the influence of romantic novels could have on gardens. As one of the four great classical novels of China, it is no wonder that the Story of the Stone could have such a great influence, and the illustrations in the books or the painting albums created based on the novel allows reader to have an intuitive sense of a proper garden. Almost all the plots in this novel took place in Ning Mansion, Rong Mansion and the Daguan garden shared by the two mansions. In the novel, the author recreates his past luxurious life, giving the reader a real glimpse into the life of the upper class. There is only one main male character in this romantic novel, this novel is mainly about the luxurious life of a dozen young women in the garden. Such plot is so common that the author of the Story of the Stone also use Grandma Jia’s87 words to criticize it: these romantic novels depict gentle women to be so bad, although they read many books and are talented, as long as they see a handsome man, they forget about Li and their family, and want to go with the man. These plots are written by the male author to satisfy his fantasy, and the result is to mislead too many people.88 Such a luxury and dissipation life in the garden naturally attracts not only female readers, but also male readers. Male readers fantasize about meeting and falling in love with women in romantic gardens, and urge these men, who are in charge of decisions and household finances, to build gardens based on romantic novels. According to Agenda Setting theory, “there is a strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media place on certain issues (e.g., based on relative placement or amount of coverage) and the importance attributed to these issues by mass audience.”89Although this theory is mainly used to study the contemporary media and politics, at the time, popular romance novels like modern newspapers and television was also a kind of influential media, so repeated garden in people's daily readings would also affect people's attention and desire in the gardens, and caused the trend to construct gardens.
Summary:
The secularization process of Taoism from the Ming dynasty made the influence of Taoism expand from then on. Taoism's view of gender equality made garden a comfortable space for
85 Cited from Yang Lin, Qingchu Xiaoshuo Yu Shiren Wenhua Xintai 清初小说与士人文化心态, sec. 3. 86 Tai Jie, ‘Suzhou Chuantong Yuanlin Sanda Gongneng Quyu Kongjian Sheji Yanjiu 苏州传统园林三大功能 区域空间设计研究’ (Suzhou University, 2007). 87 Grandma Jia has the highest status among all the characters in this novel. 88 Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo Lidai Hukou Tiandi Tianfu Tongji 中国历代户口、田地、田赋统计, sec. 54. 89 Dietram A. Scheufele and David Tewksbury, ‘Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models’, Journal of Communication, 57 (March 2007), pp. 9–20.
40 women to enter as they would not be oppressed in a Taoism garden, and Taoism’s worship of the power of fertility made flowers a major feature of gardens in the Ming and Qing dynasties. To make it easier for women to enter gardens and enjoy their feminine space, the gardens were built behind the residences or open doors that close to the inner hall and made it accessible for women. The popularization of romantic novels, and their repetition of presenting how romantic and elegant it was to live in a garden trigger people’s eager to construct gardens, and increased the number of the time. However, the influence of women on the garden was not active, in most cases, it was through men that they could influence the design of the garden. Passive influence means that the role of women in landscape architecture is easily ignored by history. On the practical level, the most significant influence of women on the changes in garden is mainly on the female themselves. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, there appeared a group of female poets.
41 4 More gardens, more talented women:
Hu Wenkai (about 1899-1988), who compiled the works of women in all dynasties, calculated that from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty, there were more than 4,000 recorded female authors, with the largest number in the Ming and Qing dynasties. There were about 300 female writers in the Ming dynasty and more than 3,000 in the Qing dynasty. Among them, the two provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the main area of Jiangnan region, accounted for 80% of the female poets.90 Poetesses and gardens are very consistent in number and geographical distribution. Moreover, through reading poetesses' poems, it is not difficult to find that poetesses mainly take gardens as the background of their poems, and the most common chanting objects are the flowers in gardens. In the first part of this section, I will discuss whether the emergence of poetess was related to the increase of gardens. In the second part, I will discuss the influence of gardens on poetess’s social circle. In the third part, I will discuss the limitations on their works, and the final part is about the significance of receiving education for women.
4.1 The scenery of gardens stimulated women to write poems:
It was because of the universality of the garden of that period that many women could live in the garden every day, accompanied by the relatively natural scenery, which affects the content of their thoughts. Writing poetry became a pastime. The younger brother of Shen Yixiu (1590-1653), a famous talented woman in the late Ming dynasty, described his sister's daily life in this way: “After my sister stopped playing the Guqin, she became more and more devoted to reading, sometimes praising the spring pepper, sometimes chanting the autumn chrysanthemums. She recited poems with her husband at home all day long.”91 Shen Yixiu became a famous poetess in the Ming dynasty largely because she lived in a garden. Her husband, Ye Shaoyuan, wrote in the biography of her:
She tended her plants every day and was sure to have them watered by her maid in the morning. The shade of the paulownia tree fell on the window, the curtain covered the tea table, and she burned incense and sat alone. In our spare time, after we write poetry, she and I enjoyed the scenery in the garden, and can see our footprints on every path.92
When Shen woke up early in the morning, she would sign at the quietness of the garden and the beauty of the scenery;93 When she saw the flowers falling in the garden in spring, she would
90 Hu Wenkai, Lidai Funv Zhuzuo Kao 历代妇女著作考 (Shanghai, July 1985), pp. 8–9. 91 Original text: “姊静琴既翕，益肆力于缥缃，或作颂春椒，或俪铭秋菊。中闺倡和，业日以富。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, p. 20. 92 Original text: “日莳佳卉，药栏花草，清晨必命侍女执水器栉沐。桐阴映窗，帘横一几，焚香独坐，有 荀令君之癖。吟咏馀暇，或共琼章飘姚药径，恒有履迹焉。贫居无聊，故寻清寂之趣。自两女亡后，拾 草问花，皆滋涕泪，兴亦尽减矣。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, p. 279. 93 Original text: ‘《晓起》“晓风庭户静，凉露迎晨旭。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, p. 46.
42 associate it with man’s away from home, leaving the woman alone to hide her face and cry. Since man left, the beautiful days of the woman were just like the flowers falling in the water and running away mercilessly;94 In the fall, when she saw the leaves falling in the garden, she would marvel at the ruthlessness of the world.95 Living in a garden where she could feel the seasons and observe the flowers blossoming and falling gave her the material to write poems about. At that time, some men think it is elegant for women to be able to read and write poetry, so they were happy to encourage their sisters, wives and daughters to do so. No doubt, Shen was greatly encouraged by her husband, Ye Shaoyuan, who not only wrote poems with his wife and taught his children to do so, but also edited and published poems of his wife and three daughters, making their voice heard by the outside.
