Nanjing Mustard Seed Garden. Source: Tuchuang Creative
In this garden, one of Li Yu's most proud landscape creations are "size windows" and "unintentional paintings".
rockery is located behind "Fubaixuan", so Li Yu opened a scenic window in the middle of the back wall of Fubaixuan, which is what he called "size window". He put several cut papers around the window frame, and used as the head and tail of a vertical painting and the left and right edges to form a landscape Zhongtang painting, and the landscape in the painting is real mountains and real water. When a person is in the house, sitting and looking at it, the window is not a window, it is a painting. The mountain is not a mountain behind the house, it is the mountain above the painting.
Li Yu claimed to be the second of his two unique skills in his life. One was to judge music, "The other was to set up a garden pavilion, adapting to local conditions... Those who enter his room were like reading the book of Mr. Li on the Lake. Although they lacked talent, they were quite unique."
This uniqueness is the fading of elegance and the rise of the world. Although the little boys of late Ming culture can still live in the new era, they have no courage to challenge society.
Compared with the talent and elegance of Wen Zhenheng's era, the world style has changed drastically. If Li Yu's mustard seed garden is still a little arrogant, then Shen Fu 's Canglangting has completely taken the lower level route, which is closest to ordinary people's lives.
In Shen Fu's "Hidden Life Six Records ", Shen Fu and Yunniang are in the Canglang Pavilion to enjoy the cool and play with the moon, taste the clouds, burn incense and tea, sing casually, collect flowers and stack stones, and plant grass and put in bottles. This garden has no elegant taste or wonderful design. It is all trivial and ordinary things, but it has fun that ordinary people cannot understand.
Canglang Pavilion. Source: Tuchuang Creative
At the end of Yunniang's life, the two lived a life of "quality hairpins and clothes" and selling books and paintings. When he was in a state of hardship, Yunniang heard that Prince Fu wanted Qianren to embroider the Heart Sutra. Yunniang seemed to have grabbed a life-saving straw. After more than ten days of continuous fatigue, "Yun's illness became worse, and she called Shuisuo Tang, and the upper and lower parts of the body were disgusted with it."
At the moment of death, Yunniang did not mind the poverty in this life. On the contrary, she left the world with a hint of sad and indifferent comfort. It was enough that she had experienced the fireworks and gods of Canglang Pavilion in this life.
Yunniang held Shen Fu's hand, said the word "the next life" intermittently, and then left the world of nostalgia. Such aesthetics as
are enough to be touching even if they are so dull.
02
The gardens in Jiangnan are becoming more and more restrained. The era of enterprising and pioneering spring has long passed, and the era of mature but heavy autumn has arrived.
Royal gardens flourished again in the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi built Xiangshan Palace and the Old Summer Palace. By the Qianlong period, there were Wanshoushan , Xiangshan, Yuanmingyuan, and Qingyi Garden in the western suburbs of Beijing, and Chengde Summer Resort to the north. There was Xiyuan in the imperial city, which was rich and gorgeous, more prosperous than Ming Dynasty .
However, Qianlong always felt that there was a little color missing. And the color he was thinking about was in Jiangnan.
At that time, Qianlong especially liked a painting - "Lion Forest Picture" written by painter Ni Zan at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
【Yuan】Ni Zan: "Lion Forest Picture"
In the painting is a private garden in the south of the Yangtze River. Between the pine and bamboo, it is a small garden surrounded by fences. The fences are looming, seemingly there and there are nothing, and there are five houses in it, all of which are mud walls of thatched cottages. On the left side of the painting is a rock, surrounded by a small house with two pine trees in the garden and one old plum tree outside the garden. There are no details in the whole picture, and it is full of sparseness.
Qianlong loved this painting to the extreme. He imitated Ni's paintings many times and wrote poems and postscripts on it. In his poem "Ni Zan's Lion Forest", the beginning is "I'll ask Lion Forest , what should be there be?"
But every time Qianlong saw this painting, he felt sorry. This painting was in the early Ming Dynasty. The real lion forest may have been submerged in the long river of history for hundreds of years.
However, fate is so wonderful.On the second southern tour, after Qianlong arrived at Suzhou , local officials welcomed him to the lion forest. The garden in the painting turned into a scene in front of him, which made Emperor Qianlong very excited. For this reason, he specially sent someone to send Ni Zan's paintings from the capital to Suzhou.
The officials who welcomed the car told Emperor Qianlong that this place is now called "Sheyuan" and has not been modified, which is its true nature. Looking at the scenery here, the springs and stones were half destroyed, the houses were not decorated, and the clear and sparse scenery actually had the meaning of Ni Tu. Qianlong was still walking in the painting.
