T'IEN HSIA

Chinese Gardens
Especially in Kiangsu and Chekiang

Chuin Tung 童雋

Chuin Tung 童雋, 'Chinese Gardens, Especially in Kiangsu and Chekiang', T'ien Hsia Monthly, Vol.III, No.3, October 1936, pp.220-244.

Weng Garden

A French poet once declared, 'J'aime fort les jardins qui sentient le sauvage.' This just hits upon the difference between Western and Chinese gardens, the latter being entirely devoid of the jungle atmosphere. The Chinese garden is primarily not a single wide open space, but is divided into corridors and courts, in which buildings, and not plant life, dominate. But garden architecture in China is so delightfully informal and playful that even without flowers and trees it would still make a garden. On the other hand, Western gardens consist much more of landscape than of architecture. The buildings, if any, stand in solitary splendour. Foliage, flowers and fountains are much more akin to one another than to the buildings, in spite of the effort to arrange them architecturally, even to the extent of laying them out symmetrically and axially….