4.1.1 Reason for men willing to educate women:
Li Yu pointed out that there was a saying in his time that "innocence is the virtue for women,"96 and he agreed with the rationality of this view, because he thought that there were indeed a lot of intelligent women who were not determined and had no integrity. But he also thought it was necessary to let women learn, and men should let women study in a fine environment, like in a garden. The key to get women to study literature is not whether they can become scholars, but the scene that women are learning in a beautiful environment that is like a painting and is itself satisfying.97 Women were not encouraged to read and write poetry simply to enrich their spirit, for some men, they didn’t care about women's talent in writing poetry. The scene of women reading was not only aesthetically attractive, but also sexually attractive. For them, letting women read books was to better enjoy "the fun of having sex with talented girls."98 One way to make women learn without letting them have the same thoughts as men is to only let women read the book of ethics written for women, so that they can learn how to discipline themselves. In the novel the story of the Stone, all women end in tragedy, but one woman's story is particularly lamentable. In the story, a widow named Li Wan lost her husband at a young age and has since lived in his home to support his mother and her son. Although the author says she also reads books, the tragedy of her comes from the books she reads. Her father “didn't let her read
94 Original text: 《悲花落》“湿云不飞花欲落，数枝憔悴胭脂薄……公子金鞍嘶落日，佳人红袖泣啼 鹃……妆镜慵窥双鬓蓬，花开争似夕阳红。夕阳千里还同照，花落空随逝水东。东流逝水日悠悠，流尽 闺人一片愁。锦字不传红叶恨，燕衔春色入银钩。春为多愁不忍看，可堪春去众芳残。风前历乱吹肠 断，落尽苍苔泪点丹。寄语春光莫来去，免教长恨倚栏杆。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, pp. 51–52. 95 Original text: ‘《感怀》“忽闻秋风至，萧条楚客惊。庭阶初叶堕，烟树远天平。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, p. 61. 96 Li Yu, Xianqing Ouji 闲情偶寄, p. 167. 97 Li Yu, Xianqing Ouji 闲情偶寄, p. 169. 98 Li Yu, Xianqing Ouji 闲情偶寄, p. 169.
43 much, only books like the Four Books for Women, so that she could know how to read and remember the deeds of several virtuous women in the previous dynasties.”99 The author therefore describes her as "like the dead ashes."100 The other women in the novel are talented and lovely because they are well-educated and live in gardens, and often have different subjects to write about. But the more talented and rebellious the women are, the more tragic their end is. This is not the author's wish, Cao Xueqin just recorded the common situation. At that time, people praised moral women like Li Wan who would take the initiative to disciple themselves. A scholar called Shi Chengjin (1659-?) of Qing dynasty said:
It is rare for women to be both literate and virtuous. Other women who read novels, have bad ideas, or even make themselves a fool by writing are even worse than those who can't read. What Chen Jiru said, "a woman without talent is virtuous" is true.101
Being talented and virtuous at the same time are the best, but the talent they want women to have is not the same talent as men, and women shouldn't read anything but books of Li, or write poetry, or let others hear their thoughts, because it makes them look stupid. Although the point of men educating women is for them to discipline themselves, it is inevitable that some educated women will explore a wider range of knowledge. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, many talented women appeared in their families.102 Without the help of men, mothers would educate their daughters to read and write poems. The appearance of female poets did not depend entirely on the help of men in the family.
4.1.2 Women compare themselves to flowers in poetry:
Another way is to let women objectify themselves into fragile flowers. As we have discussed before, Taoist thought attaches importance to female reproductive ability, and flowers can be regarded as a symbol of female fertility through simple association. Therefore, the comparison of women to flowers under the influence of Taoist thought is not an act of weakening women. However, in the poems of many male and female poets in the Ming and Qing dynasties, it can be found that male poets often compare women to, or female poets compare themselves to flowers. What they want to express by doing so is to show women’s weakness, which needs the garden walls to protect them from the wind and rain and requires men to take care of themselves like gardeners.
99 Cao Xueqin, Hong Lou Meng 红楼梦 (Changsha, 2011), p. 23. 100 Cao Xueqin, Hong Lou Meng 红楼梦, p. 23. 101 Original text: ‘女子通文识字，而能明大义者，固为贤德，然不可多得；其它便喜看曲本小说，挑动邪 心，甚至舞文弄法，做出无丑事，反不如不识字，守拙安分之为愈也。陈眉公（即陈继儒）云：“女子 无才便是德。”可谓至言。’ Wang Liqi, Yuan Ming Qing Sandai Jinhui Xiaoshuo Xiqu Shiliao 元明清三代禁 毁小说戏曲史料 (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1981), 175. Cited from Lin Zhihui, ‘Mingqing Zhiji Jiangnan Guixiu Shiren Shehui Xingxiang Yanjiu 明清之际江南闺秀诗人社会形象研究’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, South China University of Technology, June 2013). 102 Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, Calif, 1997), sec. 4.
