Today's Changzhou Qingshan Square is roughly the location of the stop garden ◎ Li Xin (former editor-in-chief of Sanlian Bookstore, special editor of the Commercial Press)
Editor's note: Today's B1 and B2 editions are two closely related humanistic stories. The B1 edition tells the past of the academic causes of the famous American sinologist Gao Juhan and Changzhou Zhiyuan, Mr. Gao Juhan has studied chinese art history all his life, and his in-depth study of the late Ming painter Zhang Hong's "Zhiyuan Map" has made the little-known Zhiyuan a funny art topic, which has led to a series of vivid academic stories. The B2 version presents the traces of the 500-year bloodline inheritance of the Wu family in Changzhou that were hooked by the "Garden Map" under the fate of the meeting. The Wu family is full of talents, and the most famous person in modern times is the scholar and dramatist Mr. Wu Zuguang. The Beijing Youth Daily reporter recently interviewed Wu Huan, the son of Wu Zuguang, who told the long story of his family and explored the reasons for the endless inheritance of the Wu family from another perspective.
Recently, from the central to the local level, we have been advocating the need to tell the Chinese story well. Indeed, China's history and culture, China's development and progress, and the struggle of Chinese have many very good stories, and Chinese writers and scholars need to write them out, not only to Chinese, but also to foreigners. But I think that telling Chinese stories is often better if they are told by foreigners who know China. In fact, there are many overseas Chinese scholars who are helping us tell these stories. Many people believe that the story of Mao Zedong leading the Chinese revolution is best told by Edgar Snow, and the story of Deng Xiaoping leading China on the road of reform and opening up is the best told by Vogel. But everyone does not necessarily know that the American sinologist Gao Juhan can be said to be the first person to tell the story of classical Chinese art.
Gao Juhan once lamented in a famous lecture at Harvard University that compared with the study of European art history, in just a few decades, the study of Chinese art history has started from a rather backward stage to a "respected discipline". Of course, this has been the efforts of countless Chinese and foreign scholars, but Gao Juhan should be the first to do so.
The Sanlian Bookstore where I used to work has always focused on overseas Chinese studies. Both Snow and Vogel's masterpieces of Chinese storytelling were published here. Of course, we are no exception to Gao Juhan, and even from 2009 to 2012, he published 8 of his books on the history of Chinese painting in a row, causing quite a stir and receiving rave reviews in cultural circles and academia. I myself have been honored as a participant and witness to the publishing process.
The heavily neglected mid-Ming realist painter Zhang Hong
Chinese art historian James Cahill (1926-2014) has long taught in the art history department of the University of California, Berkeley, and served as the director of the Chinese Art Department at the Freer Museum of Art in Washington. He was one of the first art historians to combine the study of sinology abroad with the study of traditional German art history, for which he received the Lifetime Outstanding Achievement Award from the American University Art Society.
Gao Juhan's works are regarded by the international art community as a model for studying the history of Chinese painting through style analysis. I think that the most illustrative of the characteristics and effects of his research method is the story of him and Zhiyuan.
Gao Juhan began to be exposed to Chinese art from his youth, which lasted 70 years. The late Ming dynasty painter Zhang Hong's "Picture of the Garden", which he had seen when he was in college in the 1940s, did not pay much attention to it. Because at that time, he was eagerly absorbing the traditional Chinese painting theory, and the style of "Stop Garden Map" was inconsistent with the requirements of Chinese orthodox painting theory and could not be said to be representative. But in the 1970s, his ideas began to change, believing that the discourse on painting must start from the work, from his own visual feelings, and should not be bound by the views of the ancients on painting. He was a scholar who paid special attention to his own observation experience, and his appointment in the museum exposed him to a large number of classical Chinese paintings. Japanese scholar Hiroshin Furuhara said, "There are almost no second people who have seen so many works like him." ”
So he began to study zhang hong, a painter whose creative style was significantly different from that of the mainstream painting scene in the Ming and Qing dynasties. People who study art history know that after the Song Dynasty, the style of Chinese painting has changed greatly, and realistic works such as Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming on the River" in the Song Dynasty are difficult to see. The freehand school led by Dong Qichang dominates, replacing the objective landscape depiction with the landscape in their hearts, emphasizing the so-called "intention" and forgetting the "shape". At that time, the landscapes and garden drawings painted by painters may not even be recognized by nearby residents, because painters do not value reproducing the scenery in their eyes, but presenting the scenery in their hearts. This is considered a pursuit of a high realm, and painting like, the so-called "portrait-like", is not only not valued, but even despised.
