Chapter 16 Section 3 Garden stacked stones and strange stones

After the Tang and Song Dynasties, the rich products and strong cultural foundation of the Wuyue area showed more and more advantages. This advantage was also very obvious in the stone culture, that is, the main form of stacking stones in gardens pushed Chinese stone culture to a new level. new stage.At this time, the stacked stones in gardens in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions not only inherited the traditions of the region since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, but also integrated the achievements of various places. With various methods of stacking stones, they combined practicality and appreciation, nature and ideas, forming a Chinese stone culture. A unique system. (Figure 29)

The environment created by stacking stones mainly pursues the mysterious and infinite natural imagery, and mostly takes the feelings of mountains and rivers such as majestic, strange, secluded, dangerous, clear, and beautiful.These artistic conceptions can be learned from nature and come from personal experience of mountains and rivers; they can also come from landscape poems; but in many cases, they are influenced by landscape paintings.Ji Cheng, who built stone gardens in Zhenjiang, Changzhou, Yizheng, and Yangzhou for a long time in the Ming Dynasty, wrote the book "Yuan Ye".In the two sections of "Selecting Stones" and "Duoshan", Ji Cheng proposed to "imitate the brushwork of ancient people".Specifically, it is "a small imitation of Yunlin, a big one for a long time".Yunlin is Ni Zan, whose name is Yunlin, and Zijiu is Huang Gongwang, whose name is Zijiu. They are all masters of landscape in Yuan Dynasty.Huang Gongwang, a native of Changshu, Jiangsu, Yuan Xia Wenyan's "Pictures and Paintings" said that he "lived in Changshu, and explored the changes of Yushan Mountain. The pen, so the thousands of hills and valleys painted, the more strange the more they are drawn, the more mountains and mountains, the deeper the more wonderful."In his later years, Huang Gongwang liked the landscape of Fuchun River in Zhejiang the most, so he built a special house to live by the river for many years.The huge long scroll "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" is Huang Gongwang's masterpiece that fascinates painters both ancient and modern. It is like a symphony with rich connotations. I don't know how many painters it has influenced and inspired.Among the stacked rocks in the Jiangnan gardens, "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" has naturally become the blueprint that many people rely on.Ni Zan, born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, together with Huang Zijiu, Wu Zhen, and Wang Meng, is called the Four Great Masters of Yuan Dynasty landscape painting. In the last 20 years of his life, he mainly lived and traveled in Yixing, Changzhou, Wuzhou, Huzhou, Jiaxing, and Songjiang around Taihu Lake.His landscape paintings also mostly paint the beautiful, clear and peaceful lakes and mountains in the Taihu Lake Basin.These paintings appear in the stacked stones of the gardens in the south of the Yangtze River, and are extremely harmonious with the entire cultural environment of the Wuyue area.Huang (Gongwang), Wu (Zhen), Ni (Zan) and Wang (Meng) are the four master landscapes, which are the painters of the Wumen school of painting Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin, Dong Qichang in the Ming Dynasty and the four kings (Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Shimin, Wang Jian, Wang Qichang) of the Wu School of the Qing Dynasty. Hui [huihui], Wang Yuanqi) and others were inherited and developed, and their influence spread throughout the country, becoming the mainstream school of Chinese landscape painting from Yuan to Qing.From the Four Masters of the Yuan Dynasty to the Four Masters of the Ming Dynasty (Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying) to the Four Kings of the Qing Dynasty, these painters all came from the Wuyue area.They are representatives of Chinese landscape paintings with literati characteristics.Their works have directly created the artistic conception of stacking stones in gardens in the south of the Yangtze River, and have also been deliberately pursued by stacking stones in various places.In addition to the influence of predecessors' landscape paintings, some famous gardens and stacked stones in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were also directly completed by some painters.For example, in the Yuan Dynasty in Yangzhou, Wei Ze built the Lion Forest, and famous landscape painters Zhu Derun and Ni Zan participated in it; in the Qing Dynasty in Yangzhou, the stacked stones in the Wanshi Garden were created by the great painter Shi Tao.The Yellowstone rockery in Shanghai Yuyuan Garden is rich in forests, springs and wildness. It is simple and tall, and has a well-organized opening and closing.Zhang Shan's paintings are based on the method of stacking stones to form mountains. Using the stone texture and strong and powerful pictures of Wukang Huangshi, the formation is similar to the method of chopping the ax and the mountain in landscape painting, which naturally has the charm of ancient peaks and valleys.Such masterpieces of stacked stones that combine poetry, painting, and good fortune are also found in other Jiangsu and Zhejiang gardens.For example, the Huanxiu Mountain Villa Lake Stone Rockery in Suzhou, which is regarded as the best example of stacking stones, and the Four Seasons Rockery in Yangzhou Geyuan, which are ingeniously conceived, are among the best.