44 Ye Shaoyuan said the three immortality for women is to show their virtue, show their talent and make their appearance look good.103 If women believe in such claim and want to make themselves immortal will try to show their beautiful appearance in her poems besides their showing their virtue and talent. As flowers are always regarded as very beautiful creature, and can be seen from their gardens, it becomes their best option. In his wife Shen Yixiu’s poem collection Oriole’s Sing, it has 634 poems, more than one hundred among these poems use flowers as their titles, and she also mentioned flowers in poems on other subjects. When she wrote about jasmine, she says: “I was having a good time drinking alcohol and admiring jasmine, but I was worried that autumn would be jealous of jasmine's beauty. If the moth pity it, please protect it with auspicious clouds.”104 Flowers that grow in nature may not have the will to be protected. The laws of nature have been with them since they were born. Without protection, flowers have evolved to the present day. Only in the eyes of people, flowers need to be protected, because this is not the flower itself, but as the representative of people. Shen asked for help from the outside world, not to guard the flower herself. Only the vulnerable feel they need to be protected, and only those who are as vulnerable as themselves need to be protected. Yuan Mei also loved poems in which women compared themselves to flowers. Yuan Mei recorded a poetess called Yu Ting’s105 poem about plum blossom, she says: “The sparse wood has just grown new shoots, you take off your makeup, you use your noble posture facing the moon. The east wind blows the drizzle, regardless of the fragrance on the branches.”106 Although this poem is a description of plum blossom, poets have always used scenery to express their feelings, the plum blossom is the poet's own incarnation. The woman compared herself to a plum blossom, believing that her flowering period was short, unappreciated, and that she had been mercilessly destroyed by life, just as the wind and rain had done to the plum blossom. The flower is chosen from other objects in the garden to represent women, because it can best reflect the characteristics of them. Other typical landscapes of garden, like artificial hills, ponds, trees, are either to be hard or eternal, while women think their youth is just like flowering time that is short, their beauty is just like flowers that will decline after a rain baptism, like a flower that need to feel appreciated, need to be taken care of. Another reason may be to learn from men’s comparing themselves to gardens. After buying a garden, many literati would give it their family name. For example, Canglang pavilion was once bought by a General called Han Shizhong in the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279), and was
103 Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集 Preface. 104 Original text: “把酒看花兴正浓，只愁秋色妒芳容。素蛾若肯相怜惜，吹落卿云护几重。”Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集, p. 160. 105 Yu Ting’s poem manuscripts were burnt, but at that time, her poems had already been famous and known by others. Yuan Mei recorded her poems to show his pity and to keep her alive in his work. 106 Original text: “才发疏林便褪妆，冰姿空对月昏黄。东风只顾吹零雨，哪惜枝头有暗香。” Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, p. 34.
45 renamed Han garden according to his family name. The other situation is that the literati take the name of the garden as their style names. Yuan Mei is a good example that he often claimed himself as “Old Man Suiyuan (Sui garden)” in his works, and his female disciples also claimed to be Suiyuan's female disciples, even though many of them had never been to his garden. Cui Mo wrote about his wife's suicide in his book, and Chen Shulan, a female disciple of Yuan Mei, lamented: “Even though you are a Jinshi of Jiangzhou, you cannot protect a flower in your garden.”107 Cui Mo styled himself as “Guanyuan”, it means the man watering the garden, Chen Shulan laments the futility of this talented man, who is clearly the master of his family, but cannot protect his possessions. When his wife and his mother had conflicts, he could not solve these problems, nor could he prevent his wife's suicide. This seems to explain why women always compare themselves to the flowers in the garden, because their husbands are the embodiment of the garden, and their existence is for decorating the garden, to enhance his glory, for his viewing. The man as the representation of garden uses his own wall to shelter her from the wind and rain, to protect her. However, all these practices that men connect their names with their garden’s names are to integrate the garden with men themselves, as a way of asserting sovereignty over this space. Famous flowers are often planted in gardens, because the walls of gardens can provide protection for the flowers, women comparing themselves to flowers means that they belong to men as flowers belong to gardens. How can flowers have thoughts? When flowers are endowed with effeminate imagery, female talent ceases to be aggressive, or to undermine the established hierarchy of men superior than women, because the poetess who sees herself as a flower feels that she needs men’s protection, and even if her poetry is seen, the impression that women are flowers will deepen in the minds of others.
4.2 Talented women had larger social circle and wider social space:
As more and more women become obsessed with writing poetry, they naturally want to communicate with other poets and have their work seen by other people, but moral codes restrict the communication between the female poets and male poets. Because of the requirement that "words from inner hall should not be heard by the outside"108, women should not let men from the outside read their poems, and such situation strengthen the interaction between female poets. From the end of the Ming dynasty, especially in the Qing dynasty, association had become a trend, and the literati formed large or small associations. These literati groups greatly influenced
107 Original text: ‘可惜江州进士家，灌园难护一枝花。’ Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, pp. 43–44. 108 Original text:《礼记·内则》：“内言不出”.
46 the politics of the late Ming dynasty, their group struggle led to the decline of the Ming dynasty.109 The trend of associating parties also affects women. "Association had become the custom by the end of the Ming dynasty… At that time, not only the literati would form the associations, talented women did that too, to promote elegance and engage in reciting poems."110 Unlike male literati, women never formed associations to discuss politics, but only to exchange ideas on writing poetry. Forming a poetry association with other female poets and holding a collection in the garden became their spare time activities, enabled them to expand their social circle, gave them excuses to leave their inner chamber and enter others’ gardens. Although the number of female poets in the Ming dynasty was more than that in the previous dynasties, the situation of forming a poetry club and holding a collection of poems was still not that common. Shen Yixiu (1590-1635) was one of the famous female poets in Wujiang (belongs to Suzhou) in the Ming dynasty. She was the center of the local female poetry circle.111 Her three sons and five daughters were all full of talent, and according to local chronicles in Suzhou, their family often "amused themselves by chanting poems to each other."112 There is little evidence of their involvement in any of the poetry clubs, they mainly communicated poetry within the family. The situation of poetess writing poems with the family as the unit continued to exist in the Qing dynasty. Some families valued the education of children, and they had many sisters or aunts who could write poems in the big family, which made it convenient for ladies to often hold elegant gatherings in their private gardens. In the Middle of Qing dynasty, A female poet called Liu Wanhuai said in the preface of her poems collection Draft of Wenyue Building (Wenyuelou Cao),: “In the past, there were dozens of tufts of peony and many buildings in the garden. Our brothers and sisters often meet in the garden and set titles to recite poems.”113 Such gatherings, held among close relatives, gradually evolve into a regional poetry community. Two famous regional poetess groups appeared in the Qing dynasty: the Jiaoyuan poetry club and Yuan Mei’s female disciples.
4.2.1 Jiaoyuan poetry club
Compared with the late Ming dynasty, it was more common for poetess to establish a poetry club in the same region in the Qing dynasty. Liang Yizhen (1900-1951), one of the earliest scholars who
109 Their infighting consumed the officials, leaving them unable to cope with the natural disasters that befell the late Ming empire, and unable to unite in the event of a Qing invasion. 110 Xie Guozhen, Mingqing Zhiji Dangshe Yundong Kao 明清之际党社运动考 (Beijing, 1982), p. 6. 111 Chen Shulu, ‘Cai, De, Se Zhuti Yishi De Huifu Yu Nvxing Qunti Wenxue De Xingsheng “德、才、色”主体 意识的复苏与女性群体文学的兴盛’, Journal of Nanjing Normal University (September 2001), pp. 132–137. 112 Cited from Chen Shulu, ‘Cai, De, Se Zhuti Yishi De Huifu Yu Nvxing Qunti Wenxue De Xingsheng “德、 才、色”主体意识的复苏与女性群体文学的兴盛’. 113 Original text: ‘昔年家园中红药数十丛，台榭参差，栏杆曲折，与诸昆仲及同堂姊妹常聚集其间，分题 吟咏。’Shi Shuyi, Qingdai Guige Shiren Zhenglue 清代闺阁诗人征略, vol. 5 (Wenhai Chuban Youxiangongsi, 2003) Cited from: Shi Yujuan, ‘Neiyan Yong Chuyu Kun 内言勇出于阃’, Mingzuo Xinshang (2015), pp. 80– 81.
