Classical-Gardens

Introduction The Canglang Pavilion is a crystallisation of Song Dynasty spatial intelligence. It is not a mere garden ornament, but a precisely calibrated spatial instrument. Its core design operates on two principles: first, its elevated placement on an earthen hill shapes its identity and choreographs a few paths of arrival; second, the famed Double Corridor, an extension of the architecture, acts as a “spatial filter.” Its walls clearly separate the inner mountainscape from the outer waterscape, while its lattice windows visually blend the two. This architecture’s fundamental role is to orchestrate a perpetual dialogue between the human-made and the natural, the enclosed and the open.

Stolen from a packed business trip, a few hours were all I had for the long-awaited Zhuozheng Garden. I arrived at the gate the moment it opened.

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.