I wanted
to make this post short, just a few highlights. After all, I visited the Humble
Administrator’s Garden at the time of the year when it is least impressive.
However, the highlights were too many and I decided not to deprive the reader
of any. Besides, I missed enough of them anyway. I won’t to talk much about the
history of this garden. Let’s just say that it was laid out in 1509 (Ming
Dynasty) by a retired Imperial Inspector by the name Wang Xian Chen, and in
case you are wondering… no, he wasn’t humble. Just a rich guy who was curious
about the idea of being not rich. Nevertheless, he built a great garden which basically
was his residential compound. The garden is nearly 52,000 sq. m. and images below show
some of its scenery.
The
interiors of the buildings were beautifully appointed too (see images below).
Both
the garden and the indoors featured many quality viewing stones (see images below).
There
was one aspect of Chinese gardens I wasn’t aware of before my trip to China. It
is the mosaic paving. I did talk about Japanese paved paths or nobedan in my post on Katsura Imperial
Villa in Kyoto (see http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/katsura-rikyu.html),
but this is different. Once again I realised that what I’ve seen in Japan is but
a fragment of a bigger whole that exists in China. Images below show some of
the paving in the garden.
The
garden and the buildings as whole have lots of little things that catch your attention
for a moment and then fade away. However, they all add up to the overall
impression of complexity and sophistication. Below are some examples of that,
just to convey the mood of what I’m saying.
Here is
the legend to the images above:
A -
porcelain plant pot with penjing painted on it.
B - funky
padlock
C - beautifully
aged wall plaque
D - cute
hand railing knob
E - old
and gnarly garden tree
F - rock
naturally shaped as an ink stone
No comments:
Post a Comment