47 studied ancient women's literature in China, believed that the trend of establish poetry clubs in the Qing dynasty began in the Jiaoyuan poetry club in the early Qing dynasty.114 Jiaoyuan poetry club was formed in 1674 by five poetesses in Qiantang, Hangzhou. These five people are Chai Jingyi, Qian Fenglun, Lin Yining, Gu Si, Feng Xian, they all came from the local noble families. Although they came from the same region, they did not know each other at the beginning. After seeing each other's poems, they recognized each other's talent and began to write letters to exchange their experience in writing poems. The first poet gathering that everyone participated in was held in the garden of Feng Xian's family in 1676. From then on, they would hold gathering several times a month, in different locations, mainly in their own gardens. According to the research of professor Song Qingxiu, after the first garden gathering held in 1676, more talented local women were attracted to join in, and eventually there were ten poetess who settled down to participate in the poetry club.115 The expansion of the poetry club means the expansion of these talented women's social circle. Although there were only ten regular members, more female poets from Qiantang could participate in their activities as their gatherings were held in semi-public places such as gardens. Therefore, the social circle of female poets is actually broader. Lin Yining, one of the founders of the poetry club, once said that when she was younger, she only exchanged knowledge with the elders in her family. It was through the exchange of poetry, she got to know so many talented women.116 Although the Jiaoyuan poetry club was first established in 1674 and there were communication among its members, it was not until 1676 that it began to attract more people's attention and participation. The difference is that prior to 1676 the members of the poetry society were communicating privately, and when the poetesses’ communication was carried out in the real space, the influence of the poetry club reached the real world. It is a noble thing to hold a gathering in a garden, and the depiction of elegant gathering is the theme of literati paintings in various dynasties. The Xi garden gathering held during the Yuanfeng period (1078-1085) in the Song dynasty has been depicted by more than 10 painters from the Song dynasty to the Qing dynasty. It can be seen that this is a noble thing that makes people follow. The garden provides enough space for many people to participate in the club activities and the elegant features attract more local talented women to join in and promote the local talented women to form a larger social circle.
114 Liang Yizhen, ‘Qingdai Funv Wenxue Shi 清代妇女文学史’ (1932), p. 23. 115 Song Qingxiu, Qingdai Jiangnan Nvxing Wenxue Shilun 清代江南女性文学史论 (May 2015), pp. 138–153. 116 Lin Yining wrote in the preface of her poem collection Hemin：“余少读书也，苦无所资，独与伯嫂重楣 称笔砚友。不知海内名媛，诗学最称者几人，人几集，集几卷。……后岁甲寅，嫂得疾以卒。兄寅三思 成其志，始命余为小启，请海内同人为哀挽以吊焉。遂以余名达于闺媛大家。” Cited from: Song Qingxiu, Qingdai Jiangnan Nvxing Wenxue Shilun 清代江南女性文学史论, p. 140.
48 4.2.2 Yuan Mei’s female disciples:
The most famous group of poetesses in the mid Qing dynasty was Yuan Mei's female disciples, whose social activities were no longer confined to their hometown. Yuan Mei traveled around Jiangnan region, his fame attracted female poets from all over the region to worship him as their teacher. Therefore, his female disciples were found in Hangzhou, Zhenjiang, Suzhou, Nanjing and many other cities in Jiangnan. As fellow students of a same teacher, it allowed women from different places to form friendships,117 and also allows some of them to use Yuan Mei’s fame to build local influence. The most famous activity of the female disciples was the elegant gathering held in 1790 in the garden belonged to the female disciple Sun Biwu’s family (Figure 6). The gathering was attended by 14 people, including Yuan Mei. Although Yuan Mei was very enthusiastic about recruiting female disciples, he did not take the initiative to hold this gathering. In his work Notes on Poetry from Sui Garden, he recorded, “in the Spring of 1790, I went to Hangzhou to sweep the grave, Sun Biwu invited thirteen ladies and we met at Hulou, they came with their poems and paintings as gifts.”118 He did not go to Hangzhou to hold an elegant gathering with these ladies, but to sweep grave. It was Sun Biwu that took the initiative because she wanted to formally acknowledge Yuan Mei as her teacher. Yuan Mei did not know all of these ladies, and some of them worship Yuan Mei as their teacher in this gathering.119 The gathering was held by Sun Biwu in her family’s garden. As the initiator and host of the gathering, she naturally became the protagonist. Pan Suxin, another female poet who participated in their gathering, said in her works that Yuanmei regarded Sun Biwu's poems as the first and hers was the second.120 Holding an elegant gathering in her garden to entertain guests not only enabled Yuan Mei, the teacher, to have more female disciples, but also enabled Sun Biwu to take this opportunity to expand her influence among local noble women. The garden is a necessary place to hold the elegant gatherings, is a physical space for poetesses to socialize, and as mentioned in the previous part, is also a spiritual space that provide subjects for them to write poems on. Just like the last painting of Chen Mei's twelve paintings, which depicts women holding a gathering in December, the title is To Seek Poem in Snow. The activity of writing poems in the gathering require poetesses to create works within a certain period of time, rather
117 For example, Luo Qilan was a disciple of Yuan Mei, and many of the other female poets she had relationship with lived in different region and some had never met each other. Their relationship was established through Yuan Mei’s social network. Cui Xiujing, ‘Qianjia Zhiji Nvxing Zuojia De Wenxue Jiaoyou Guanxi Jiqi Yiyi 乾 嘉之际女性作家的文学交游关系及其意义’ (May 2010), pp. 55–59. 118 Original text: ‘庚戌春，扫墓杭州，女弟子孙碧梧邀女士十三人，大会于湖楼，各以诗画为贽。’Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, p. 313. 119 Song Qingxiu, Qingdai Jiangnan Nvxing Wenxue Shilun 清代江南女性文学史论, pp. 154–178. 120 Original text: ‘先生论诗以孙碧梧为首，以素心为次。’ Cited from Song Qingxiu, Qingdai Jiangnan Nvxing Wenxue Shilun 清代江南女性文学史论, pp. 154–178.