Since then, Emperor Qianlong would come to the Lion Grove every southern tour, and always take Ni Tu with him. Even when he was in Beijing, he often took out paintings and recalled the scenery of the pictures, like a woman in love.
Suzhou Lion Forest. Source: Tuchuang Creative
He decided to move the scenery here to the north and build a lion forest in the Changchun Garden in the Old Summer Palace. Even the plaques hung are sent to Suzhou for manufacture. This is especially not enough. Two years later, Qianlong imitated this scene in the Summer Resort.
Whether it is Changchun Garden or the Summer Resort, the emperor felt that the imitation of the garden scenery was not as good as the old garden in Suzhou. He wrote in his poem: "It looks a little like the new structure, but I feel that it is lost to this ancient forest."
Qianlong's pursuit of the lion forest and imitation of the construction were actually just the tip of the iceberg.
During the southern tour, Qianlong ordered painters to follow him and paint famous gardens and scenery in the south of the Yangtze River into pictures, and built a large number of them in the imperial palace in the northern part of the imperial garden. For example, Qingyi Garden has imitated the "Huishan Garden" and Xiyuan has imitated the "Thousand Flying Snow" and the Old Summer Palace has imitated the construction more. There are lion forests, small ones include Tianyuan, Anlan Garden , and Zhanyuan . It can be said that the famous garden landscape in the south of the Yangtze River is all in one place. The transplant behavior of
has injected new vitality into the royal garden system in the north and achieved unprecedented prosperity for royal gardens in the mid-Qing Dynasty.
Chengde Summer Resort Lion Forest. Source: Tuchuang Creative
From a certain perspective, Qianlong was more like a literati in the traditional Chinese sense. Throughout history, it is not uncommon for emperors to have aspirations from literati. The citation world was founded in , Li Yu, and the famous calligraphy and painting masters Qin and Hui. These emperors did have a strong interest in culture, and some people's calligraphy, painting, lyrics and verses are much higher than those of Emperor Qianlong, but their control over the entire country cannot be compared with Qianlong. The elegance of the emperors in front of
is just elegance. Behind Qianlong’s imitation of Jiangnan gardens actually expressed a cultural and psychological possession of Jiangnan.
Interestingly, after Qianlong's fourth southern tour to Beijing, that is, in the 30th year of Qianlong, the royal gardens ushered in the second peak of imitation construction.
At the same time, literary inquisition began to revive: in the 37th year of Qianlong's reign, the emperor began to issue an edict to collect books and organize " Yongle Encyclopedia ", and intended to compile " Siku Quanshu "; in the 40th year of Qianlong's reign, the emperor ordered the compilation of "Biography of the Two Ministers"; the following year, the emperor issued an edict to compile "Records of Loyal Ministers for Sacrifice"...
The picturesque gardens in Jiangnan are still in Beijing - the emperor's arms.
As a holy land of literati, Jiangnan, the center of economic importance, is just a part of the empire.
03
The rulers of the Qing Dynasty had a tradition: they did not like to live in Forbidden City to deal with political affairs.
Kangxi likes Changchunyuan , and a court meeting is held here for at least seven or eight months a year. Since Yongzheng, the Old Summer Palace has become the emperor's preference. For a total of 160 years, they have handled national affairs in the Old Summer Palace. In the tenth year of Xianfeng, the British and French coalition forces invaded Beijing, and the royal gardens in the western suburbs were destroyed, and no imperial garden could be used as a place to escape the summer heat.
Old Summer Palace ruins. Source: Tuchuang Creative
After Xianfeng passed away, Cixi Regent and began her forty-eight years of political career.She didn't want to live in the Forbidden City, which she cursed as "red walls, green tiles, black gutters", but the gardens were destroyed, so where could there be a satisfying treasure land?
1886, a document titled "Reply to Reply to the Old System of Kunming Lake Water Warfare" was placed on the desktop of Empress Dowager Cixi. This article clearly stated that the old system practiced by Kunming Lake Navy should be restored. The article says that the pavilions along the lake are decadent and you should spend some money to repair them, otherwise the effect of practicing the navy will not be good.
years, under the guise of preparing for Kunming Lake Naval Academy, the plan to rebuild Summer Palace quietly began. This work belongs to the naval department, so the funds naturally need to be paid by the naval department. This is the beginning of Cixi's embezzlement of naval military spending.
The Summer Palace has gradually returned to its former appearance, and pavilions, towers, plants, flowers, strange stones and green willows have all returned. After the restoration of the Summer Palace, Cixi would stay here for ten months every year, and this garden also became the second political center.
