Classification of Gardens in China

In the early days, the park mainly kept animals, and then gradually developed into a garden integrating work, life and play. According to their location and scale, they can be roughly divided into three categories. The smallest garden is to make use of a small clearing in the forbidden area of Miyagi, build some rockeries and plant some trees to form a courtyard garden. The Royal Garden in the northernmost part of the Forbidden City in Beijing is a typical garden of this type. In addition to the royal gardens, there are Fu Jian Palace Garden, Cining Palace Garden and Ningshou Palace West Garden in the Forbidden City, all of which are oases dotted with yellow glazed tiles. Palace area is not large, affected by the axis, the layout is relatively regular.

The second category is the gardens near Miyagi. This kind of garden is often built with natural water or hills, which is large in scale and close to Miyagi (often within the imperial city), so it is very convenient to visit and enjoy, and it has been highly valued by emperors of all dynasties. The Tongquetai Garden built by Cao Cao in Yecheng and the Daxing Garden built by Emperor Wen of Sui Dynasty in Chang 'an in history. Beihai and Xiyuan (now Zhongnanhai) in the imperial city of Beijing in the Ming and Qing Dynasties are also such gardens.

Both the small gardens in the palace and the gardens outside the palace are located in the bustling Kyoto, which is often limited by the urban environment and often cannot satisfy the emperors' desire to indulge in landscapes. Therefore, they look for places with mountains and waters and beautiful natural scenery in the suburbs of Beijing or beyond, and some even package real landscapes into gardens, which is a large-scale landscape garden. Historically, Shanglin Garden of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, Mount Li of Emperor Tang Ming, Sanshan and Wuyuan in the northwest suburb of Beijing in Qing Dynasty all belonged to large landscape gardens.

The most complete landscape gardens are the Summer Palace and chengde mountain resort in Beijing.

Clear regional division is a major feature of landscape gardens. The king's concubines not only have to deal with political affairs, but also have fun, and even build street scenes in the garden to imitate the business of ordinary cities. These scenic spots with different functions are often relatively concentrated in landscape architecture, forming unique scenic spots. The big garden is close to the gate and generally has a palace area.

Although the palace area plays an important role in the garden, the garden is built to enjoy the scenery. When people enter the Summer Palace, they are most interested in the Bibo Green Island in Kunming Lake and the red walls and yellow tiles exposed in the green trees on Wanshou Mountain. The most attractive thing about visiting the summer resort is the natural beauty of the lake area and mountains. Therefore, providing a vast and rich garden area for people to enjoy and visit is the real focus of the garden.

Because the garden is the emperor's garden, with large scale, fine design and high construction requirements, the landscape of the garden area is also different from the general garden. To sum up, there are four characteristics:

(1) is magnificent and makes full use of the natural beauty of the natural landscape. The reason why the garden is magnificent is that it covers a large area and scale, and often includes real mountains and waters. Xiyuan Sanhai is the largest urban garden in China. Summer resort, Summer Palace, Jingyi Garden in Xiangshan and Jingming Garden in Yuquan Mountain can all create a beautiful scenery. Some gardens are built on the flat ground, and there are no real mountains and waters in the territory, but after careful design by designers, they can also create natural landscapes.

(2) Set up a garden in the garden. This layout method comes from the feudal consciousness of the emperor. They want to see all the beautiful scenery on the earth, so they moved the world-famous landscape garden to the garden so that they can enjoy it nearby.

(3) Highlight the theme and attach importance to colorful architectural ornament. When the emperor made gardens, he often recruited senior craftsmen from all over the country to build beautiful buildings as the theme of the scenic spot. Literati gardens, like Imperial Garden, are the main types of classical gardens in China. They represent the essence of residential gardens and have made great contributions in the history of gardens. There are the largest number of literati gardens in history, and many owners are famous writers or painters in history, which has a great influence. Literati gardens are generally small and can't accommodate many scenes. They don't have the magnificence and breathtaking beauty of gardens, but they have a unique charm that can make people linger. The key is to integrate the garden landscape with the master's literary mind and cultivation.

