Chinese garden art has a history of more than 2,000 years, but it was not until 1951 that the discipline was established, and Mr. Wang Juyuan was the founder of the garden discipline.
Mr. Wang Juyuan's "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu: Chinese Landscape Garden Art" is based on the fieldwork of physical objects and sites, extensive collection of ancient related drawings and paintings as evidence, according to the historical literature narrative to draw a planogram and imaginary perspective as a reference, the outline of the territory combs the historical development and artistic traditions of ancient Chinese gardens, is the systematic and comprehensive writing of the history of Chinese gardens.
This book is extremely full in the sense of general history, rich in knowledge, and extremely enlightening.
"Reaching the State of Wonderful Nature"
When reading "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu Valley: The Art of Chinese Landscape Gardens" (hereinafter referred to as "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu"), readers can't help but wonder, what is a landscape garden? Why is the ancient Chinese garden called a landscape garden? At the beginning of the book, Mr. Wang Juyuan did not answer the question explicitly, but first explained the connotation of the word "garden" in a vague way, "Lingyuan and Lingtai and Lingnuma, although very primitive, are the original forms of a simple nature and landscape as a wandering living realm."
As a concise little book, "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu" is based on the clarity of structure rather than the perfection of the body, and this book is also based on his previous work "History of Ancient Chinese Gardens". In the introduction to the book, Mr. Wang Juyuan said: "The garden is a beautiful natural and beautiful living area formed by a certain plot of land, created with scientific and artistic principles. In the first part of the two books, Mr. Wang Juyuan put forward the term "living realm", and this concept runs through the whole history of ancient Chinese gardens, sometimes as "wandering living realm", which more clearly expresses the meaning of the garden as a place of "wandering".
In the second part of "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu", that is, the part of the aesthetics of landscape gardens, Mr. Wang Juyuan also repeatedly emphasized the term "living realm", "China's gardens are famous for creating landscapes and landscape gardens where nature is the living realm" "It includes mountains, water, spring stones, clouds and smoke mist, trees and flowers, pavilions and pavilions and other themes composed of living realms, but this realm is based on landscapes and rivers as the backbone" "The traditional gardens of the mainland are based on the creation of landscapes and rivers as the living realm... Reach the realm of wonderful nature". It can be seen that the "living realm" of the garden is a concept that is almost a scene, that is, the so-called "space" and environment in modern times, in this environment, nature is not the subject, talent is the subject.
Mr. Wang Juyuan's artistic creation of the landscape garden mentioned above is not scribbled in a blank place, but against the original landscape, that is, the earth and its scenery, this beautiful nature, neither a simple nature, nor a wonderful imitation of nature, but although it is made by man, it is like a heavenly opening, it is a nature created through the artistic understanding of humanized nature, showing man's understanding and attitude of natural beauty, thoughts and emotions. The nature of this creation is "for the sake of the realm in which people live and live... The realm of life in which layout creation is carried out". As a result, the so-called garden has a richer connotation, not only a static scene, but also a dynamic creation process, the original meaning of the garden "gardening" in the meaning of "creating" is vividly reflected.
In the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Hong's "Map of the Garden" (part 1) depicts a quiet study surrounded by bamboo forests.
According to Mr. Wang Juyuan's point of view, the connotation of the word landscape garden arose in the Zhou Dynasty, and as a symbol of the era, it is attributed to the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, and it is the naturalistic aesthetics that rise in this era that make the family families create landscapes with the theme of reproducing nature and landscapes, forming a natural landscape garden in which landforms, plants and garden architecture are combined. From the Wei and Jin Dynasties to the Southern Dynasty, this was an era full of political and military turmoil, the scholars began to enter the metaphysics in spiritual orientation in order to avoid disasters, and Xuanyan poems began to appear in literature, and landscape idylls appeared in the Eastern Jin And Southern Dynasties, and a large number of literary works appeared depicting nature and scenic spots, praising natural and pastoral life. "From the landscape to get the fun, to nature to the map", this change on the creation of the garden, on the mountain, pond construction, has a great impact, with the landscape as the theme of the garden gradually become the mainstream. Since then, "this kind of wandering living area with mountains and water, combined with plant landscaping and pavilions and pavilions, has become the blueprint for the landscape gardens of subsequent generations."
""It is only meaningful to see the scenery and be affectionate"
What is a good garden? What is the essence of the garden? Since the beginning of the discipline of gardening, there have been many opinions.
