GARDENS IN TIME: A REVIEW

NOTES ON THE MAKE-DO GARDEN

by Stanislaus Fung

GARDENS AS CULTURAL MEMORY IN SUZHOU

by Yinong Xu

Stanislaus Fung and Yingong Xu are amongst the first generation of scholars educated both in China and abroad. Both are currently at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Their critical essays on the Chinese Garden often focus on conceptions of time, and how they differ from that of in the West. In Notes on the Make-do Garden, Fung positions the garden as neither an embodiment of a glorified past nor idealistic future. Xu approaches questions of restoration, and how the act of garden making and re-making is to adapt and develop a living narrative intrinsic to the site. Both authors demonstrate the garden as a form of place- making that is able to positions its owner relative to dual temporal realities; society of the day and the values that transcend generations. As Suzhou and China race towards a future where the only certainty is a total departure from the past, where the fragmented suburban landscape is mute to any collective identity, the Garden as described by Fung and Xu appears as an endeavor capable of projecting a cultural identity in relation to living past.

The Make-Do Garden is a fictitious garden created in text by Huang Zhouxing (1611-1680). Huang's essay, "Record of the Make-do Garden," is written in 1674, and participates in a larger interest, particular to the seventeenth century, in imaginary gardens as a vehicle for literary investigation (Stanislaus, 1)

Stanislaus Fung provides a translation to the opening of Huang's Record:

Since antiquity, gardens have been remembered on account of people, and people have also been remembered on account of gardens. Nowadays there are many owners of gardens in the world. How could Huang Jiuyan not have a garden? Indeed, Jiuyan proudly told a guest, "My garden has no fixed location. I merely select the place where the landscape is finest under the Four Heavens, and construct it there. What is called 'the finest place' is in the world, yet out of this world, is not in the world, yet not out of this world. Since I have searched for it from the day I was born, and have only found it after several tens of years, I have not been inclined to speak of it to men of the world." The guests said, "Please describe its general features." Jiuyan replied, "Certainly."

Huang proceeds by describing the landscape of the fictive garden, two accounts of its land and water dominated halves respectively, and concludes by relating the two halves, like ying and yang, with each other. His garden is encircled by an impenetrable ring of mountains. The only opening is through a cave, no larger then the human body, and screened at its entrance by a waterfall. Thus it is isolated from the rest of humanity. It is both of this world and set apart from it.

Fung notes that the layout of the garden is the inverse of a well known fourth century poem "Record of the Peach Blossom Source" (桃花运) by Tao Yuanming (365-427AD). In Tao's poem, a fisherman stumbles upon a peaceful peoples who know no strife. They live in peace amongst peach blossoms and isolated from the society since the beginning of Imperial China under the Qin (221-208 BC). The fisherman leaves but is never able to find the ford back to the Peach Blossoms.

Even in its name, the Make-do Garden suggests temporal transience. Stanislaus Fung presents the imaginary garden as a device that positions its author and viewers neither entirely in the present nor the past. The Make-do Garden is neither entirely Tao's Peach Blossom Grove, nor locked its ring mountains and physical reality. The garden is neither nostalgic nor an idealized future, Arcadia nor Utopia. It is not "insulated" within the flow of time. Its identity lies between multiple histories.