Zhenjiang Jiao Shan is an island in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, with a particularly quiet environment. Halfway up the mountain, there is a Biefeng Temple, small and exquisite, surrounded by green trees and bamboo. There are two study rooms in the nunnery, which were originally the study rooms of Zheng Banqiao, a famous painter and calligrapher in Qing Dynasty. There is a calligraphy couplet by the door: "Elegant room, not many flowers." In Banqiao's view, a good living environment is not big and complete, but poetic. Only in this way can we win greatness with elegance and win more with less. This "elegance" and "smallness" are the main characteristics of literati gardens.

In ancient feudal society, the best way for literati and intellectuals was to be officials, but this was a minority after all. Most people can only make a living by teaching or selling calligraphy and painting, and their economic situation is not very good. Therefore, most of their gardens are located in the open space next to the house, occupying little land. This can also be reflected in the title of the ancient literati garden. For example, there is a bonsai garden in Suzhou. Because of its small area, the whole garden space is like a teapot. There are also famous gardens, such as remnant garden, mustard seed garden and half acre garden, which are all famous for their small area. "Small" is not conducive to gardening. However, ancient garden artists can freely master the dialectics of artistic creation, turn disadvantages into advantages, and create infinite scenery within a limited scope.

Suzhou Netscape Garden is a representative small garden in the south of the Yangtze River. As the essence of China's classical gardens, the study courtyard "Dianchun Table" in the garden has been rebuilt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States. Its elegant style and exquisite production have won the praise of tourists.

"Three or five steps, travel all over the world; Six or seven people, the public must be a teacher. " People often use this couplet to describe the superb skills of China's classical operas, and so do literati gardens. If it wants to express the beauty of the world on a small scale, it needs to apply the artistic principle of "taking one as ten". Every scene in the garden, whether it is a rockery pool or a tree stone in a corner of the courtyard, must be refined and tempered, and poetic and picturesque, so as to receive the artistic effect of using less brushwork and strengthening the scenery.

The scenery of literati gardens is mostly elegant. Elegance here mainly refers to tranquility and nature, freshness and charm, simplicity and indifference, and elegance. The acquisition of this style is closely related to the artistic principle that less wins more and simplicity wins more. In addition to landscapes, the architectural decoration and sketches of literati gardens are also very elegant and simple.

Another feature of literati gardens is the close combination of garden appreciation function and residence function, that is, the unity of so-called "tour" and "residence".

The ancients often called it "traveling" to enjoy the mountains and rivers, and called it "living", studying, practicing arts, talking and feasting in a beautiful environment. Only by reaching these two realms can art be considered perfect. Lingering Garden is a famous private garden of literati in Suzhou. It can be roughly divided into two parts: the central part and the eastern part. Although the main scenery of these two parts is different, they both reflect the combination of "walking" and "living" to varying degrees. Temple gardens are another category of classical gardens in China. As far as horticulture is concerned, it refers not only to gardens attached to Buddhist temples and Taoist temples, but also to gardens belonging to buildings serving religious beliefs and consciousness worship. In ancient China, the objects of belief and worship were more complicated, and various types of buildings appeared, usually with gardens, which also brought the diversity of temple gardens.

"Four hundred and eighty halls in the southern dynasties, how many towers are misty and rainy." This famous sentence by Du Mu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, not only describes the prosperity of Buddhist temples in the Southern Dynasties, but also points out the beautiful environment of the temples. Almost all the scenic spots in the north and south of the Yangtze River are occupied by Galand, a Buddhist temple. Nowadays, famous mountains, big and small, all over the country have become tourist attractions. Almost all of them have ancient temples. Someone once described the beauty of these temples as "Yuanbao Temple, a temple wrapped in gardens".

"Yuanbao Temple" means that the temple is integrated into the mountains and rivers; "Garden-wrapped temple" means that there are several small gardens built in the temple for pilgrims to enjoy. This is the case with the famous Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou. Even in monasteries in bustling cities, monks always try their best to plant trees and stones in the open space to build small gardens and landscapes. Sometimes they buy abandoned gardens and ponds nearby and make some repairs to become independent gardens attached to monasteries, such as Zhuang Jie Hokkeji in Suzhou, Longhua Temple in Shanghai and Liu Rong Temple in Guangzhou.

