Chapter 18 Chapter V Vicissitudes of Ancient Chinese Gardens
The ancient Chinese garden art, bred by thousands of years of history and culture, has been chanted by poets, depicted by painters, and written by writers, and has been passed down through the ages.The themes of garden themes in these literary and artistic forms, of course, remember their prosperity, but many of them express emotion for their destruction.This is why we can know a lot of ancient gardens, but the real objects we can see are limited.Among the real objects that we can see, there are even fewer complete ones, not to mention that many relics are reconstructed on the site of the remnants.
As early as the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Gefei, a writer, described that after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, thousands of houses and gardens in Luoyang alone were destroyed. The flames burn and turn into ashes."
Although the majestic royal gardens and small and exquisite private gardens are the sanctuary of rich and rich officials and rich people, they cannot bear the ravages of turmoil and war.Therefore, Li Gefei expressed his emotion: "Woohoo! Your Excellency, Dafu, Fang Jin entered the court, let go of his own selfish intentions, and forgot about the order of the world. If you want to retreat and enjoy this pleasure, is it right? The end of the Tang Dynasty is enough!"
He profoundly pointed out that once the officials and officials gain power, they will forget about it, don't take the country's order and chaos at heart, and prepare themselves to retreat to enjoy the garden, but in the end they will not get it!It is very insightful for Li Gefei to link the chaos of the world with the prosperity and decline of Luoyang and the abolition of gardens.This is true of the historical facts before the Tang Dynasty; it is also true of the facts from the Northern Song Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty.The rise and fall of Genyue left many thought-provoking stories.When Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty Zhao Ji and Cai Jing were feasting and singing all night long in Genyue Yuyuan, Tai student Deng Su wrote a poem to remonstrate, stating the sufferings brought by Huashi Gang to the people. At the end of the poem, he reminded Zhao Ji: "I hope the king is safe Surname, when will there be no east wind in the garden." Deng Su also saw that the people's living and working in peace and contentment was the prerequisite for the emperor to have a feast in the imperial garden.In 1122, Genyue was finally built. Six years later, in 1127, the Jingkang Disaster occurred, the city of Bianliang (Kaifeng) was destroyed, and the two emperors Hui and Qin were taken into captivity.Before and after the city was broken, Genyue saw the scene of "demolition of houses for salary, hewing of stones for fortresses, and cutting of bamboo for fences".The rare birds and animals in the garden were also captured and killed to satisfy their hunger.It turned out that the rare birds raised in Genyue Garden were domesticated and trained. Due to the attraction of delicious food and drinks, wild birds also came to the garden. Tens of thousands of birds constituted a great landscape of "Auspicious Birds Welcome". .Because it is a royal plaything, no one dares to capture or harm it.Poor these birds who are not afraid of people and do not avoid people, when Kaifeng was besieged, they were all filled with rumbling stomachs.
The last climax of ancient Chinese garden construction occurred in the Qianlong period in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. The royal gardens have been shining for about 100 years.
After the middle of the 17th century, the Qing Dynasty entered the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong. It was built by the royal family and has taken on a large scale. In the mountains and rivers in the northwestern suburbs of Beijing, it has formed a scene of tens of miles of towers and terraces facing each other and listening to each other.At the same time, in the Chengde Mountain Resort in the northeast of Beijing, after several generations of hard work, the thirty-six scenes of Kangxi and the thirty-six scenes of Qianlong have coexisted, and the construction of private gardens in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, represented by Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou pushed to an unprecedented peak.The prosperity of garden construction here is supported by the rich Jiangnan economy.The direct reason is that Emperor Qianlong made six southern tours following his grandfather Kangxi's six southern tours.