In this atmosphere, Gao Juhan said, Zhang Hong wanted to "paint like a little, like a little more," "get rid of the shackles of layers of tradition, and pursue a naturalistic depiction," and "write as you see." This, of course, is not tolerated in the mainstream. Therefore, later researchers have a very low evaluation of him. The Qing people commented on the paintings, which were divided into four grades, called divine products, yipin products, wonderful products, and noh products. Zhang Hong is only between "Miaopin" and "NohPin", which seems to be not difficult to hear, but it actually positions him between the third stream and the last stream. Hong Zaixin, a professor at the University of Phuket Bay in the United States, said that he had seen a qing dynasty painting theory that commented on 870 painters, and only had one sentence to introduce Zhang Hong, saying that he was just from Suzhou. Therefore, Zhang Hong can be said to be unnoticed and uninherited.
But Gao Juhan was a blockbuster. In 1979, he was invited to the Norton Lecture Hall at Harvard University to give a lecture on the history of Chinese art. In this series of lectures that belong to the temple level, Gao Juhan gave a total of 6 lectures. This time, he no longer talked about the famous painters in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, such as Tang Bohu, Wen Zhengming, Shen Zhou, Qiu Ying, and so on, but from the late Ming Era, the first lecture was actually about Zhang Hong. He grandly introduced the seriously neglected realist painter. He recounts a series of landscape paintings, including "The Garden Map", and believes that these paintings represent a very different style of painting. He said that Zhang Hong painted the real scenery landscape, breaking the creative mode of a period of time. Gao Juhan interpreted many of his paintings and examined his paintings as "representations of the world of appearances." As for the "Stop Garden Map", he believes that it is a sketch of a garden that once existed in history. Of course, he thinks that Zhang Hong is unlikely to be like a Western painter holding a drawing board to face the scene, but this "must be based on the actual drawings."
As for why Zhang Hong leads the way in realistic painting, Gao Juhan believes that the reason for this may be that Zhang Hong came into contact with Books brought to China by European Jesuit missionaries, which had a large number of copperplate engraving illustrations. History records that Zhang Hong, a native of Suzhou, once visited Nanjing, which was the gathering place of Jesuit missionaries, and it has been recorded that these European paintings caused Chinese to look at them. He even found the book "Colors of the Global City", published in Germany between 1572 and 1616 and had been brought to China by missionaries at that time, and compared the "Frankfurt Landscape" with the first panorama in the "Garden Map", hoping to discover Zhang Hong's reference to Western painting techniques. He pointed out that Zhang Hong can condescend to grasp the principle of high-point perspective, and his works pay more attention to the expression of scene details than the works of ordinary Chinese painters, and there are many hints of light and shade and light and shadow, which are common techniques in Western painting, but in Chinese paintings, which is a special case. Of course, he also believes that Zhang Hong's works are still authentic Chinese style, and he only borrows a little from Western paintings.
Gao Juhan's speech was shocking, and his understanding and evaluation of Zhang Hong, and his interpretation of the "Garden Map", it is not too much to say that it is against the trend. There were many dissenters on the spot, and after these views reached China, they were fiercely denied by Chinese scholars, and some experts and scholars repeatedly said that Chinese painting focuses on the spirit, rather than attaching importance to materialism as Western painters. They believe that China's excellent painters do not need to learn techniques from the West.
For a long time, Gao Juhan was very depressed. How can we prove that Zhang Hong is an excellent realistic painter? The best example is finding a real-life garden. However, he had no way of knowing where the Garden was, who built it, and what it looked like now, not even a clue. However, Gao Juhan always adhered to his own point of view, and in his four books, known as "History of Late Chinese Painting", he set up special chapters or sections in the two books "Imposing People" and "Mountains Outside the Mountains" to discuss Zhang Hong's paintings in detail, including "The Garden Map". Regardless of what others say, he stubbornly lists Zhang Hong as a first-class painter of the Ming Dynasty.
