date trees, must be able to arrange itself commodiously in space. And given
commodious space, in ancient China as in all rural civilizations, the house itself
dwindles to a comparatively less important position in the general scheme of the
home garden.
Human civilization has changed so much that space is something that the average man
cannot own and cannot have. We have gone so far that a man is entirely complacent
when he owns a mow of civilized lawn, in the midst of which he succeeds in digging
a five-foot pond to keep his goldfish and making a mound that would not take ants
five minutes to crawl to the top. This has changed entirely our conception of the home.
There is no more poultry yard, no well and no place where one's children can catch
crickets and get comfortably dirty. Instead, our home becomes physically like a
pigeon's house called an "apartment," with a combination of buttons, switches,
cabinets, rubber mats, keyholes, wires and burglar-alarms which we call a home.
There are no attics, no dirt and no spiders. Our perversion of the idea of a home has
gone so far that some Western people are even proud of the fact that they sleep on a
bed which is the back of a daytime sofa. They show it to their friends and marvel at
modern technological civilization. The modern spiritual home is broken up because
the physical home has disappeared, as Edward Sapir pointed out* People move into a
three-room flat and then wonder why they can never keep their children at home.
The average poor Chinese in the country has more space of his own than a New York
professor. But there are Chinese living in cities as well, and not all of them own huge
gardens.
Art consists in doing with what one has on hand and still allowing for human fancies
to come in and break the monotony of blank walls and cramped backyards. Shen Fu
(middle eighteenth century), author of the Fousheng Liuchi, outlines in this tender
little book, which reflects the best spirit of Chinese culture, how even a poor scholar
can manage to have a beautiful house. From the principle of irregularity in Chinese
architecture we develop, with intricate human fancies, the principle of concealment
and surprise, as capable of infinite development in the designing of the rich man's
country villa as in that of the poor scholar's dwelling house. In Fousheng Liuchi (Six
Chapters of a Floating Life} we find an important statement of this principle. With
this formula we can, according to the author, make even a poor scholar's house
artistically satisfying. This principle is stated in the formula that we should "show the
large ia the mall and the small in the large, provide for the real in the :nreal and for the
unreal in the real." Shen Fu ssays:
As to the planning of garden pavilions and towers, of winding corridors and outhouses, and in the designing of rockery or the training of flower-trees, one should try to show
the small in the large and the large in the small, and provide for the real in the unreal
and for the unreal in the real* One reveals and conceals alternately, making it
sometimes apparent and sometimes hidden. This is not just "rhythmic irregularity,"
nor does it depend on having a wide space and a great expenditure of labour and
material. Pile up a mound with earth dug from the ground and decorate it with rocks,
mixed with flowers; use live plum branches for your fence, and plant creepers over
the walls. Thus there will be a hill in a place which is without hills. In the big open
spaces, plant bamboos that grow quickly and train plum trees with thick branches to
cover them. This is to show the small in the large. When the courtyard is small, the
wall should be a combination of convex and concave shapes, decorated with green,
covered with ivy, and inlaid with big slabs of stone with inscriptions on them. Thus
when you open your window you seem to face a rocky hillside, alive with rugged
beauty. This is to show the large in the small. Contrive so that an apparently blind
alley leads suddenly into an open space and the kitchen leads through a backdoor into
an unexpected courtyard. This is to provide for the real in the unreal. Let a door lead
into a blind courtyard and conceal the view by placing a few bamboo trees and a few
rocks. Thus you suggest something which is not there. Place low balustrades along the
top of a wall so as to suggest a roof garden which does not exist. This is to provide for
the unreal in the real. Poor scholars who live in crowded houses should follow the
method of the boatmen in our native district who make clever arrangements with their
limited space on the bows of their boats, making certain modifications. . . . When my
wife and I were staying at Yangchow, we lived in a house of only two rooms, but (by
such arrangements) the two bedrooms, the kitchen and the parlour were all arranged
with an exquisite effect, and we did not feel the cramping of space. Yiin once said
laughingly to me, "The arrangements are exquisite enough, but, after all, it lacks the
atmosphere of a rich man's house." It was so indeed.
Let us follow for a while these two guileless creatures, a poor Chinese scholar and his
artistic wife, and see how they try to squeeze the last drop of happiness from a poor
and sorrowladen life, always fearful of the jealousy of the gods and afraid that their
happiness may not last.
Once I visited my ancestral tombs on a hill and found some pebbles of great beauty
with faint tracings on them. On coming back I talked it over with Yiin, and said:
"People mix putty with Hsiianchow stones in white stone basins because the colours
of the two elements blend. The yellow pebbles of this hill, however, are different, and
although they are very elegant, they will not blend in colour with putty. What can we
do?" "Take some of the worse quality," said she, "and pound them into small pieces
and mix them in the putty before it is dry, and perhaps when it is dry it will be of the
same colour**1 So we did as she suggested, and used a rectangular Yihsing earthen
pot, over which we piled up a mountain peak on the left, corning down in undulations
to the right. On its back we made rugged square lines like those in the painting of Ni
Ytinlin, so that the whole looked like a rocky precipice overhanging a river. On one side we made a hollow place which we filled with mud and on which we planted
multi - leaf white duckweed. On the rocks we planted dodder. This took us quite a
few days to finish. In late autumn the dodder grew all over the hill, like wistarias
hanging down from a rock. The red dodder flowers made a striking contrast to the
white duckweed, which had grown luxuriantly, too, from the pond underneath.