49 than to be able to get the feeling naturally in the infinite time. In order to create a better work in a short time, they need garden to provide them with a lot of materials.
4.3 Limitation of writing poetry based on garden scenery:
The flourishing of female poetry writing in the Ming and Qing dynasties did not promote women's academic status. Although the number of female poets in the Ming and Qing dynasties was greatly improved compared with that in the former dynasties, women's academic status was reduced compared with that in the former dynasties, and the group of female talent was even stigmatized. This is the limitation of writing only on the landscape of the garden.
4.3.1 Confucian scholar’s criticism on the ethos of women writing poetry:
Male scholars' attack on women's forming associations, writing poems and putting them into print never stopped since the group of poetesses emerged. Sun Qifeng (1584-1675), one of the three greatest scholars of late Ming and early Qing dynasties, severely criticized the talented woman for feminizing the whole society:
I heard that ‘a woman without talent is virtuous’. Recently, women form associations, visit guests and write poems, and men praise their talents and dedicate their poetries to those in power, request to publish and circulate them, and people praise it as an elegant thing. This kind of ethos has been rampant for a long time. Is there no masculine person in the world to end this kind of femininity?121
Zhang Xuecheng also criticized Yuan Mei for he accepted many women as his disciples and held elegant gatherings with these talented women. He criticized Yuan Mei for seducing talented women with romantic dramas and asking them to write and publish poems, which made the women immoral and the social atmosphere corrupt. Zhang looked down upon Yuan Mei and wrote many articles to scold him, but that is not the main reason for his critics on Yuan’s relationships with his female disciples, he believed that Yuan Mei’s fault was seducing more women to learn poetry, making less women learn the principle of Li, and corrupting the society. As a well-known Confucian scholar, he was serious about the moral code women ought to obey. In his article The Study of Women (Fu Xue) he believed that “after Tang and Song dynasties, all the talent we can see from women is just writing full of complaints and sorrow, their writings about
121 Original text: ‘我闻之:“妇人无才即是德”，近来妇人结社，拜客作诗，至男子为其妇兄才，持其诗 献 当道，求为刻传大家，称述以为韵事。吁嗟!此风浸淫不已，岂世终无阳刚大人，一洗此阴靡者乎?’ Sun Qifeng, Sun Zheng Jun Ripu Lucun, Vol.13. Cited from Zhang Jie, ‘Cainv Weihe? Mingqing Jiangnan shehui dui Cainv Qunti de Shehui Renzhi Yu Zhixu Shengchan 才女为何?——明清江南社会对“才女”群体的社会认 知与秩序生产’, Kaifang Shidai (2014), pp. 62–80.
50 flowers and grass, and their writings are short.”122 Male scholars praised talented women for their physical beauty not their knowledge, the communication between men and women about poems could bring no good but harms to the society because they violate the principle of separation and should be avoided. Zhang Xuechen’s comment makes some sense, for most of the women's poetry is not so much about deep thoughts as about emotions, self-pity and narcissism. Poetry became the only field in which they could display their talents, and their vision was confined to the garden.
4.3.2 Talented women's works are of low literary value:
If there were still women in the Han dynasty to compile historiography,123 then after the Song dynasty, only poetry still provided space for women to display their talents. The reason for women only display their talent in writing poetry can be discussed from two aspects: Firstly, with the further interpretation and utilization of Confucianism by Confucian scholars in each dynasty, the restrictions on women were gradually strengthened, and women were certainly not expected to be truly talented. Secondly, it is relatively simple to write poems, no matter it is to learn or to create, it would not take women too much time to write a poem, and their abundant emotions would cover their poems’ drawbacks. The fact that the woman in the family could read was a sign of male identity and status of the family, but that was all that was required of the talented woman. Thinking from a less positive point of view, poetry is more about emotion than rational thinking than formal writing, because poetry is always composed of descriptions of several scenes and the accumulation of hazy atmosphere, their thinking would not be effectively exercised. Men do not need to worry too much about their female family members’ improper words being heard by outsiders, because after years of Confucian discipline, women themselves knew they should behave themselves, and most women know they should choose the right time to burn their manuscripts before too many people heard about their talent, otherwise their family members would burn it for them.124 The brevity of the poem at least made it possible for women to write. From Susan Mann’s description of women's daily lives, women simply did not have the time to study systematically and
122 Original text: ‘唐宋以还，妇才之可见者，不过春闺秋怨，花草荣彤，短什小篇。’Zhang Xuecheng, Wenshi Tongyi 文史通义 (Shanghai, 1988), p. 70. 123 The most typical figure is the female historian Ban Zhao (about 45-117) of the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220), who was one of the most famous female Confucian scholars in ancient times. The Book of Han, which she compiled, became one of the Twenty-Four Histories. She was so learned that she was teacher of queen and other noble women. She emphasized the superiority of men and inferiority of women, and wrote the Women's Commandments (Nv Jie), which became one of the Four Books for Women. 124 There are a few men who, out of pity for women's talent, will stop them from burning their poems and help publish them. Some of these manuscripts have been handed down as materials for the study of poetess. These manuscripts often include the words “焚余” ("the remaining of burning") in the title.
