(piano music)
- [Steven] We've walked through a warren of
back alleys to find the entranceway to what was once
a private garden in the city of Suzhou,
known as the Master of the Fishing Nets.
- [Kristen] The name was inspired by
this idyllic life of a fisherman,
that name came later, came in the 18th century,
but the site itself dates to the 12th century.
- [Steven] Back to the southern Song dynasty,
but this is a garden that has been continuously
reworked over the years.
Now we should say that a contemplative Chinese garden
is not what we think of in the West
when we think of the formal gardens of Versailles,
for example, or the lush overgrown gardens
of the manor houses in England.
This is completely man-made.
- [Kristen] And this was a place where
people lived, it's an estate.
- [Steven] The modern city of Suzhou
has more than 50 surviving gardens,
in part because this area has always been an important
place of commerce and great wealth,
but also because it is steeped historically
in highly intellectual culture.
- [Kristen] Suzhou is known as
the ancient region of Wu.
This idea of Suzhou as a grand canal city
was also very important, it was a place that was in between
networks of trade, and the city profited over the years,
and still even today as one of the prominent
economic cities in China.
- [Steven] The Grand Canal links north and south,
and it was one the great engineering feats of ancient China.
- [Kristen] And through the Ming dynasty
it was still a bustling center for trade,
very cosmopolitan city.
- [Steven] So the idea of a garden within
a metropolis is a place of respite,
it's a place of contemplation,
it's a place into which one can retreat.
- [Kristen] To call it a garden,
it's hard to see that on the first few steps,
you see built spaces, walls and buildings,
glimpses of courtyards along either side,
- [Steven] It's important to understand
that the garden is in fact fully constructed.
There is nothing natural here, everything is planned,
everything is purposeful.
As we enter into the garden we move through
a series of halls, that is small buildings
punctuated by even smaller courtyards,
creating a rhythm of enclosed open enclosed spaces.
- [Kristen] We progress through these
different structures, the reception halls,
we get glimpses of the natural world
as it's drawn in through windows and doors.
- [Steven] We've just walked northward
through a series of buildings and a series of courtyards,
and we've entered into our first really open space.
It's this beautiful interior court that is paved
with a begonia pattern,
and then there are small islands in the corner
of rocks, of plantings, and when you look at the bamboo
for example, having looked at so many Chinese ink paintings,
when I look at these leaves, I almost see
the individual strokes of the paintbrush.
- [Kristen] They draw you back to the rocks,
these vertical stone slabs, these are bamboo rocks,
they look like stalks of bamboo,
following your eye down to a cluster of long leaves
of grass that seem to echo that verticality.
- [Steven] And then we have these wonderful grottoes,
these rocks that are perforated,
pierced with all these wonderful nooks,
they're incredibly complicated, they've been carved
naturally by the water in Lake Tai,
but have been enhanced by the hand of
the man who constructed this garden.
- [Kristen] We have texts on constructing gardens
that date to the 17th century.
This idea of crafting a garden,
how many groupings, how many rocks,
which way they should lay,
all of this was laid out very carefully.
- [Steven] So this idea that a garden
is a natural place is not quite right,
this is a distillation of the qualities of nature,
that have been made more potent, very much the way
that a painting will pick and choose elements of nature
to create a specific kind of composition,
and in fact when we look at some of the plantings
against this beautiful dirty white wall with its cracks,
we get a sense of the two dimensionality
of Chinese landscape painting.
- [Kristen] It's really a presentation of contrasts,
it allows you to see these variations.
- [Steven] There are so many contemplative aspects
here, because you see the changes of the seasons
in the foliage, but then you also have a sense of
the eternity suggested by the great age of the rocks
that are here. This is rock that has been sculpted
by water over eons, that things change
but at different scales of time.
- [Kristen] These very old rocks
and these very young tender branches of bamboo,
then the garden look entirely different
from week to week and month to month of every year.
- [Steven] We've moved into the northern part
of the garden, which is associated with
intellectual pursuits, and in fact,
we're in Five Peaks Library.
- [Kristen] So, first we've gone from this area
that's very public to now the very private area,
the very contemplative realm of the garden.
We see windows that open to big views of stone gardens,
rockery, and walls that are ornamented with trees,
with foliage, with windows, glimpses through
to the other buildings.
- [Steven] It's true this hall,
the Five Peaks Library, is surrounded on its two long sides
by rockeries with immense stones,
and the stones here feel powerful, it feels concentrated,
it feels a little more intense,
this would be a great place to study, to read and to write.
We've just rounded a bend, and looked through
a wooden doorway, through a moon gate,
into this wonderful surprise,
this pond in the center of the garden.
- [Kristen] This is only about an acre,
this entire garden, quite small,
but it's so artfully presented.
We go from even just looking at the ground
that we're walking on, these rocks that are laid,
in patterns of triangles and hexagonals,
and then we step up and over a little ledge
which is part of a moon window,
leading us into this organic realm of the pond
- [Steven] I love the fact that paving changes
from courtyard to courtyard, and in this case
what almost look like shards of broken glass
are reflected in the latticework of the doors
that frame that courtyard.
We've walked around the edge of the pond
into a little six-sided pavilion,
that seems to cantilever over the water.
- [Kristen] It seems like the water
is so expansive, creeping and meandering beneath
the buildings, and they seem to float on top of it.
This particular pavilion is named in reference to a poem,
and the verse that it recalls reads,
The twilight brings the autumn
And the breeze sends the moon here.
So this idea of the end of the day, the darkening of autumn.
- [Steven] I love the ephemeral evocation,
and also the literary reference that the pond
is referring back to literature which would be known
by the people that would inhabit this space.
- [Kristen] Every one of the buildings,
every one of the views, all of the sights all have names.
You'll see buildings inscribed with poetic couplets,
we'll see rocks with hints at verses,
this connection between all of the media
that we've been studying.
- [Steven] And we spent the last few days
looking at ink painting, and it really helps me see
the compositions that are intended here.
Throughout the architecture of the garden
there are framed windows, there are screens that set up
very particular views in this miniaturized
intensified landscape.
- [Kristen] Along one side of the pond
would be the area where intellectual activities
would take place.
Down to the other side would be more for social areas,
you can see larger halls, spaces where perhaps
poems would be read, where painting might be appreciated,
where guests might come to hear music.
- [Steven] Although the garden of course
is three-dimensional, there is that collapsing of space
with rocks and foliage against those white walls,
creating a kind of two-dimensionality,
and yet at the same time, we're asked to wander up paths
that rise up into rock formations
so that we can get views and begin to see
this very small garden from a whole different
set of perpsectives.
You get the sense that the people who designed this garden
over generations were intensifying the qualities of nature
in order to provoke a kind of intensified creativity
for their own literature, for their own poetry,
and for their own painting.
So if the garden functions as a refuge,
what were the creators of this garden
protecting themselves from, what were they
turning their backs away from?
- [Kristen] Oftentimes these were sites of
retirement, of course they're sites of leisure,
they're private worlds of these scholars,
places for them to entertain their guests
and to meet with others.
They often had careers at court.
Some of them in other contexts were merchants,
in this case most of the hands that this passed through
they were officials.
This idea of having this Confucian self cultivation,
this idea of perfecting your calligraphy,
the things that they had been studying
since they were young children,
sitting for their examinations,
trying to get into the civil service,
cultivating that lifelong talent,
and then writing to each other,
admiring calligraphy and painting together.
- [Steven] But it wasn't just about skill,
it was moral cultivation, that calligraphy, literature,
the making of gardens, the making of paintings,
these were all things that helped one perfect oneself
to rise to a a higher level.
(piano music)