There are technicalists, the most common and most popular garden treatises on the market hold this view, the garden where the scenes are blended has become the analysis target on the drawing board, and the garden has become a treasure hunt game according to Tu Suoji's search for the best viewpoint, and the garden carefully created by the garden builders hundreds of years ago has become fragmented. There are also intellectuals who have turned the garden into a term supported by rich literature, and the appreciation of the garden has become a realistic scene of various or beautiful or fresh literary expressions. In recent years, there have been more abstract people, and the garden has been described as a spatial form under the "command" of a certain concept, which seems to be a long talk, and the concept is frequent, but it ignores what is seen in the eyes and what the body feels.
Mr. Wang Juyuan is quite dismissive of this, but he does not explicitly oppose it, but we need to look for clues in his writings ourselves. If you read the text carefully, you can still read its attitude between the lines. In short, that's the word "temperament." Mr. Wang Juyuan said that "the basic principle of creating landscapes in Chinese gardens is to obtain the interest of nature and its temperament", and quoted the Ming Dynasty painter Tang Zhiqi's "Micro Words of Painting Things", "The most important thing is to obtain the temperament of landscape and water." Gain its temperament, so that the mountain surrounds the undulating trend, such as jumping, such as sitting, such as pitching, such as hanging feet... It is also the momentum of the waves of water, such as scales, such as resentment and anger..." This is the beginning of the next part of "Stacked Stones", and the Stacked Stones are the essence of the next part, which is valued by Mr. Wang Juyuan.
Dieshi occupies an important position in the garden world of Mr. Wang Juyuan, he once said that the most difficult to learn in the garden discipline is Dieshan, Mr. Wang Juyuan's descendant, famous garden historian, garden designer Meng Zhaozhen has since taken the rockery as his lifelong pursuit. Taking the above concept as a starting point to enter the world of Dieshan, we can see the weight of the word "temperament". Therefore, Mr. Wang Juyuan said, "Only when you see the scenery can you really have meaning." Mr. Wang Juyuan's clear statement on "temperament", in the author's simple view, only appears here, not in the "History of Ancient Chinese Gardens", I don't know when Mr. Wang Juyuan began to comment on the essence of the garden from the "temperament" of the gardener. However, the refinement of the word "temperament" is extremely full of spirit, which cannot help but remind people of another garden history, Mr. Tong Liao. Tong Liao's "Southeast Garden Villa" has a high opinion on the history of gardens and garden art, and the most appreciated place by Wang Shu is that he proposed that the word "love" is the core of the garden, "it must be remembered, the importance of interest here is far better than the technique and method." Mr. Wang Juyuan admires "temperament" and does not know whether there is a conceptual similarity with Mr. Tong Liao.
The "Forty Views of the Yuanmingyuan" is as numerous as clouds, showing the art of landscape and water dependence.
""The historical materials are handed over to the reader in their original form"
Compared with the metaphysical and frequent ultimate questions of "Southeast Garden Villa", Mr. Wang Juyuan's "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu", whether its theoretical pursuit or language, is simple, he did not always issue such a philosopher-like question as "Chinese gardens are really a dreamy virtual world in the present world, a condensed world of fabrication", but based on reality, and strive to use a clearer language to tell the basic knowledge of garden history and how to appreciate the main points of the garden, and at the big joint, never skimp on pen and ink, must be clear.
Mr. Meng Zhaozhen once made a wonderful comment on Mr. Wang's path of governance, saying that Mr. Wang's research on the history of gardens is a scientific study, which is "from history, Mr. Wang's scientific attitude is reflected in the fact that he gives the collected historical materials to the reader in their original form, he has his views, and you can also borrow the historical materials he provides to have other arguments."
Mr. Wang Juyuan studied chemistry at Soochow University in Suzhou in his early years, and then transferred to the College of Agriculture of Jinling University to study horticulture, and began to enter the world of gardens. Therefore, Mr. Wang attaches great importance to the influence of the times and scientific progress on the garden art at that time, which is not very conspicuous in small books such as "Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu", but in the huge work "History of Ancient Chinese Gardens", examples can be seen everywhere. Therefore, in the book "History of Ancient Chinese Gardens", Mr. Wang poured countless pen and ink into the key cases in the history of gardens, such as Hanshang Linyuan and Jianzhang Palace, Tang DaiShouju garden pond, Song Shoushan Gongyue, Yuanmingyuan garden, Qingyi Garden (Summer Palace), Chengde Summer Resort and other gardens with relatively complete literature or physical materials in the western suburbs of Qingxi, pouring countless pens and inks, and the materials are rich, and readers can draw conclusions after reading. In "Swallowing mountains and huaigu", for the combing of the history of ancient Chinese gardens, somehow, only Song Zhishou Mountain Gengyue was favored by Mr. Wang, and the materials were extremely rich, even far exceeding the existing gardens of the Qing Dynasty.
