Rolling On

Well, I have not been able to really dial in on my studies, given the craziness of the holiday season and packing, but I am now in Portland staying with a friend for a week before I fly to Qingdao for a 6-month internship, which I hope to follow up with a few weeks in Suzhou and Wuxi. This morning I am looking over some books about Chinese landscaping that my friend Kenneth aloud me to check out on his PSU library card. Then if the skies clear up a bit, I hope to check out the acclaimed Chinese garden found here in pdx. The architects were supposedly from Suzhou, but more on this garden later. Hopefully this week will be a nice kickstart for my studies into Chinese landscaping.

Purpose

When I began studying Mandarin in my freshman year of college I knew little about Chinese culture (my two primary sources of info had been "Big-Bird Goes to China" and books by Pearl S. Buck my grandmother would let me borrow). Now I have the China-bug. After returning from a 5 week stay in Shanghai during the summer of '05, during which I was able to explore the city of Suzhou, I realized China has much more to offer than manufactured goods. I started diligently digging through the large annals of their traditional music, graphic arts and more.

Landscaping has been another great interest of mine. Over the years I have held many jobs where I could get my hands dirty. One day I hope to combine my interests by creating a landscape architecture business that will specialize in creating gardens stylized after, or influenced by, those found in China. In the spring of 2008 I plan on returning to Suzhou, China so that I may conduct some independent research on their beautiful gardens. For now I plan on using this blog as a portfolio-of-sorts for my studies, by collecting pictures and other info about gardens past, present and future; I say future because the city nearest my hometown, Chattanooga, is actually planning to build a garden designed by architects from their Sister City in Wuxi, China. (For more on that visit: http://chinanooga.com/pages/1/index.htm)


"All the clouds and mists around the three peaks are within my palm"
- Su Shi (1037-1101)

The above painting is of a garden stone often found in a traditional Chinese garden. The Chinese have placed similar naturally-carved rocks in their gardens since the Han dynasty (206B.C. - 220A.D.). They traditionally are not manipulated by human hands and many have been mined from Lake Taihu, near Suzhou. Garden stones such as this often represented famous mountains that were revered in early Confucian and Taoist traditions:

[These stones] were most likely representative of the fanciful paradises known as Penglai, or the Eastern Isle of the Immortals. These paradises were actually perceived to be three or more mountains isolated in the Eastern Sea. The mountains were tall with "craggy, inaccessible peaks" and isolated - even from each other. Since the immortals could fly from one to another, they could easily carry on social commerce among themselves, however, to mere mortals these paradise isles were completely inaccessible. In Chinese paintings these gods are often depicted as cranes flying to or between the tall mountains. The three islands were called Fanghu, Yingzhou, and Penglai, but were also referred to collectively as Penglai. This is where the immortals lived and socialized. It was a mystical place where everything was wonderful and of course highly sought by mankind as well. These paradises were later incorporated into Daoist tradition.
- From: http://shimagata.tripod.com/srhist.htm

After Wudi, a Han emperor from ______, commissioned a garden containing stones representing mythical mountains where gods resided, many Chinese emperors, scholars, etc., have done the same.

To close, a line from "The Tao of Pooh:"

"The essence of the principle of the 'uncarved rock' is that things in their own original simplicity contain their own natural power, power that is easily spoiled and lost when that simplicity is changed."