On the 500th anniversary of the establishment of Guyi Garden, five lectures will take you back to Jiangnan Garden and the literati world

2022 is the 500th anniversary of the establishment of Shanghai Guyi Garden. "Zhan Pi Qi'ao, green bamboo monkey." This poem in the Book of Poetry and Wei Feng is the origin of the name of this Ming Dynasty garden. For 500 years, this famous garden in Jiangnan has had lynx green bamboo, and there are also poetry and history belonging to Jiangnan flowing through it.

From May 1st to 5th, Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts joined hands with Guyi Garden to invite experts and scholars in the field of Jiangnan Garden Culture to bring five Jiangnan Culture Forum series lectures, leading readers to re-read the past and present lives of Guyi Garden online, enjoy the poetry, myths and legends, "scenery" beauty, landscape culture, architectural culture and plant culture in Jiangnan Garden, experience the natural and humanistic beauty of Jiangnan region, let Jiangnan culture nourish the soul and lead life.

In the first lecture, Hu Jianjun brought "Classical Poetry and the Life of Jiangnan Literati".

The first lecture was delivered by Hu Jianjun, associate professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University and executive director of Shanghai Poetry Society. She started from the origin of the name of Guyi Garden and told "Classical Poetry and the Life of Jiangnan Literati".

Founded in the Ming Jiajing period, Guyi Garden has experienced 500 years of wind and frost immersion, as one of the five classical gardens in Shanghai, Guyi Garden is deeply immersed in the connotation of Chinese culture, and also comprehensively reflects the ancient Chinese philosophical thought and gardening art.

Hu Jianjun started with the name of The Ancient Yi Garden. The first owner of the garden here is the Huizhi Min surname Renren, because he borrowed this place, he took the Song Dynasty Xu Qianshi poem "Used to be a guest of the county, and once borrowed the water to live." The meaning of the autumn water moon is day, and the spring wind and flowers are the meaning of "borrowing the garden".

In the late Ming Dynasty, the garden experienced three owners, the third named Min Shizhi, who was then the general judge of Henan. "Like Su Dongpo, he cannot live without bamboo, so he used bamboo as a metaphor, and then asked Zhu Sansong, a bamboo man of the 'Jiading Sect,' to design and supervise him, and to carry out garden design in the context of Bai Juyi's "Pond Chapter", the so-called 'ten acres of house, five acres of garden' 'there is a pool of water, there are bamboo thousand poles', you can imagine the scene of a garden with a thousand poles of bamboo." Hu Jianjun said that after the construction of Min Shibi during the Ming Jiajing period, the Ancient Yi Garden was officially completed. Min Shi took a sentence from the Book of Poetry: "Zhan Pi Qi'ao, green bamboo is a lyn." There are bandits, such as cutting like a practice, such as grinding", and the name "Yiyuan" was fixed, and the scenery was set with bamboo.

The choice of this poem "YiYuan" has multiple meanings. Hu Jianjun came one by one: "'Zhan' is the meaning of distant looking, because Min Shizhi was once a Henan Tongjue, and the 'Qi Shui' in the Book of Poetry originated from Linxian County, Henan, which has commemorative significance for him; 'Ao' is the place where the water's edge bends; 'Yiyi' is 'leaning' and 'Yi', relying on each other, and there are also explanations that it is reading 'ē', it is a long and beautiful look, I think 'Green Bamboo Monkey' is more in line with this situation; 'Bandit' Tong 'Fei' is a literary look; 'Cut' 'Gong' is 'Qiu'' Grinding' is the process of processing and reprocessing of jade, and also refers to the study of learning, morality, and conduct, so that it has the meaning of Bede, not only to depict the shape, but also to depict the inner temperament. ”

In the eleventh year of Qianlong, Ye Jin, a man of Dongting Mountain, purchased the "Yi Garden" and built a large number of civil engineering to expand the foundation of the garden, in order to show that he was still good at writing, he added a "gu" character and changed the name of the garden to "Guyi Garden", so the name of "Guyi Garden" was settled in the eleventh year of Qianlong.

In the fifty-third year of Qianlong, local people in Jiading purchased the Ancient Yi Garden for the Zhoucheng God Temple to use as a spiritual garden. "Generally, the temple strengthens the role of a release pond, so I added three points of water to the 'Yi' and wrote 'Guyi Garden'. This is also the reason why people confused the name of The Ancient Yi Garden in the later period. The "ripples" with three points of water also have the temperament of the ancient Yi Garden, "With water, a place will have an aura through, so the literati are both Happy Mountain and Happy Water." There is a couplet in the Guyi Garden, 'A pavilion overlooks the flowing water, and the ten thousand bamboo leads to the breeze', and I think this couplet has the temperament of the Guyi Garden. It was not until 1978 that Guyi Garden returned to its old name.

