Spring is in the air and annually the Chinese Culture Day is coming to
the Missouri Botenical Garden in May. When you visit the well designed
gardens, you should take a stroll in the Chinese garden. St. Louis
Chinese garden commemorates the longstanding scientific and
cultural exchanges between the Missouri Botanical Garden
and Chinese botanical institutions, culminating in the monumental Flora of China
project currently in process. The Chinese garden also honors the
fifteenth anniversary of the sister city relationship between St. Louis
and Nanjing, China. Construction of the Chinese garden was made possible
by a generous gift from Margaret Grigg Oberheide in memory of her parents,
Estelle and Robert Blanke.
An Ancient Tradition Landscape design has been an important part of
Chinese culture for more than 2,500 years. It incorporates aspects of
Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, as well as the arts of painting,
poetry, and calligraphy. In the 18th century, naturalistic Chinese garden
revolutionized the symmetrical designs of European landscapes. Yet
traditional Chinese gardens can seem bewildering to Western eyes
accustomed to expanses of lawns and flowers. Chinese gardens use plants
sparingly and are often completely enclosed by a labyrinth of walled
spaces. One experiences a Chinese garden as a series of scenes that unfold
in sequence, like a landscape painting on a scroll.
It is often said that a Chinese garden is built, not planted.
Architectural elements such as walls, paving, bridges, and pavilions are
of central importance. Skillful use of perspective makes small spaces
appear larger. Undulating, serpentine walls suggest mountains in the
distance and provide a surface for the interplay of light and shadow.
Structures often suggest playful shapes and images or the legendary realms
of the Immortals, creating a timeless world separate from the daily
concerns.
In traditional Chinese landscape painting, a tiny pavilion, or T'ing, is
almost always present, dwarfed by vast mountains and waterfalls. The
t'ing is the focal point of the composition, balanced between heaven and
earth, symbolizing humankind's spiritual relationship to the
universe and serving to "borrow" the landscape by providing it with a frame and a
focus. The pavilion is a resting place where one contemplates nature and
"once a place has a t'ing, we can call it a garden."
The Chinese term for landscape is [shan shui], literally "mountains and
water". Water is Yin, the calm, nurturing, yielding element; mountains
are the complementary Yang, vertical and powerful. No garden is complete
without a body of water, its spiritual heart, or monumental
[T'ai Hu] stones, traditionally taken from [Lake Tai] or nearby regions. These
fantastically shaped boulders of eroded limestone evoke the awe of ancient
mountains, seeming at once solid and transparent, suggesting faces,
animals, or spiritual forces. Chinese gardens are designed to be separate
from the distractions of ordinary life, places where one can experience "an eternal moment of suspended time when man and nature seem in perfect accord."
A Walking Tour - St. Louis Chinese Garden
One enters the Chinese garden through the traditional [Moon Gate]. The
moon is a symbol of perfection; the circular opening frames the
view of the garden beyond and reinforces the sense that one is stepping
into a special place. To the right is a group of vertical stones
symbolizing a bamboo grove. The tiles along the wall carry the Missouri
Botanical Garden logo. The curving path is embellished with designs
created with colored pebbles imported from China. Where the path divides,
a yin/yang symbol appears in the pavement, juxtaposed with a monumental
T'ai Hu stone at the edge of the pool. To the right, a white marble
balustrade extends over the water. The pavement is decorated with a
circular emblem of the phoenix, symbol of the empress.
The central pool is irregular in shape, with Missouri stones set around
the edge to suggest the shoreline of a larger lake. It is important for
water to seem natural, with a source and an outflow; here the water flows
down a rocky streambed that suggests a mountain gorge, then beneath a
bridge and into the pool, where it seems to disappear beneath the
overlook. The white marble bridge, with its circular moon shape completed
by its reflection in the water, was a gift from the city of Nanjing.
The hexagonal wooden pavilion, also a gift from Nanjing, stands at the
edge of the pool. Our garden is modelled on the "scholars' gardens" of
the southern provinces near Nanjing, which are smaller and less ornate
than the Imperial gardens of the north. Pavilions in the private gardens
of gentlemen and scholars were used not only as retreats for study and
contemplation, but as places for pleasant social gathering and poetry
contests. The structure is fitted together like a Chinese puzzle, with
carvings representing bamboo, mountains, and the phoenix of the empress.
The great tile roof with its traditional swooping lines seems to echo the
"smiling curves" of the tree branches behind it; it seems to float,
lightly suspended from its lotus final despite its great mass.
Behind the pavilion is an undulating wall pierced with decorative latticed
windows, the "eyes" of the garden. Along a second wall is a stone mural
carved in bas-relief with a view of contemporary Nanjing. The great
wooden exit gate is intricately carved with lotus flower motifs and paved
with an exquisite pebble design of cranes, symbols of longevity.
Traditional plantings include pines, bamboo, and willows. Many ornamental
species familiar to Western gardeners, such as rhododendrons, peonies, and
camellias, originated in China, which has the world's largest temperate
flora.
No scholar's garden would be complete without
inscriptions of poems in traditional calligraphy. On the wall beside the gate is a stone tablet
inscribed with a poem by [Pu Jie], brother of the last Chinese emperor,
[Pu Yi]:
"Sitting alone in a secluded bamboo grove, I was singing while playing the qin, (Chinese stringed instrument) Before realizing, in the deep grove, The moon had already joined me with her beautiful light."
(Translation by Dr. Guanghua Zhu from the Garden.)
For more detail see "A Fairy Landscape Unlike Any on Earth" Missouri
Botanical Garden Bulletin, Sept./Oct. 1995, p. 4-7
(Chinese American Forum, the 67th issue, January 2002.)
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