Tu Fu once said "Even if the nation should be destroyed, the mountains and rivers will remain". The Chinese people are well aware of the grandeour in the geography of their land. Chinese civilization has developed over thousands of years in an environment composed of five mountain ranges forming a criss-crossing grid and whose "upland" account for eighty-five percent of the country, leaving a mere fifteen percent of land available for farming. In addition to the mountains is the element of water. There run three great rivers and their tributaries which flow into the East China Sea, with the East China Sea accounting for China's entire eastern boarder. These geographical features have long been ingrained into their culture. The view of landscape as well as villages have long been partitioned by the mountains and the rivers and ocean have long played a part in fertility and deployment of goods. The facination with such enviornmental elements as discussed in the former can been seen reflected in the Chinese garden as well as many other elements of importance to their culture.
The desire for and luxury of having a garden in China grew out of the lack of ownable land. Starting from the beginning of society all farmable land was be
Taoism is similar because allows for man's place in the environment but differs from Confucian thought in that it wants not so much for man to be the controller of things but for man to get in touch with the thing that is governing the things around him. Such Taoist thinking can be seen in the garden possessing elements from the cosmos, such as rocks and ponds, to be available for viewing by an onlooker for contemplation and especially for learning.
As discussed earlier the Chinese garden in essense can be considered a type of art, which instead of being viewed from a distance or through a 'picture window' as often discussed in Western art history, is intended to invite the viewer in physically to explore the many 'frames' it embodies; not just a single view. As one moves through the garden they are not meant to let the retinal images be ends in and of themselves but instead they are meant to conjure up a world, much larger than the garden, in the viewer's mind which in turn can be expressed in forms such as poetry. A literary tradition, especially poetic, is therefore associated with the Chinese garden.
The earliest conceptual 'Chinese garden' were owned by the kings of the Shang up through the Han dynasties. Many attributes of these original gardens can be seen in their more contemporary manifestations, of course the element of hunting was one of the first to be eliminated in China's primarily agrarian society. These spaces were meant to show the wealth of the king in that they were extremely large sections of land and they were to provide a space for such valued leisure activities such has
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