Ancestor worship is another common cultural phenomenon in ancient China. In famous mountains and rivers, there are often memorial buildings to commemorate ancient celebrities or national heroes, such as Yue Temple in Hangzhou, Wuhou Temple in Chengdu and Xiangyang, Du Fu Caotang in Chengdu, Du Gong Temple in Shaanxi, Lanting and Wang Youjun Temple in the southern suburbs of Shaoxing. It was built to commemorate historical celebrities such as Yue Fei, Zhuge Liang, Du Fu and Wang Xizhi. In fact, they are another type of ancestral temple buildings.

Another feature of temple gardens is that they have some comprehensive public gardens. In order to receive some pilgrims and tourists, some temples always have living and entertainment facilities. Some temples and gardens have guest rooms for scholars to study or spend the night. Suburban landscape garden refers to a garden scenic spot located in the suburbs of the city, which is made up of nymph of original natural landscape, combined with landscape management and construction, and properly processed and transformed. It is a public tourist area with natural scenery as the basic skeleton and urban residents as the main body. They are very close to modern parks in nature, and fully embody the tradition of conforming to nature and beautifying nature in planning and layout. They are the transition between urban gardens and famous mountains and rivers.

The first feature of suburban landscape architecture is that it is close to the city, and it is generally located within two or three kilometers near the suburbs. This kind of gardens preserved so far include Shihu and Huqiu in Suzhou, Slender West Lake in Yangzhou, Xishan and Huishan in Wuxi, Zhongshan in Nanjing, Nanshan in Zhenjiang, Gaolan Mountain in Lanzhou, Dinghushan and Qixingyan in Zhaoqing, West Lake in Huizhou, Guangdong, West Lake in Fuyang, Anhui and West Lake in Hangzhou. For example, the West Lake in Hangzhou is very close to the urban area, and you can see the sparkling water as soon as you get to the lake. Huishan and Xishan in Wuxi and Zhongshan in Nanjing are also very close to the city roots, and even their scenery can be seen in the city. China's famous gardening work "Yuanye" said when talking about the location of the garden: "It's not far from the city, but you can go anywhere." The characteristics of this kind of gardens are summarized, which are convenient for sightseeing.

Historically, the development of suburban landscape architecture is slower than other gardens. It was not until the Song Dynasty that the landscape gardens in the suburbs flourished with the development of economy and the prosperity of urban commerce and handicrafts.

To be exact, the suburban landscape garden is a collection of many single gardens (such as temple gardens, private gardens and gardens) plus scenic spots between mountains and rivers. Its main factors are mountains, water, gardens and temples. There are not only natural scenery such as green mountains and green waters, flowers and trees in caves and streams, but also artificial scenery such as pavilions, dangerous winding paths, ancient temples and immortals, and finely carved houses. Its scenic area is much larger than ordinary gardens, with many living service facilities and commercial outlets, and its development and construction are much more complicated.

The suburban landscape garden covers a large area and has a wide field of vision, which creates conditions for enjoying the overall momentum of mountain springs, pavilions and pavilions and the changes of rain and snow from a distance. Compared with urban gardens, suburban landscapes have more levels and richer changes. In these landscape gardens, the most basic and three-dimensional landscape scenes such as rocks, trees, fountains, buildings, etc. can often be combined with some living and virtual landscapes in nature, such as the change of sun shadows and the surging climate change, forming a charming landscape that combines static and dynamic, and the combination of reality and reality.

Rich historical and cultural connotation is another feature of suburban landscape architecture. Most gardens, especially famous scenic spots, have been transformed, managed and accumulated for hundreds or even thousands of years, and have been inscribed and described by several generations of literati and painters, which has far-reaching humanistic significance. This is also an important reason why some famous landscape gardens are enduring and attracting tourists. The historical and cultural factors of suburban gardens are also reflected in the names of garden attractions. In order to pass on the beautiful scenery of gardens from generation to generation, and to compete with other cities, some ancient cities often invite some well-known literati painters and squires from their hometowns to evaluate and name the main scenery of suburban gardens, and finally summarize the main beautiful scenery of local gardens in the form of "eight scenes" and "ten scenes".