The three mountains and five gardens of the royal family in the Qing Dynasty were destroyed by the British and French allied forces in 1860. Twenty-eight years later, Cixi rebuilt the Summer Palace on the site of Qingyi Garden, but the scale of the Summer Palace is less than 2/3 of that of Qingyi Garden. The other four gardens, except Jingming Garden, are still " Trampled by soldiers and chariots, turned into mounds and ruins", "fired and burned, turned into ashes".The Old Summer Palace is the most famous and influential one among the three mountains and five gardens. It is not the Chinese themselves but foreigners who call it the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens".Knowing its value, the imperialist aggressors completely destroyed it.So far, the exquisite cultural relics looted from the Old Summer Palace are still displayed in British and French museums."Ode to the Forty Scenes of the Old Summer Palace" inscribed by Emperor Qianlong and written by the minister Wang Youdun is collected in the rare book library of the National Library in Paris, France. It is the painstaking work of court painters Shen Yuan and Tang Dai. Reconstruct the forty scenes based on it. "Ode to Forty Views of the Old Summer Palace" is the most historically, artistically and scientifically valuable material for studying ancient Chinese gardens, and it is also a physical evidence of imperialist aggression.The painting "Admonitions for Women's History" by Gu Kaizhi, a great painter of the Jin Dynasty, looted by Yuan Mingyuan, is now in the British Museum, London, England.Although this painting is a copy of people in the Tang Dynasty, its historical and artistic value is also universally recognized.
The Palace of Fontainebleau, about 60 kilometers away from Paris in France, is a palace garden with a history earlier than Versailles. There is a Chinese Pavilion in the Palace of Fontainebleau, which was built by Queen Augini of Napoleon III who launched the Second Opium War. .Thousands of cultural relics displayed in the museum, except for a few, are all fine Chinese art looted from the Old Summer Palace and other places, including copper, porcelain, jade, enamel, and furniture. There are three huge paintings on the top of the museum. Kesi [ke carved] silk Buddha statues are used as decorations, and the large chandelier in the middle of the hall is actually the cover of the remodeled cloisonne large smoker.The cabinet next to the wall is the interior decoration of the Chinese court made of modified huanghuali wood.Some of the cultural relics in the cabinets are still pasted with yellow name tags from the Palace of the Old Summer Palace."Huifang Academy" is pasted on the center of a small white jade dish, and "Gengyun Hall" is pasted on the inner edge of a white jade dish. "Huifang Academy" is one of the forty scenic spots in the Old Summer Palace, and "Gengyun Hall" is the name of the hall in the "Ruofan Pavilion" scenic spot in the Old Summer Palace.A couch in the China Pavilion is also filled with Chinese cultural relics.No wonder the great French writer Victor Hugo said at the time: "In the face of history, one of these two robbers is called France and the other is called Britain. We must protest against them."
A hundred years after the Yuanmingyuan was burned down, it was turned into a relic park. With its devastation, it tells the thrilling national tragedy in modern history to future generations.The brutality of the invaders and the decay and decline of the feudal rulers are all deeply engraved on the ruins of this ancient garden masterpiece.
The decline of royal gardens from its heyday in the middle of the Qing Dynasty was the result of China becoming a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country.Private gardens in the south of the Yangtze River are also declining day by day in the turbulent environment of economic depression and frequent wars.Many private gardens were dismantled and sold to flat land due to the bankruptcy of the owners and the prodigal children and grandchildren.
After the Opium War in 1840, some new gardens appeared in private gardens, such as Jixiao Villa in Yangzhou, Shihu Garden in Weifang, Shandong, Yuyin Shanfang in Panyu, Guangdong, Keyuan in Dongguan and Yiyuan in Suzhou.Some of these gardens were built on the basis of the original garden foundations and homesteads, some were designed by integrating the strengths of all gardens, and some were imitated in reduced size.These gardens are of a high artistic level and well-known, but they all bear the brand of that era and some foreign styles. Together with the Summer Palace among the royal gardens, they become the last batch of famous ancient Chinese gardens.
What needs to be explained here is that garden history and garden art have the same carrier, but they can be evaluated from different angles. , make us proud and excited.In fact, the tragedy of history contains the crystallization of art.The development of Chinese gardens has entered a new historical period. Modern gardens not only contain the excellent heritage of ancient gardens, but also have essential differences from ancient gardens.
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