Chinese Garden - Philosophy

Philosophy

Even though everything is the work of man, it must appear to have been created by heaven...

The Chinese classical garden had multiple functions. It could be used for banquets, celebrations, reunions, or romance. It could be used to find solitude and for contemplation. It was a calm place for painting, poetry, calligraphy, and music, and for studying classic texts. It was a place for drinking tea and for poets to become happily drunk on wine. It was a showcase to display the cultivation and aesthetic taste of the owner. But it also had a philosophical message.

Taoism had a strong influence on the classical garden. After the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), gardens were frequently constructed as retreats for government officials who had lost their posts or who wanted to escape the pressures and corruption of court life in the capital. They chose to pursue the Taoist ideals of disengagement from worldly concerns.

For followers of Taoism, enlightenment could be reached by contemplation of the unity of creation, in which order and harmony are inherent to the natural world. The gardens were intended to evoke the idyllic feeling of wandering through a natural landscape, to feel closer to the ancient way of life, and to appreciate the harmony between man and nature.

In Taoism, rocks and water were opposites, yin and yang, but they complemented and completed one another. Rocks were solid but water could wear away rock. The deeply eroded rocks from Lake Taihu used in the classical garden illustrated this principle.

The winding paths and zig-zag galleries bridges that led visitors from one garden scene to another also had a message. They illustrated a Chinese proverb, "By detours, access to secrets".

According to the landcape historian and architect Che Bing Chiu, every garden was "a quest for paradise. of a lost world, of a utopian universe. The scholar's garden participated in this quest; on the one hand the quest for the home of the Immortals, on the other hand the search for the world of the golden age so dear to the heart of the scholar."

A more recent view of the philosophy of the garden was expressed by Zhou Ganzhi, President of the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture, and Academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, in 2007: "Chinese classical gardens are a perfect integration of nature and work by man. They are an imitation of nature, and fully manifest the beauty of nature. They can also be seen as an improvement on nature; one from which the light of human artistic genius shines."