On the tenth day of the 20th year of Guangxu (1894), it was the 60th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi. Almost sixty years old, Cixi attaches great importance to this birthday. In order to receive congratulations in the Summer Palace, Cixi asked the officials in charge of the construction to make a written report on the progress of the project to her every five days, and even construction as usual during the Spring Festival.
After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, although Cixi was in charge of the war, when someone suggested stopping the Summer Palace project and transferring military expenses, Cixi directly put down her face and said, "If I don't like today, I will also make her feel unhappy for life!"
So this strange scene appeared: the soldiers on the front line fought desperately with the enemy, but in the Forbidden City, they were busy celebrating Cixi's birthday, singing and dancing to peace, "listening to the opera for three days, everything was delayed."
Cixi's Summer Palace is like Beijing City A beautiful tattoo, under the glamour, full of sores and blood. Some people want to pull it out, some people want to keep it, and the Summer Palace is gradually shrouded in blood and conspiracy.
Cixi. Source: Internet
Emperor Guangxu appointed Kang Youwei , Tan Sitong , Yang Rui A group of new people who reformed and reformed in an attempt to overthrow the rear party. Cixi also agreed with her confidant, Ronglu, to accompany her to Tianjin to parade in autumn, and then she would force Emperor Guangxu to abdicate with her troops and establish a new emperor.
Emperor Guangxu realized that Cixi's dispatched troops and sent Yang Rui to send a secret decree: "Now my position is not guaranteed. Kang Youwei, Yang Rui, Lin Xu, Tan Sitong, Liu Guangdi can quickly and try to save each other." After
, Tan Sitong visited Yuan Shikai in Fayuan Temple , and directly showed up: Yuan Shikai wanted to raise his troops to kill Ronglu, and surrounded the Summer Palace to capture the Empress Dowager Xi to save the emperor. Tan Sitong touched his neck with his hand and said, "If you don't want to save the emperor and report to the Summer Palace and kill my head, you can also get a high-ranking official."
Yuan Shikai knew that the confrontation between the Emperor and the Later Party was tantamount to hitting a stone with an egg, so he decisively threw himself at the Empress Dowager Cixi. Cixi was not a vegetarian either. She launched a coup a day before Yuan Shikai reported the news.
In the end, Reform of 1898 failed. Cixi took the power and imprisoned Emperor Guangxu in Langtai in Zhongnanhai and Yulantang in the Summer Palace in the western suburbs. " Six Gentlemen in 1898" was killed at the execution ground in Caishikou.
Ironically, in order to ensure the safety of the Summer Palace, Cixi specially issued an order to increase the walls around the Summer Palace by three meters. This stubborn fortress is even more difficult to break from within.
In the 26th year of the Guangxu period (1900), the invaders arrived again, like a giant ship rolling over the Summer Palace. Treasures were robbed, woods were cut down, and pavilions were burned. This time, no one can keep its prosperous style.
Summer Palace. Source: Tukong Creative
1921, Japanese writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke once traveled to China.On the one hand, his majesty and breadth of ancient civilization were deeply touched. On the other hand, he disliked China at that time: "What is modern China? Isn't politics, knowledge, economy, and art all degenerate?"
He sighed: "This is my first time to come to China. After I came, I felt that it would be better if I had come earlier. If China did not come as soon as possible, as time passed, those ancient things would have been destroyed."
In his eyes, China at that time was devastated and had no taste.
This arrogance spread viciously in Japan, and eventually prompted Japan to launch a war of aggression against China.
The country is unfortunate and Jiangnan is in trouble.
Starting from August 15, 1937, Japanese fighter jets began to carry out barbaric air strikes on Nanjing, which lasted for nearly four months, blowing many places and famous buildings in the ancient city of Nanjing into a sea of fire and ruins. Only the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum left two bullet holes, one large and one small, and became the only garden in Nanjing at that time that was not severely damaged by the Japanese army and was well preserved.
During the Japanese occupation of Suzhou, many gardens suffered great damage. Military horses were raised in the gardens, feces were everywhere, and exquisite carvings were dismantled and burned.
Looking at the history of the Republic of China, although there have been more than half a century, wars have continued. I don’t know how many beautiful scenery in Jiangnan finally became a ruin, becoming the last elegy of the Chinese classical gardens in .
References:
Wang Yi: "History of Chinese Garden Culture", Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2004.
Chu Zhaowen: "History of Chinese Gardens", Oriental Publishing Center, 2008.
weeks of rights protection: "History of Classical Gardens in China", Tsinghua University Press, 2008.
Chen Congzhou: "Garden Qinghua", Zhonghua Book Company, 2017.
Huang Xingtao, Kan Hongliu, etc.: "Research on Royal Gardens of the Qing Dynasty (First Volume)", Beijing United Publishing Company, 2019.