51 write formal articles,125 many female poets also gave their poems such titles as After the Needlework (Xiu Yu Cao) to show that writing poems did not hinder their needlework. Poetry writing solves the problem that women have no time and little knowledge, for its introduction and creation require little talent, knowledge and time. When instructing writing poems, Yuan Mei said: “Those ordinary sentences, as long as they can be said, are poetic.”126 It is true that women's poetry is more like refined and rhythmic everyday speech, but because women have ample emotions, their simple sentences seem more valuable. Yuan Mei compared the two farewell poems to prove that women's poems are superior to men's in terms of emotion. One is written by a courtesan to her lover at their parting: “Tears shed when we separate, dripping on the autumn steps, will grow into a begonias.”127 Another is written by an official to a courtesan: “You'd better not shed tears, save your tears for your tomorrow guest.”128 He praised the first poem as rich and pure in emotion, and found the second poem uninteresting because it contained no emotion and revealed a harsh reality. The poem of the courtesan expresses the preciousness of her tear and the sincerity of her emotions, which can even nourish the begonias in the garden and make the flowers bloom. The works of the male poet show the denial of the emotion, thinking that the emotion of the courtesan is worthless, they have to receive different guests every day, so he does not want the tears of these courtesans. Such a rejection of emotion is common in the poems of many male poets, who always hope that their poems are full of passion rather than indulging in useless emotions. The parting poem Lu Nan (1507-1560) gave to his friend in the Ming dynasty said, "do not indulge in the narrow grief, and ride away for thousands of miles."129 Men left their hometown because they had to take the imperial examination or go out to be an official. Such a departure was to fight for a better future. Therefore, although they would express their sadness as friends, they should not encourage their leaving friends to indulge in their emotions, because their goal of life would not end here. Ye Shaoyuan said, men have three immortality: show their virtue, make contributions to the country, make their speech recorded and remembered by later generations; women also have three immortality: show their virtue, show their talent and make appearance look good. 130 It takes emotion to write poetry, but for men, the talent they show in writing poetry is only an ornament to the success they can achieve in their careers, and indulging in it will only hinder their success. However, for women, it is the lifelong pursuit of some poetess to use their own emotions to make their poems moving and show their talent via their poems, just like the nightingale who made the beautiful red rose with her life.
125 Susan Mann, The Talented Women of the Zhang Family (2007). 126 Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, p. 38. 127 Original text: ‘临歧几点相思泪，滴向秋阶发海棠。’ Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, p. 15. 128 Original text: ‘凭君莫拭相思泪，留着明朝更送人。’ Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, pp. 15–16. 129 Original text:“勿作羊肠悲，且驰千里辔。”《赠子青三首·其二》 130 Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集 Preface.
52 Women are confined to the inner sanctions. Most of the time, they can only see the scenery in the garden. They objectify themselves as the flowers and plants in the garden and describe their miserable life from the perspective of a bystander, which can not only arouse the pity of readers, but also cover up their ordinary and unchanging life through the abundant emotion in the poem. Women themselves are aware of the shortcomings of their own poetry. In a letter to her younger brother, Liang Mengzhao explained why women’s poetry was not as good as that of men:
Male poets can travel mountains and rivers, have a lot of experience, and have no scruples in evaluating things, so they always write poems with an open mind. Not so for women in the inner room. We never leave our house, our knowledge is limited to this county, and even if we feel something, we must express it in a proper way. If express it in a casual way, it is not elegant, even women talented as Zhu Shuzhen131 suffered from the irony of others, let alone those who cannot match her. When we want to express our feelings, our poems should not be so direct, but cultured and restrained, which make the poem appears weak.132
Women understand that such disadvantages not only affect their ability to write poetry, but also prevent them from being able to write a real article. In writing a preface to someone else's poetry collection, poetess Fang Mengshi (1582-1639) said: “people like us pretend to be happy in our boudoir and never go out even for short distances, the preamble we wrote was of no value at all.”133 As a result, when Wang Xiuqin and Hu Wenkai tried to compile a collection of women's works of all dynasties, they found that women's works were mainly poetry, and it was not easy to find their articles.134
4.4 Liberation or Burden
Only women from the leisure class had the opportunity to receive a good education and be able to write poetry. These people had a high social status, and a small number of poetesses had the opportunity to publish poetry to make their voices heard. But being educated and learning to write poetry is not necessarily liberation for women. It can bring more pain than pleasure to them. Only a few poetesses use their influence to call on women to do the same thing as men, but most of the women's poems even make more women immobilized in gardens.
131 Zhu Shuzhen was one of the most famous female poets in the Song dynasty, but her parents thought their daughter was unvirtuous, so they burned her poems after her death. Posterity collated the rest of her poems and compiled them into a collection, but found only a small part of all her poems. 132 Original text: “诗人肆意山水,阅历既多,事情 ,诵言无忌,故其发之声歌,多奇杰浩博之气。至闺阁则 不然。足不蹄阃域,见不出乡邦,纵有所得,亦须有体。辞章放达,则伤大雅,朱淑真未免以此蒙讥,况下此者 乎？即讽咏性情,亦不得态意直言。必以绵缓蕴藉同之,然此又易流于弱。”Wang Xiuqin and Hu Wenkai, Lidai Minghuan Wenyuan Jianbian 歷代名媛文苑简编 (Shanghai, 1947), p. 85. 133 Original text: “我辈嚅唲深闺，终日行不离咫尺，何足当弁简之贽。” Wang Xiuqin and Hu Wenkai, Lidai Minghuan Wenyuan Jianbian 歷代名媛文苑简编, p. 15. 134 Wang Xiuqin and Hu Wenkai, Lidai Minghuan Wenyuan Jianbian 歷代名媛文苑简编, p. 19.
53 4.4.1 Beautiful ideal, cruel reality
The poems written by women living in gardens are quite different in content and feeling from those written by some talented women who could live outside gardens. Wang Zhenyi was a famous mathematician and astronomer in the Qing dynasty. Her father practiced all over the country as a doctor, she travelled with her father and gained extraordinary insights. She studied and integrated the scientific knowledge of east and west without prejudice, and wrote many books to promote science. Not only did she make immortal achievements in the field of science, but her poems were praised by the literati. One of her poems describing the northwest frontier fortress was praised by Yuan Mei as having the spirit of a hero: “The border is tightly locked, these tall mountains are like holding the throat of the country. Hundreds of rocks stand tall under the sun, and the Yellow River flows through them like a thin string.”135 Her poems are grandiose and have a wide sense of space, she is concerned about state affairs rather than personal feelings, this is different from other ladies’ work, her poems even attracted a male student to worship her as a teacher. She is focused on the infinite outer space, while more talented women are confined to the limited world. She also continued to call for equality between men and women, encouraging other women in her poems: "I always believe in equality between men and women. Who says women can't be heroes!"136 She also criticized men for not allowing women to carry out academic research, and hoped that other women would follow her example and not just write silly poems, but have lofty ambitions.137 But the trajectory of her life cannot be replicated, and women who have no opportunity for ambition will find it painful to be educated. Women would have lofty ideals after they were educated, and then they became dissatisfied with their fate because their ideals were impossible to realize in reality. Wen Yuyan was an official who attached great importance to children's education and had high expectations for their success. However, he had no son and could only concentrate on the training of his daughter, Wen Pu. He asked his daughter to dress like a man and go to a teacher to study, and even asked her to pretend to be a man to attend the Imperial Competitive Examination. When Wen Pu’s father encouraged her to study and explore the world as men did, this brought pain and sorrow to her. In a poem that expressed her feelings, she wrote: “……Long night burnt out lamp oil and prevented studying, after the illness, needlework is abandoned……As the sun set over the deserted village, I stood in the quiet garden and counted the stray geese.”138 She felt lost because she could neither have the
135 Original text: ‘重门严柝钥，盘岭踞咽喉。白日千岩俯，黄河一线流。’Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园 诗话, p. 427. 136 Original text: “始信须眉等巾帼 ,谁言儿女不英雄!” Cited from Li Min, ‘Qingdai Nvkexuejia Wang Zhenyi 清代女科学家王贞仪’, Zhongguo Keji Shiliao, 18 (1997), pp. 17–27. 137 Li Min, ‘Qingdai Nvkexuejia Wang Zhenyi 清代女科学家王贞仪’. 138 Original text: ‘夜长油尽妨书课，病起窗闲废女工……斜阳寂历荒村晚，小立幽庭数断鸿。’Yun Zhu, Guochao Guixiu zhengshi Ji 国朝闺秀正始集, pp. 7/13a-b.