"Wonderful Garden Enlightenment Education Class"
Let's go back to the book "Swallowing mountains and valleys" itself. Looking at this book in a simple and in-depth way, talking about the past and the present, "our thoughts have followed into a new field, which is a very vivid and wonderful garden enlightenment education class" (Meng Zhaozhen), from the perspective of the dissemination of knowledge, this is really a general work that is easy to glimpse the doorway of the garden.
The clues in this book are extremely clear and easy to understand, and the structure of the book is handled almost at the pace of the average reader learning new knowledge. The whole book is divided into two parts, the first part has its own clear records of the Western Zhou "Lingyuan", "Lingtai" and "Lingnuma" began to talk about, through the Qin and Han "one pond and three mountains" to the natural landscape garden of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, through the Sui and Tang Palace Gardens, Beiye Mountain Residence to the Song Shanshui Palace Garden, until the Ming and Qing Imperial Gardens and the Su-Zhejiang Residence Garden, that is, the Literati Landscape Garden, systematically sorted out the history of Chinese gardens, the upper part of this book, can be said to be a minimalist history of ancient Chinese gardens. In terms of content, although the rhythm of the narrative is bright, it is focused and there is no lack of details, which is also a point where this book is relatively different from other general books.
The book's narrative of the history of gardens in each era revolves around the most representative set of gardens or ideas of that era. For example, in the Qin and Han Palace Garden part, the author tirelessly cites the material to prove to the reader the origin of the prototype of "one pond and three mountains" from the time of Qin Shi Huang to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, lest the reader have hesitations here, in fact, "one pond and three mountains" is indeed the standard of almost all gardens, especially the royal gardens, and its symbolic meaning has an impact on the aesthetic concept of gardens in later generations for more than two thousand years, and there is still a lingering rhyme; and the Northern Song Dynasty Shanshui Palace Garden is almost all laid out around the "Records of Gongyue". The magnificent and highly pictorial texts of the Huizong Dynasty are interspersed in the imagination of the garden, "Wearing stones out of the woods, Ganglian Fu genus, east and west, before and after, left mountain and right water, along the creek and long, continuous and diffuse, swallowing mountains and valleys..." The landscape under the text is like the scenery in front of you.
"Swallowing mountains and huaigu", "Tao Te Ching" has clouds "valley to win", "Shuowen" has clouds "spring out of the tongchuan river as a valley", valley is the way of flowing water between the two mountains, therefore, the valley means water, the meteorological "swallowing mountains Huaigu" is really majestic, mountains and water are integrated here, readers are like in the painting, you can experience the shape of the highest peak of the Chinese royal Stacked Mountains.
The next part of this book focuses on the art of Chinese landscape gardens, although it is a technical content, it is by no means general, on the contrary, the content is extremely substantial. In addition to a detailed explanation of the layout principles and layout techniques of the garden, Dieshan, Lishui, and plants are all involved, especially the chapter on Stacked Stones is the most knowledgeable. Mr. Wang spent a full 50 pages and 11 chapters, from Gao Guangshan, Xiaoshan, Shanshan, Fengluan Valley, Dongfu to the way of stone, stone pointing, stone piling and even the way of selecting stones, all of which were decomposed in detail, according to the author's view, in today's mass book market, yu Dieshi This knowledge, rarely speaks so deeply and clearly.
Looking back at history, we hope to find a model of life that once existed, in this model, we can see the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, people in such a model, appropriately exert influence on the landscape of the earth, the spiritual dimension tends to respect the laws of nature, chinese landscape gardens are the best compromises made by the ancient Chinese people to nature. In the "living realm" of the ancient Chinese, landscape, nature and gardens are one, and for a long time, people have taken being in the world of landscape gardens as the best choice for life, whether in action or concept. Therefore, in such a modern society, the garden will surely become a link to bridge the tension between man and nature. Revisiting the world of classical landscape gardens is of far-reaching significance to us.
"Swallowing Mountains and Huaigu: Chinese Landscape Garden Art"
Written by Wang Juyuan
Beijing Publishing House
(The inscription picture is the spring scenery of Wuxi Liyuan Garden, provided by Liyuan Management Office)