Column: "Let's Talk"
Speaker: Wang Xiangrong
He once served as the fourth and fifth vice presidents of the China Landscape Architecture Society, and is currently the executive director and chief science communication expert of the China Landscape Architecture Society, the editor-in-chief of Chinese Garden, and the dean of the School of Landscape Architecture of Beijing Forestry University.
Air date: June 12, 2021
Theme: "Let everyone live in the garden"
Wonderful review
Chinese worldview is in the garden. The history of Chinese landscape architecture is a broad and profound history book, only by truly in-depth and systematic study of this history book, we can better understand ourselves, understand China's land, and establish a flexible and sustainable ecological environment support system for modern and future China, to coordinate the balance between artificial and natural, maintain the safety of land and cities, and transform this system into a poetic landscape with a humanistic spirit.
This issue of "Let's Talk" invites Wang Xiangrong, dean of the School of Landscape Architecture of Beijing Forestry University, who takes us to understand China's gardens and garden culture from different perspectives.
Classical Chinese gardens - "Although made by man, it is like opening from heaven"
The garden is the projection of the ideal paradise in people's hearts, and the construction of the garden on the earth is to realize the ideal environment in people's hearts on the earth. The gardens of all countries in the world are different, so what are the characteristics of Chinese gardens?
To a certain extent, the Suzhou garden represents the highest achievement of the Chinese literati garden, and Wang Xiangrong takes his favorite coupling garden as an example to take everyone to understand the beauty of classical Chinese gardens. Taking the name of the couple garden as an example, the original name of the couple garden is wading garden, taken from Tao Yuanming's "Return to xi ci" in "The garden day is involved in fun, although the door is set up and often closed", which means that the owner of the garden yearns for a secluded and quiet life. Later, it was renamed Couple Garden by the Shen couple, representing the vision of both of them returning to seclusion and cultivating the countryside. Wang Xiangrong said that Chinese are all scenery and literary heart, and one of the ways is to express it through the inscriptions in the garden.
Another feature of chinese gardens is that the homestead garden is integrated, and the center is left to the landscape, all the design is in accordance with the principles of nature, get the interest of nature, the whole garden is like a landscape painting. Although the space of the garden is limited, through the clever design of the gardener, people can not see the end. Therefore, when people walk in the garden, they will feel that space and time are infinite, and although everything in front of them is made by people, it seems to open from heaven. Our lives and character are placed in the landscape of nature.
Couple's photo
Chinese build cities in the form of gardens
Wang Xiangrong led the audience to jump out of the wall, raise their eyes to a height of hundreds of meters above the coupling garden, and will find that the coupling garden is surrounded by water on three sides, and if the line of sight continues to rise to a height of several kilometers above the coupling garden, suzhou will be closely related to the surrounding landscapes. A string of hills in the west of Suzhou blocked the possibility of flooding taihu Lake, and people slowly combed and introduced water into the city to ensure people's living needs, so Suzhou became a city with water streets.
Overlooking the city of Suzhou
It's a microcosm of Chinese cities, and so is Hangzhou. Hangzhou West Lake not only ensures that during the rainstorm, the water from the mountains will not flood the city, but also provides irrigation for the surrounding farmland, and is also the source of drinking water for the early Hangzhou citizens, but there is no Hangzhou without the West Lake. After thousands of years of continuous dredging and management of the West Lake, Su Shi, Bai Juyi, etc. have presided over the dredging of the West Lake, and the dredged silt should be piled up into a island, and bridges and plants should be built on it... Slowly and slowly turn the West Lake into a beautiful scenery to see today.
When we look at the whole land of China, the Taihu Lake Plain, the Dujiangyan, the Hetao area... Each region's water network is Chinese and after thousands of years of grooming, it has finally created a picturesque livable city that can nourish the land, develop agriculture, and nurture people.
Wang Xiangrong said that Chinese build cities in the way of building gardens, and our city is a big garden, because this is the ideal of Chinese - picturesque, and the mountains and rivers are interdependent.
West Lake - Three Pools Moon Printing
Overlooking the city of Hangzhou
Turning the city into a beautiful landscape,
Let everyone live in the garden
These water systems in history have supported agriculture, how should we establish an ecological environment support system in today's China to support China's rapid development and the happy life of the people? Wang Xiangrong also brought the results of his thinking and practice.
Around 2000, the West Lake was faced with problems such as water pollution and tourist overload, because the source of the West Lake's water, the place where the mountains and rivers meet, was silted up, and the occupied land needed to be returned to the West Lake. Wang Xiangrong referred to the ancient paintings of the West Lake to determine the area of the lake to be restored and the appearance of the restoration. In the end, the West Lake was restored to the same rustic appearance as in the ancient paintings, so that the landscape of the West Lake was reconnected together, and the scenery submerged in it was revealed again, making Hangzhou truly a landscape city where mountains, lakes and cities depended on each other.
(Southern Song Dynasty) Li Song's "West Lake Picture Scroll"
The restored West Lake westward area
Chinese through thousands of years of efforts to comb the land into a livable city dependent on mountains and rivers. Today, we must establish a flexible and sustainable ecological environment support system, and turn it into a landscape of the earth within the scope of the inhabited city, so that everyone's surroundings are like a garden, so that everyone can truly live in the garden.
Lecture Highlights
The picture and text are provided by the School of Landscape Architecture of Beijing Forestry University, and some of the pictures are excerpted from the video of the "Let's Talk" column, if there is infringement, please notify and delete it.
The source of the picture and text is the Chinese Landscape Architecture Society
Wang Xiangrong: Let everyone live in the garden, are you "" today? ▼