The important buildings in the Ancient Yi Garden also have allusions. The name of the three-facing boat-shaped building "Untied Boat" is taken from the "Boat That Is Not Tied to the Boat, The Void and the Wanderer" in the "Zhuangzi Lie Yukou", which is a metaphor for a life of wandering, unrestrained, and unfettered. On the boat, there is a couplet written by Liao Shoufeng, a jinshi in the late Qing Dynasty, "Very spring water than eaves shadow, hundred leaves lotus seven incense", which makes people think of "the spring wave green under the sad bridge, once it was a shocking picture". The "South Pavilion" has a pair of Yang Lian, which was made by Ye Changchun in the Qing Dynasty, "The moon is full of water, and the clouds rise up to the mountain". "The first sentence has the situation of 'moonlight is like water and water like the sky', and then it makes me think of 'the moon rises out of the heavenly mountains, between the vast clouds and the sea'."

From poetry to humanistic life, in the Jiangnan garden, the ancients lived a poetic life. Engaged in poetry creation for many years, Hu Jianjun also got acquainted with a group of literati and tried to recreate the former literati collection in contemporary times. She and her friend, the glass artist Wang Qin, have a "dating of the Ancient Yi Garden". Usually, they belong to the relationship of "gentleman's friendship is as light as water", rarely meet, not very contact, but every year on the day of heavy snow, they have to meet in Guyi Garden, do their own works, write their own poems. Hu Jianjun believes that to this day, the mood and life of Jiangnan literati can still be regained in the garden.

On that day, the online lecture was basically maintained in a "full" state of 500 people. Everyone followed Professor Hu Jianjun to feel the beauty of the garden online and experience the life of ancient literati. It is reported that from the 1st to the 5th, a total of 5 lectures were held online.

From May 1st to 5th, 5 lectures will be held online.

Zhu Yuhui, master tutor of Tongji University and executive director of the History Branch of the Architectural Society of China, from the perspective of garden construction, brought "Green Bamboo Monkey, MingYuan Siyi - From Guyi Garden to Jiangnan Ming Garden", from Nanjing Zhan Garden, Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden (central), Art Garden to Shanghai Guyi Garden, Qiuxia Garden... Lead everyone to appreciate the style of the Mingfeng Garden in Jiangnan, and feel the peak era of gardening that is as beautiful as the Ming-style furniture and is like the wind passing away.

Whether in painting or in gardens, landscape imagery has become an inevitable aesthetic theme. Li Hui, a master's supervisor at the China Academy of Art and a national first-class registered architect, will tell the story of "Landscape in Jiangnan Garden", tracing the ontological characteristics of natural landscapes, exploring the scribe's desire for mountains and forests and rivers in his heart, thus analyzing the landscape craftsmen in the construction of Jiangnan gardens and revealing the deep aesthetic meaning.

Jiangnan garden, beauty in the scenery, more beauty in the artistic conception. Cao Lindi, professor and doctoral supervisor of Soochow University, will bring "On the Beauty of the "Scenery" of Jiangnan Garden", introducing the specific connotation of the "Scenery" of Jiangnan Garden, all scenery language is love language, and the eternal charm of Jiangnan Garden is the charm of Chinese culture.

"Jiangnan Garden A World" has won worldwide praise for the classical gardens in Jiangnan, and the garden plants in it are indispensable. Associate Professor Luo Zhenwei of Shanghai Jiao Tong University will give a lecture entitled "Understanding Traditional Plants in Jiangnan Gardens", providing a botanical perspective for tasting Jiangnan gardens.

According to Zhang Lili, vice president and professor of Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts, in 2021, Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts and Guyi Garden reached a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly promote the expansion of the theme function of Shanghai Park, through in-depth excavation of the cultural connotation and gardening characteristics of Guyi Garden, extract typical elements for exploration and development of intangible cultural heritage, and build Guyi Garden as an intangible cultural heritage theme park, further meet the people's yearning for a better life, the needs of more diversified park culture, and promote the creation of park cultural brands. Innovate the park composite function model and build a park city system that integrates "park +" and "+ park". The "Jiangnan Culture Series Forum" is part of the project. In the second half of the year, Shanghai Vocational College of Arts and Crafts and Guyi Garden will also launch a series of activities of intangible cultural heritage theme park to provide citizens and tourists with rich spiritual and cultural enjoyment, and jointly create the beauty of Yi horticulture.