Looking at it, one could imagine oneself transported to some fairy region. We put this
under the eaves, and discussed between ourselves where we should put a pavilion,
where we should put a farmer's hut, and where we should put a stone inscription,
"Where petals drop and waters flow," And Yiin further discussed with me where
we could build our home, where we could fish, and where we would have to jump
across, all so absorbed as if we were moving into the little imaginary universe to live.
One night two cats were fighting for food and it fell down from the eaves, broken into
pieces, basin and all. I sighed and said, "The gods seem to be jealous even of such a
little effort of our own." And we both shed tears.
What distinguishes a home from a public building is the personal touch that we give it,
and the time and thought we spend on it. Home designs and interior decorations are
not something that we can buy outright from an architect or a first-class firm, and it is
only when this spirit of leisure and tender loving care exists that living at home can
become an art and a pleasure. Both Shen Fu and Li Liweng show this tender love for
the small things of life, and give ingenious advice on the training of flowers, the
arrangement of flowers in vases, the use of courtyards, the art of perfuming, the art of
making windows look out on a superb view that could go into a painting, the hanging
of scrolls, the arrangement of chairs, including Li Liweng3s invention of a heated
desk with charcoal burning iHiderneatii so as to keep the feet warm in winter. It
would be manifestly impossible to go into all these details of interior decoration,
Suffice it to say that in the arrangement of courtyards and the scholars5 studios, and in
the arrangement of vases, the essential idea is the beauty of simplicity. Many of the
scholars* studies are made to look out on a small clean courtyard,, which is the very
embodiment of quietude itself. In the middle of that courtyard stand just two or three
of those rhythmic and perforated rocks, bearing the mark of sea-waves, or some rare
specimens of fossilized barks, and a small bush of bamboos which are so loved
because of the fineness of their lines. Perhaps in the wall is a fan-shaped window with
glazed tiles in bamboo pattern as bars, giving just the merest suggestion of the
existence of a world of wheat fields and farmers* houses outside.
The principle of surprise which Shen Fu outlined for the poor scholar's small
residence holds good in a rich man's home garden. The English word "garden" gives
an entirely erroneous idea of the Chineseyuan^ for "garden" suggests a lawn and an
infinite variety of flowers, altogether too prim and tidy to suit Chinese taste. The
Chinese yuan suggests first of all a wild landscape, perhaps better arranged and more
artistically planned than nature, but still a bit of nature itself, with trees, mounds,
creeks, bridges, a rowing boat, a patch of vegetable fields, fruit trees and some
flowers. Dotted in this natural landscape are the human structures, the bridges, pavilions, long winding corridors, irregular rockeries, and sweeping roofs, so
perfectly belonging to the scenery as to become a whole with it. There are no even-cut
hedges, no perfectly conical or circular trees, no symmetric rows lining avenues as if
in battle formation, and no straight pavements 梟 one of all those elements that
contribute to make Versailles so ugly in Chinese eyes. Everywhere we see curves,
irregularity, concealment and suggestion.
No Chinese mansion allows an outsider to look through the iron gates at a long drive,
for that would be against the principle of concealment. Facing the gate, we see
perhaps a small courtyard or a mound giving no idea whatsoever of the expansiveness
of space inside, and leading one step by step into newer and bigger views, in a
continual series of surprises and astonishments* For we wish to show the small in the
large, and show the large in the small. There is little possibility of gaining a bird's eye
view of the whole at a glance, and if there were, there would be nothing left for the
imagination. The Chinese garden is characterized by studied disorderliness, which
alone can give the feeling of the infinite and make one imagine the garden to be larger
than it is.
There is something amounting to religious fervour and sacred devotion when a
cultivated rich Chinese scholar begins planning for his garden. The account of Ch' i
Piauchia (1602-1645) is interesting as showing this spirit.
In the beginning, I wanted to build only four or five rooms, and some friends told me
where I should build a pavilion and where I should build a summer-house, I did not
think seriously of these suggestions, but after a while these ideas would not let me
alone, and it seemed indeed I should have a pavilion here and a summer-house there.
Before I had finished the first stage, new ideas forced themselves upon me, and they
chased after me in all out-of-the-way places, and sometimes they came to me in my
dreams, and a new vista opened before my imagination. Hence my interest grew
more and more intense every day and I would go to the garden early in the morning
and come back late at night, and leave any domestic business to be attended to under
the lamplight. Early in the morning, while resting on my pillow, I saw the first
rays of the morn and got up and asked my servant to go with me on a boat, and
although it was only a mile off, I was impatient to get to the place. This continued
through winter and summer, rain or shine, and neither the biting cold nor the
scorching sun could restrain ne from it, for there was not a single day when I was not
out jn the spot. Then I felt under my pillow, and knew my money was gone, and felt
annoyed over it. But when I arrived at the spot* I wanted always more and more
stones and material. Hence for the last two years my purse is always empty, and I
have been ill and got well again, and fallen again. . . , There are two halls, three
pavilions, four corridors, two towers and three embankments. ... In general, whore
there is too much space I put in a thing; whore it is too crowded I take away a thing;
where things cluster together I spread them out; where the arrangement too diffuse I
tighten it a bit; where it is difficult to walk upon I level it; and where it is level I introduce a little unevenness. It is like a good doctor curing a patient, using both