"Stop Garden Map" and "Stop Garden Collection" correspond seamlessly
Gao Juhan admired Zhang Hong, and he also collected Zhang Hong's works. There are a total of 20 paintings in the "Garden Map", which have not been heard from the late Ming Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty, and have only been discovered in modern times, and they have been scattered overseas. Over the past hundred years, after a number of collectors have changed hands, after the 1970s, they have been divided into three collections, including 6 works of los Angeles County Museum of Art, 8 works of the Museum of East Asian Art in Berlin, and 6 works of Jing Yuanzhai under the personal name of Gao Juhan. Later, in order to make this set of works as complete as possible, Gao Juhan also transferred 6 of his paintings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Of course, he wanted to find a real garden based on the paintings. Therefore, when the famous Chinese landscaper Chen Congzhou visited the United States in 1978 to meet him, he presented Chen Congzhou with 14 copies of the "Garden Stop" and wanted to ask Chen to study these paintings from the perspective of garden history.
In 2004, Chen Congzhou's "Garden Synthesis" edited by Chen Congzhou was published. The purpose of the publication of this book is to "collect historical materials of famous gardens in the past for the reference of garden experts", and Zhang Hong's 14 "Pictures of stopping gardens" are placed at the beginning of the volume. This not only means that the "Stop Garden Map" returns to the chinese people's vision hundreds of years later, but also shows that the Stop Garden has been noticed by garden scholars as a historical garden that once existed. However, until this time, the details of the construction of the park are still not available.
By 2010, things took a major turn for the better. Cao Xun, a disciple of Liang Sicheng, a professor at Beijing Jianzhu University and an expert in landscape architecture, discovered a copy of the "Collection of Stopping Gardens" at the National Library, which is said to be an ancient book that is the only one at home and abroad. The garden notes and garden poems about the garden in this book correspond seamlessly to the 14 "Garden Stops" published in the "Garden Synthesis". Cao Xun then concluded that the owner of the Garden was Wu Liang (1562-1624), the author of the collection.
Wu Liang was a scholar during the Ming Dynasty, and an official to the Dali Temple, but due to the fierce internal party strife, he retired to his hometown of Changzhou to avoid disasters. He took the name of "Stop Garden", the word "stop" comes from Tao Yuanming's "Stop Wine Poem", Tao's "stop wine" means to quit drinking, but Wu Liang used "stop" here as the meaning of "stop Shi". There is such a sentence in his "Poetry of Stopping the Garden": "When it is appropriate to go, it can stop and stop." But we have to stop being interesting, and our fame is like our. It shows the Confucian mentality of "reaching out and benefiting the world at the same time, and the poor are alone". At this time, Wu Liang just wanted to find a place for self-cultivation. Like many officials of the same era, guiyin no longer needed to retreat into the mountains and forests, but built a garden in his hometown, the so-called big hidden in the city.
As an expert in landscape architecture, when Cao Xun confirmed that the peach blossom source in the painting once existed in history, he could not wait to get a glimpse of it in its entirety. However, there were only 14 copies of the "Stop Garden Map" donated by Gao Juhan at the beginning, which was not complete. So he asked two doctoral students in the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University, Huang Xiao and Liu Shanshan, to contact Gao Juhan by e-mail, saying that he wanted to get the full picture of the painting of "Stop Garden". Gao Juhan was naturally ecstatic when he heard the news, and quickly sent a picture album containing all 20 works that he printed after a special exhibition of "Stop Garden Map".
Using this as an opportunity, he established contacts with two young Chinese scholars. Everyone has a strong interest in the garden, which is the link between them. Because Gao Juhan never considered himself a gardener, some of the articles he wrote in his early years on Chinese garden painting, especially some articles on the study of the "Garden Map", were not published publicly, but now he found that these articles may be beneficial to the study of garden history. At this time, this elderly and world-famous university scholar actually took the initiative to propose to cooperate with two young Chinese scholars in their 20s, asking them to expand their research results, and then the three of them jointly published a book on ancient Chinese garden painting, the title of the book is "Immortal Forest Spring". The idea hit right with the publishing house, which I was involved in when I was in charge of editing at Triptych Bookstore.