54 same academic pursuits as men if she did not want to risk putting her father and herself into jail, nor be good at doing traditional needlework because she spent too much time on education. Stray geese can also be referred to scattered poems, when she said she was counting the stray geese in a silent garden, she also expressed her sorrow that she could not see her future, her poems would scatter and disappear because her poems would not be valued by the society and would soon be forgotten. She placed her act of counting the stray geese in the garden because it was one of the few spaces where she could enter and see the sky. On the other hand, this space also referred to the furthest free boundary of women, whose voices should only be heard by her family. The gap between what her father expected of her and the restriction on women in real life was a source of anguish for her. In contrast to father's unrealistic expectations, mothers as women, could better understand the pain their daughters would experience from outsiders’ critics and their inner dissatisfaction after being educated. As a mother, Liang Lanyi realized that letting her daughter learn knowledge without giving her room to display her talents would cause her great pain. In her poem Teaching My Daughter, she explained why she did not educate her daughter as her parents did: “Your mother is a miserable person, I went through all the pain brought by knowledge.”139 The pain she mentioned is not caused by study itself, for she still required her daughter to study: “the three obediences and the four virtues, I eagerly teach you to learn. Learn these simple qualities obediently and learn nothing else.”140 She believed the pain came from having the same thoughts and intellectual as men have, but could not live the life as men did, so for women, it's better to be ignorant and well-behaved.
4.4.2 Asking for high walls
Although some talented women had realized that their vision and freedom were limited by the high walls in the garden, some still believed that the walls could give them a sense of security, both physically and spiritually. Yuan Mei held positive view on his garden’s lack of walls, because he could see more beauties in his garden, but his female family members did not have such desire, one of them once complained that: “Here is not good, no walls around it, has ghosts and thieves, and is far away from our neighbours.”141 From the several gardens shown in the painting Suzhou’s Golden Age, we can also see that the boundary of the general garden near the house in the city is not a low fence, but roughly a story high wall. The main reason for Sui garden’s lack of high wall is that it covers so much land and is
139 Original text: ‘汝母薄命人，尝尽诗书苦’ Yun Zhu, Guochao Guixiu zhengshi Ji 国朝闺秀正始集, p. 12/3b. 140 Original text: ‘四德与三从，殷殷勤教汝。婉顺习坤义，其余皆不取。’Yun Zhu, Guochao Guixiu zhengshi Ji 国朝闺秀正始集, p. 12/3b. 141 Original text: ‘此处不好,四面无墙,闹鬼闹贼,人家又远。’ Cited from Zhou Ruchang, Honglou Meng Xinzheng 红楼梦新证 (Beijing, 1998), p. 115.
55 located on the mountain, it would be expensive and unnecessary to build a high wall. Most beauty paintings, however, use a low fence as the boundary between the inside and the outside. Considering the sense of space and extension of the picture, it is likely that the painter made adjustments in order not to make the picture appear depressed under the influence of high walls. In real life, poetesses asked for high wall, because it gave women a sense of security. poetesses believed they were fragile flowers that would wither easily and needed to planted in the garden for protection. When Yuan Mei was the county magistrate in Jiangning (now a part of Nanjing), He met a female prisoner named Zhang Wanyu, who escaped from her husband because she disliked her husband's family. When Yuan Mei questioned her, she presented a poem to prove that she was an educated woman from a good family: “A jasmine from the Jiangnan region, strayed into the home of the merchant in Huaixi142.”143 She hoped Yuan Mei would understand her pain as a merchant's wife. Yuan Mei thought that someone else had written the poem for her, so he asked Zhang Wanyu to write the poem on the spot in the court, with a dead tree in front of the court as the title, Zhang wrote: “I stood alone in the empty courtroom for a long time, facing the sun every morning. Who can plant with his own hands, and turn me into a flower in the backyard?”144 Yuan Mei therefore believed that she was indeed a talented woman, and that the salt merchant was not worthy of this talented woman, so she was absolved from the crime of running away from her husband. She compared herself to a flower in both poems, the first poem says that she was planted in the wrong place, and her husband was a salt merchant, which means that she needed to follow him around to do business. She would have more space for activities and living in this condition, but she was not satisfied with it, the cause of her discontent is revealed in the second poem: she did not want to be seen in public, what she want was not real freedom but a garden like other talented women had. The poetess would be praised, and it was normal for the poetesses to praise each other, which may make some people become self-conceit. Women living in gardens were like canaries pampered in fine cages, no longer wanted to be eagles soaring in the sky. These women did not want to be part of a family that needed to be hard-working but could give her freedom. The garden created a false illusion for them, and they immersed themselves in it more and more by writing poetry.
Summary:
The emergence of a large number of poetesses is indeed related to gardens. poetesses were stimulated by the scenery in the garden and had the impulse to write poems. Some men would like
142 Huaixi, now locates in north Jiangsu Province, being discriminated by Jiangnan people since ancient times. 143 Original text :"五湖深处素馨花，误入淮西估客家。"Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话, p. 65. 144 Original text: ‘独立空庭久，朝朝向太阳。何人能手植，移作后庭芳？’Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园 诗话, pp. 65–66.
