Studies

Picture this: you’re transported 600 years back to 15th-century China. The emperor, hearing of your unparalleled skill as a builder, summons you to build his new palace. The emperor’s top priority? How soon he can move in. The scope of the palace is quite ambitious: it covers 8,700 halls and rooms of all sizes. The footprint of the buildings alone, excluding gardens and plazas, is equivalent to 15 soccer fields.

A headache, brought on by matters at work, was my companion to the Canglang Pavilion on a gloomy morning. It is one of the oldest gardens in Suzhou, a city of canals and white-walled dwellings that stands as a living archive of China’s garden design, deep in the Jiangnan region, the historic centre of Chinese literati culture. Instead of heading directly for the famous structure, I circled behind to an unassuming cluster of buildings—the Cuilinglong.

After seven consecutive days of work and rushing through ten cities, I stole a half-day of leisure before boarding my flight back to Australia to visit Wuxi’s renowned Jichang Garden. I had long wished to see it in person. One reason is its brilliant and grand design: the garden rests against Huishan Mountain while borrowing the scenery of Xishan Mountain, from which the Song Dynasty Longguang Pagoda can be seen atop the hill. The distances, proportions, mountain contours, and pagoda silhouette—together with their reflections in the garden’s lake—are perfectly balanced, like a meticulously composed Song landscape painting: serene and restrained, yet brimming with life. Of course, this is only the beginning. The true marvel lies in the artificial hills along the lakeshore, which seem to extend as natural continuations of the surrounding ranges, their heads greeting Xishan and their tails pointing toward Huishan. This effect—though man-made, as if born of nature—is a rare achievement in later Chinese gardens, particularly those of the late Ming and Qing, which grew ever more ornate and affected.

Prologue I stand before a painting. Around me are countless visitors to the exhibition, but for a moment they all seem to vanish, leaving me alone with the artwork. It depicts an utterly ordinary riverside meadow, with a few small trees growing haphazardly. Through the branches, glimpses of clean river surface and a stone arch bridge in the distance emerge; there appears to be a figure on the bridge. Wildflowers carpet the ground, and leaves tinged with yellow amid the green speak of a fresh spring day.