The Garden of Stopping is reproduced in a model, which also leads to the Wu family
Speaking of the "Stop Garden Map" in "Immortal Forest Spring", Gao Juhan once again expounded his point of view, because he found the historical document "Stop Garden Collection" as a basis, this time he appeared more confident and more rational. He asked the reader to assume that he was a landscaper, taking a camera with only 20 films to take a beautiful garden landscape and reproduce it as completely as possible, predicting that you might take a panorama, and then you might roam the garden, take a series of photographs according to the tourist route, and note that the areas they contain can be represented on the panorama, in the hope that when they are combined, they can reproduce the whole garden from both the overall situation and the details. Each film will also contain elements that are also contained in other films, such as buildings, trees, or rocks. This helps to combine them. "All this is exactly what Zhang Hong did in the book "Stop Garden Map"." So "what he depicts is not a fixed and static attraction, but a dynamic tour process."
Hammer it out. He believes that "Stop Garden Map" is the most realistic and vivid painting that can be seen at present to reproduce the style of Chinese gardens. It is the pinnacle of Chinese garden painting.
As a realistic work, "Stop Garden Map" is a work by the painter Zhang Hong at the invitation of Wu Liang's family to record the beautiful scenery in the garden three years after Wu Liang's death. Fortunately, there is Zhang Hong, otherwise a generation of famous gardens will be lost. According to historical records, the Wu family can be described as a gardening family, and there were more than 30 gardens built in the Ming and Qing dynasties, but unfortunately they have been submerged by history, and only the garden is to survive. It is speculated that the Garden was also destroyed in the chaotic era of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Because the local chronicle compiled by the Qing Dynasty Daoguangnian has the name of this garden, but the address is wrong, indicating that this garden no longer exists at that time.
However, in the 21st century, with the help of advanced technology, people can easily find the old site of the park. On google satellite maps, it is shown that the park is in the north of Guanzhonghe Middle Road in present-day Changzhou City, and the east of Qingshan Road and Jinling Middle Road. In the 400 years of vicissitudes, the only constant is the river and bridge, which is an important marker. Although it is a bustling commercial area today, people can still clearly identify the U-shaped river outside the park and the Qingshan Bridge in the lower left corner of the first panorama of the "Stop Garden Map", which proves that Zhang Hong's realistic paintings are really very accurate.
Of course, as an ancient classic garden, its beauty is also presented by Zhang Hong in a specific and delicate way. Stop the garden with more water, people call it "water alone to win". Except for the adjacent Changzhou moat, there are several small lakes inside, where you can fish and can go boating. Others, such as mountain stones, pavilions, courtyards, flowers and trees, are all exquisite, elegant and lovely, showing the owner's elegant taste and the ingenuity of the gardening craftsmen. Today's people think that it is comparable to suzhou humble administrator's garden, lion forest, Yangzhou garden and other historical gardens.
The accurate depiction of the "Stop Garden Map" makes it possible for this historical garden to reappear today. In 2015, the China Garden Museum invited Kan Sanxi, a famous master of miniature sculpture art, to make a model of the garden based on the "Garden Stop Map". Since 2018, the model, titled "The Vanishing Garden: The Garden of Changzhou in the Ming Dynasty," has been exhibited at the China Garden Museum, and it has been used as a representative of ancient private gardens. Another miniature sculpture model representing the royal garden is the Yuanmingyuan.
The garden is reproduced in a model, but the story does not end here, and then there is a surprising development. In 2018, Xing Juan, director of the Yixing Museum, visited the Chinese Garden Museum, saw the model of the garden, and learned that the owner of the garden was Wu Liang, a Changzhou native at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and said that the Changzhou Museum contained Wu Liang's family tree, which recorded that the Wu family was a big family, and there were dozens of jinshi in history, and the descendants of the family were also talented. In the genealogy from the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, it is clearly confirmed that the blood relatives have a vertical line, which has been passed down to the modern era, and among the cultural celebrities are Wu Ying, the founder of the Palace Museum, Wu Zuguang, the dramatist Wu Zuguang, the musician Wu Zuqiang, the painter Wu Guanzhong, the medical scientists Wu Jieping, Wu Weiran, etc. They are all after Wu Men, Wu Zuguang's son, the contemporary famous calligrapher and painter Wu Huan, is Wu Liang's twenty-first grandson.