Zhishi is an aesthetic mentality unique to Dushi and Dufeng. This mentality is to use stones as a metaphor for people, and to reflect all people's emotions and character from the stone.As mentioned earlier, during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, there were examples of expressing love with stones. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, represented by Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo, this way of expressing love evolved into a part of life.The idea of ​​appreciating and playing with stones expounded by Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo has greatly influenced the understanding of stones in later generations, not only for desk stone offerings and water stone bonsai, but also for large monoliths.The garden stones in Jiangsu and Zhejiang that exist today, such as "Guanyunfeng" in Suzhou Lingering Garden, "Yu Linglong" in Shanghai Yuyuan Garden, "Ruiyunfeng" in Suzhou No. 10 Middle School, "Craneyunfeng" in Jiangnan Famous Stone Garden in Hangzhou, etc., are famous. Far and near, in addition to the unique shape of the stone, it is also valued by people for its unique connotation.Some of these stone peaks embody the heart of love for daughters, such as "Guanyunfeng" ("Guanyun" is the name of the stone owner's beloved daughter), some embody the posture carved in heaven, such as "Yu Linglong", and some embody the The posture of the literati with delicate bones and appearance is like "Crane Cloud Peak", while others have both the various forms of nature and the combination of historical facts, such as "Ruiyun Peak".In terms of using stones as a metaphor for expressing one's aspirations, these Shifengs are excellent examples.

Using the environment to set off the beauty of the stone expresses the expansion of the dependent space of the stone.This expansion of space mainly refers to using stone as the main landscape or theme of the garden to fully display the beauty of stone sculpture.This kind of display can not only make people enjoy living and traveling leisurely; it can also make people look at it from a distance and see the charm of the stone;When the garden is conceived, buildings, pavilions, pavilions, platforms, bridges, beams, water, stones, etc. are all arranged around the main environment and theme. These architectural and natural objects that also have artistic appeal will undoubtedly enhance and deepen the theme. The artistic charm of the boundary stack stone and the main boundary peak stone.Typical examples in this regard are the lake stone rockery in Huanxiu Villa in Suzhou and Guanyun Peak in Lingering Garden in Suzhou.Huanxiu Villa covers an area of ​​only one mu, with rockery as the main body, equipped with curved pools, pavilions, corridors and bridges.The lake stones used in this rockery do not have a single rare and precious rock, but they are well arranged according to the needs, using stubborn stones for the base and inconspicuous places; using holes and wrinkled stones for eye-catching and As a result, the overall effect of this rockery has reached the point of perfection. Its peaks and peaks have the tendency of master and slave; You can live and swim; cliffs and flowing water, twists and turns are natural, and the virtual and the real are combined.Therefore, this rockery is like a real mountain, both ethereal and dignified; rich in layers and integrated; it echoes the surrounding high walls, curved bridges, square pavilions, and corridors, forming a metaphor for the false in the true, the false in the false, and the virtual and the real. Real, specious and wonderful artistic conception.Guanyun Peak, located in the east of Lingering Garden, is a well-designed community by the owner of the garden, Sheng Kang (Xuan Huai), to watch the stone peaks.In order to make Guanyunfeng, the subject of appreciation, stand out, all buildings, flowers, trees, and rocks have been reduced in size or made room for space.Low trees and dwarf bamboos are planted around the stone; on both sides of Guanyun Peak, there are two smaller peaks, "Ruiyun" and "Xiuyun"; The peak is more steep and straight; the "Guanyun Pavilion" retreating to the northeast corner is built with a small size, and so on.When the viewer sits in the south hall and observes the pinnacle, as far as the eye can see, there is nothing to dilute the theme.The beauty of Guanyunfeng, as well as the emotions drawn by Guanyunfeng, are all reflected in the appreciation of this environment.