56 to have a talented woman in the family to reflect their social status, but on the other hand, they did not want the female voice to be heard by outsiders, so that others would think that the women in their families did not follow the rules of Li. Men achieved this dual purpose by depriving women of the ability to think deeply and leading them to see themselves as delicate flowers. Although the number of female poets increased greatly from the late Ming dynasty, it resulted in the low literary value of talented women's works, which further led to the criticism of women's education from some conservative people. Poetesses also made more friends by holding poetry club activities in gardens, established a social circle and even established an influence in the local area. However, most female poets tended to weaken themselves in their poems rather than taking the advantage of their fame to encourage more women to pursue a life goal as men did, partly because most of them suffer from having such opinion and think it would be even better to not let other women receive education. Thus, the emergence of poetesses could not help to expand the living space of all women beyond the garden, and even constantly deepened the impression that women had a close relationship with the garden and the flowers in the garden in their poems.
57 5 Conclusion
Although the formal regulations of Li was quite strict during the Ming and Qing dynasties, in the Jiangnan region, where the economy was developed and the culture was relatively open, Li was not strictly observed, women were given restricted freedom. However, even this limited freedom had caused a large number of scholars to criticize this open social ethos, they emphasized the specific requirements of Li and the details that needed attention in their works, making the Li more stringent. What moralists emphasized was too strict and could not completely applied in real life, women tried to find a balance between strict regulations and an open society. Women could go out, but only to public places close to home and in the company of female elders or male family members. Women were also allowed to enter other gardens aside from their own’s under certain circumstances, and in cases where the garden was a male space, whether it was public or private, women were not allowed to enter. In the social imagination, women should not be in a natural space outside the garden, nor should they be in the same space with men other than their own family, because this would make them appear uneducated, unmoral, and might even be mistaken for courtesans. This social imagination was reflected in the paintings of beautiful women, and the widespread beauty painting were deepening this social imagination. The secularization of Taoism in Ming dynasty made it more influential on gardens. The gender equality advocated by Taoism makes the garden more suitable for women's use, because women will not be oppressed in this space. Taoism's emphasis on fertility makes flowers with symbols of reproduction a feature of gardens. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the development of commodity economy, the publishing industry promoted the popularity of novels. Many of these novels and paintings were set in gardens with beautiful and wealthy ladies as the main role, which made people think it was an elegant way of life and chase for it, this helped increase the number of garden in Jiangnan region. Restricted by economic conditions and cultural level, the forms of gardens began to become diversified. Some men also took more account of the needs of women in the family when building private gardens. The gardens were arranged closer to the rear of the house, which is the area where women live, making it more convenient for women to enter the gardens. The scenery in the garden is the simulation of the natural landscape, artificial hills, ponds simulate mountains and lakes, planting flowers and trees to feel out in the wild. The existence of gardens enables women to feel the nature without leaving the house. Women experience the subtle changes of nature with exquisite emotions. Flowers bloom and fall, the vigorous vitality of spring and summer, and the bleak scenery in autumn and winter. A large number of female poets appeared, they wrote poems, made friends, held elegant gatherings, and even a few female poets began to communicate with male poets. Their living space was broadened to a certain extent, more people
58 heard the voice of women, the figure of women was no longer completely invisible, and their own value was noticed by more people. However, the emergence of female poets had not changed the situation that all women are restricted in material and spiritual life. The so-called natural landscape in the garden is limited, confined within the walls, is artificially shaped, and thus frames women’s mind. Limited time and space prevented women from writing long, thoughtful articles like the male literati. Many of them could only pile up beautiful words to form a poem, lamenting flowers and other sceneries in the garden and made their works lack literary value. Many of them alienated themselves into flowers in the garden in their poems and asked the male master to protect them as the gardens protect the flowers. They wanted to be placed within a high wall, which made them feel safe. In the process of writing, they still practice the value system established by men to control women and reinforced this system through their published works. Some educated women realized that they were as capable as men and set the same goals as men, but only a very small number of women’s living circumstances and experiences could enable them to achieve such goals, and many more suffer from such awakening. The private gardens of the Ming and Qing dynasties were like elaborate bird cages, which were made more suitable for women to enter and use, but also restrict the freedom of women. Influenced by gardens, some upper-class women made their mark in the society and gained others' attention by writing poems, just like singing canaries gain others' attention. They were not necessarily less talented than their male contemporaries, but society did not give them the opportunity to achieve their ambitions in life, and they were locked up at home. Gardens are more often a gift from men, symbolizing the love and protection of women, but at the same time restricting women's exploration of the wider world and exploration of their own abilities. Poetesses who were lucky enough to be able to make their poetry known to the world have not yet realized the importance of using their influence to make a difference, and their constant emphasis on gardens reinforces the stereotype that women are destined to stay in gardens rather than soar like eagles.
59 Appendix:
Figure 1: Portrait of Kou Mei. Painter: Fan Qi, Wu Hong. 1651. Nanjing Museum. Figure 2: Red Landscape Self Portrait. Painter: Xiang Shengmo. 1644 Figure 3: Read in the Shadow of the Banana Tree. Painter: Lv Tong. Qing dynasty. Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Figure 4: Beautiful Woman Under a Banana Tree. Painter: Gai Qi. 1819. Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. Figure 5: Beautiful Woman Under a Banana Tree. Painter: Sha Fu. 1894. The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 6: Thirteen Female Students Seeking Guidance at Hulou. Painters: Wang Gong, You Zhao. Qing dynasty. Shanghai Museum, Shanghai. Figure 7: Fuzhuang’s Confession of Debauchery. Painter: Fei Danxu. 1839. The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 8 Tao Gu give Poetry. Painter: Tang Yin. Ming dynasty. Palace Museum in Taibei. Figure 9 Fei's Mansion. Copy from Ancient Residences In Suzhou (Suzhou Gu Minju). Figure 10: A family is holding marriage ceremony. Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age. Painter: Xu Yang. 1759. Liaoning Provincial Museum, Shenyang. Figure 11: A farmer's family is constructing their house. Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age. Figure 12 Wangshi garden. Copy from Classical Gardens of Suzhou (Suzhou Gudian Yuanlin). Figure 13: The main garden of Wangshi garden. Photo taken by author. 2020.3. Wangshi garden, Suzhou. Figure 14: A family is treating guests in the great hall. Detail from Suzhou’s Golden Age. Figure 15 Panorama of Daguan Garden. One painting of the album of The Story of the Stone. Painter: Sun Wen (1818-?). Lvshun Museum, Dalian
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