So they established contact with Wu Huan, and since then, various seminars and exhibitions on the Stop Garden and the "Stop Garden Map" have been held continuously, and Wu Huan will be invited to participate. In January 2022, Liu Shanshan and Huang Xiao's co-authored "Peach Blossom Source in Painting - Album of Stopping Gardens" was published, and Wu Huan also wrote an inscription for this book. Unfortunately, Gao Juhan did not see all this, and he died of illness in 2014.
Their "encounter" has greatly advanced the examination and research of Chinese art history
The Garden of Stopping appears from the remnants of history, and the high residence of Han juju is the greatest.
Without him, not only would Zhang Hong not be known, but no one would have seen the "Garden Map".
All this stems from Gao Juhan's unique vision. His vision is based on the sensitivity of a Western scholar to realistic painting techniques. He is good at identifying the clues of Western realism techniques from Zhang Hong's overall works that show the Chinese painting style, and examines the possibility and inevitability of Zhang Hong's borrowing from Western painting, so as to argue that this borrowing is the reason for Zhang Hong's success.
All this also stems from Gao Juhan's influence as an international scholar. His repeated support and his loud shouts naturally made Zhang Hong pay more attention. "Monks from afar are good at chanting", just like qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City" was published in 1948, it has not been reprinted for decades, and four or five kinds of "History of New Chinese Literature" have been published in China without mentioning the name of Qian Zhongshu. However, when the overseas sinologist Xia Zhiqing talked about this book in the "History of Modern Chinese Novels", "Siege of the City" suddenly became a popular book in the mainland. Gao Juhan's study of the "Stop Garden Map" made the Stop Garden a topic, which triggered a series of stories.
I think that Gao Juhan's love for "Stop Garden Map" comes from his love of Chinese art. His daughter, Ms. Sarah, said that whenever her father talked about Chinese painting, he would be excited, appear particularly energetic, speak faster, and constantly point with his hands to tell readers what the details in the paintings meant, even for the works of Van Gogh and Monet, he had never seen him have such passion. The daughter knows how much effort her father has put into Chinese painting, so when she saw the photo of the miniature sculpture model of the Garden, she burst into tears.
China's academic and cultural circles should thank Gao Juhan for his national conditions.
Special thanks to Mr. Gao Juhan is Wu Huan, a descendant of the Wu family. I saw his calligraphy for Huang Xiao and Liu Shanshan, two collaborators of The Immortal Forest Spring. Because the two are husband and wife, Wu Huan wrote:
As soon as the golden wind and jade dew met, they won countless victories in the world.
The above paragraph is: Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshanxian and their spouses think so?
I thought Wu Huan was brilliantly written, with many meanings. To say small, it is aimed at two parties, praising their marital love. Speaking of the big picture, it can be compared to the exchange and integration of Chinese and Western cultures.
Although borrowed from Qin Guan's Queqiao Immortal, "Golden Wind" and "Yulu" refer specifically to time in autumn. They meet the cowherd and the weaver girl. But wu huan here, obviously has another reference to "golden wind" and "jade dew".
If it is said that here is "imitation", "golden wind" refers to three-dimensional perspective and other techniques in Western painting, and "yulu" refers to traditional Chinese freehand brush and ink, then the "meeting" of the two has produced an immortal work such as "Stop Garden Map", which is better than countless mediocre works of the same era. Gao Juhan believes that this "encounter" is "like interracial marriage, cross-cultural integration, which is bound to produce particularly robust and charming descendants."
If it is said that here is "anthropomorphic", "golden wind" refers to Gao Juhan, and "Yulu" refers to Chinese art researchers, including Chen Congzhou, Cao Xun, Huang Xiao, Liu Shanshan, etc., then in this "encounter" exchange, a set of landscape paintings of ancient unknown authors scattered around the world is not only cited as Chinese garden historical materials, but also collected and published in its entirety. Finally, taking this as a clue, combined with the literature, a mountain, a stone, a lake and a pavilion in the garden, the garden model was completely built, and the original famous garden was reproduced, which was also unprecedented, several miracles. Obviously, their "encounter" has greatly advanced the examination and research of Chinese art history.
I think that one day in the future, between the mountains and rivers of Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, the Garden will be restored and become a famous garden like the famous garden landscapes in Suzhou, Yangzhou, Wuxi and other places, as a hot spot for people to visit today.
At that time, in front of the gate of the Garden, a monument was erected for Gao Juhan to commemorate it.
Photo courtesy of Li Xin