The Classical Gardens of Shanghai

Classical Chinese gardens in the springtime are a beautiful sight, but they’re an even more profound experience when you know what you’re looking at.

This Sunday (April 27, 11am) we’re visiting Guyi Garden with Shelly Bryant, author of The Classical Gardens of Shanghai. It’s a remarkable, revealing experience, as she takes us through the garden’s origins and tumultuous history, and providing the context with which to begin to truly appreciate this ancient Chinese art form.

Viewing a Chinese classical garden is not meant to be a passive activity, explains Shelly, quoting Ming-era garden designer Ji Cheng: “The visitor is expected to enter the garden not only physically but also intellectually and emotionally. There is no definite way of making the most of scenery. You know it is right when it stirs your emotions.”

The classical Chinese gardens were created by the literati, creating microcosms of the world, spaces where they showed off their learning. The gardens are an expression of culture, rich with literary references, and more: these are poetry and paintings brought to life.

As Lynn Pan says in describing the book, “Shanghai’s classical gardens are as much text as space: they exist in art, poetry, and literature, as much as in stone, rock, and earth.” One of the highlights of a walk with Shelly, an acclaimed poet and translator, is the inclusion of this ‘text’ –  the literature that inspired the gardens – beautifully translated into English.

You learn the fascinating tales and histories of each garden, and interesting insights: None of Shanghai’s gardens are original, nor were they meant to be. The surviving gardens (Yu Garden, Qiuxiapu, Qushui, Guyi, and Zuibaichi) have been through social and dynastic shifts, failing family fortunes, revolution – and remodelling.

The classical gardens survived the turbulent 1950s and ‘60s, for example, in part because the wartime Japanese destruction of gardens immediately made them a symbol of national pride, and in part because of Zhou En Lai’s protection, knowing that once China reopened, it would need unique cultural attractions. But the politics of the time meant that the 1950s-era gardens de-emphasized culture (inextricably linked as it was to “old society”).  Instead of poetry and art, the gardens during that period were simply about nature.

Through the centuries, designers have referenced the old literature in restoring and remodelling the gardens, with fresh interpretations. In restoration, the critical point is to reproduce the effect the original designers sought, in ultimately achieving the same goal: to stir the heart.

Sunday April 27, 11am/RMB 350 members, 450 nonmembers, includes lunch/To book, click here.

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Available at this link