Suzhou as a Garden City
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Marco
Polo, one of the first Westerners to visit and write about Suzhou,
called it the "Venice of the Orient." Suzhou is favored
by a mild climate and rich agricultural land and is laced with
rivers, canals and hundreds of bridges. Suzhou's great wealth provided the fluid capital to finance garden construction, while the Chinese religious and social environment helped provide the incentive. In a society where material possessions could be considered vulgar, the wealthy were encouraged to invest in cultural and artistic expression. But wealth and a philosophy for investing that wealth were only two of Suzhou's advantages. The surrounding region is rich in the construction materials that would come to define the Scholar's Garden. West of the city are mountains that produced the special granite used in construction. Lake Tai offered its exquisitely sculptured stones. Lumber, not available everywhere in China, was in abundance in the area. The city was also a center of artists and artisans. It was home to a flourishing silk trade and the site of the imperial kilns for the creation of tiles and porcelains. Many government officials of the Ming and Qing periods were born in Suzhou, and retired there after their government service. Their status in the community, their wealth and the resources of Suzhou made the city a natural center for the construction of Scholar's Gardens. In Suzhou's 2,500 year history, thousands of gardens were built. Unfortunately, only 60 have survived, 19 of them open to the public. However, those that have endured are a leigacy of extraordinary beauty, art and artistry. |
Located
near the northern shore of Lake Tai, China's third largest lake
(and the source of many of the stones appearing in The New York
Chinese Scholar's Garden), Suzhou accumulated vast wealth during
the Ming Dynasty derived from banking, commerce and agriculture.