Strange stones have a long history as treasures. For example, the strange stones produced in Qingzhou mentioned in "Shangshu·Yugong" were the strange stones for appreciation as early as the Xia and Shang Dynasties.But the widespread popularity of strange stone appreciation was in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.The reason is that during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, stones had more uses, stone resources were developed more extensively, the observation field of stones was wider, and the understanding of stones was clearer.For the same reason, the scale of Kistler Tours today exceeds any previous period, both in terms of number of people and species of tours.

Appreciation of strange stones is mainly reflected in three aspects: the appearance of the stone, the quality of the stone, and the pattern of the stone. Appreciation of the posture of the stone mainly pursues the shape of the stone.On the one hand, this shape still follows the literati in Tang and Song Dynasties to seek concrete meaning from the abstract shape of stone; the stone of the image.These images that resemble stones are mostly objects in people's lives, so they are amiable; but because these images are formed naturally, they always have their hazy and fuzzy features, which instead stimulate the viewer's curiosity. Imagination makes the charm of this kind of stone unabated.The expansion of Shi Zhizi's appreciation extends to mountains and rivers.If we say that the appreciation of stone offerings or landscape bonsai is to use the small to describe the big, which is "moving the sky and shrinking the earth, and erecting a thousand pots", then the unique way of appreciating mountains and rivers is to use the big to describe the small, which is to regard the world, mountains and rivers as The scenery in the garden and the offering in the room.For example, Wushan Goddess Peak, Huangshan Xiantao Stone, Monkey Watching the Sea, Yunnan Lunan Stone Forest Ashima, and "Xiucai Kanbang" (a combination of a solitary stone and a stone screen) seen in many places are all unique to mountains and rivers. A typical example of appreciation style.

The appreciation of stone quality is mainly to pursue the material of stone, especially the rare stone that is rare and expensive in the world.This trend was first advocated by the emperors and nobles, and then spread to the society.Just as the emperor of the Qing Dynasty valued Shoushantian Huangshi, everyone in the world valued it.Because of their preciousness, this kind of strange stones are generally used as playthings such as seal stones. Others, such as Qingtian steatite, Changhua bloodstone and all precious inkstones, etc., also belong to this kind of plaything.With the development of modern geological science, various types of ores are increasingly recognized by people.As a result, some rare ore crystals and paleontological fossils have also entered the ranks of ornamental stones. In the traditional humanistic stone appreciation activities, the content of natural science has been added.

To enjoy the stone pattern, the main pursuit is the stone pattern (the pattern of the line and the pattern of the color).The appreciation of stone patterns has always been represented by large marble and granular Yuhua stone.The pattern of marble is the world of ink and wash. Those paintings of clouds and mists and mountains and rivers are clearly elegant splash-ink landscapes; the pattern of Yuhua stone is the world of colors. And patterns, delicate and wonderful, colorful.The appreciation of stone patterns often depends more on the viewer's insight and rich imagination.Sometimes a seemingly ordinary stone and a proposition with deep meaning can immediately turn stone into gold and turn ordinary into magic.The appreciation of stone patterns is most popular among people nowadays because of its randomness (proposition and meaning) and popularity (materials are easy to obtain).Because the pursuit is the pattern of the stone, sometimes even if the stone is rough and stubborn, it can still become a good product because of its unique pattern.In this way, it will undoubtedly open the door for stone play, making the appreciation of stone patterns an aesthetic activity that everyone can participate in.As a result, today's riverside, seaside, mountain caves, plains and deserts, there are no stone hunters anywhere, and amazing products appear everywhere.