When people think of gardens, they often think of Suzhou. In fact, Shanghai was also a remarkable garden city in ancient times. In the old city of Shanghai, Songjiang and Jiading, exquisite gardens have been created.
"Early Gardens: "Quiet Sound""
Shanghai's earliest name, Huating, is legendary from a royal garden. The Ming Dynasty Zhengde's "Songjiang Fu Zhi" said: "Wu Zi Shou Dream, the beginning of the Construction of Huating, Gaiting Stay Club place also." "During the Spring and Autumn Period, King Shoumeng of Wu built huating on the eastern side of the territory as a place to stay when he was touring. In this way, Huating can be regarded as the palace of King Wu.
The story of Shou Meng belongs to the legend, and I am afraid that it comes from the imagination of posterity. Huating first appeared in historical records during the Three Kingdoms period. After Wu Guoda captured Guan Yu with Lu Xun's plan, he was given the title of Marquis of Huating by Sun Quan because of the Kungang in this area of Lu's hometown. The Lu family lived among the landscapes of Huating and built a beautiful homestead.
Regarding the Lu family, the tragic story of Lu Ji in "The New Language of the World" should also be known to many people. Lu Ji was Lu Xun's grandson, and he and his younger brother Lu Yun went to Luoyang to serve as an official, but were framed and died. Before his execution, Lu Ji sighed: "Huating Crane, how can you hear it again?" ”
Lu Xun's younger brother Lu Mao once opened a fish pond next to his family home, known as Maohu Lake. The water of Maohu Lake is clear and forested, attracting flocks of white cranes to drink water and roost on the beach of Chidong, and the sound is quiet, so this place is also known as The Crane Beach. The Lu Ji brothers played here when they were teenagers, and the sound of cranes in their hometown became Lu Ji's last concern before his death.
In addition to the Lu family's mansion, shanghai's early famous garden also has Gu Yewang's reading pile. It was the private garden of Gu Yewang, a scholar during the Liang Dynasty of the Southern Dynasty. According to the Qing Dynasty's "Jiangnan Tongzhi", "Reading piles, after the Tinglin Baoyun Temple in Huating County, Chen Guyewang read here. The pile is several feet high, stretching across dozens of acres, lin is green, and the wild king ink pond is on its side. ”
There is a dense forest in the area where Gu YeWang's residence is located, called Gu Ting Forest; there is a lake on the edge of the forest, and the scenery is beautiful, called Gu Ting Lin Lake. The lake has been silted up since the Song Dynasty, but the remains of Gu Yewang's reading pile still exist today. Legend has it that there is an inexhaustible deep black pond near the reading pile, which is called the GuyeWang Washed Stone Pond, which is listed in the "Eight Views of the Pavilion Forest" together with the reading pile.
"Song Dynasty Gardens: "Frozen Clouds""
In the Song Dynasty, Maohu Lake was still a famous attraction in Songjiang. During the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Zhichun built a private residence next to MaoHu Lake. Because Lu Ji's "Poetry for Riding from the Brother's Car" has the sentence "As if Gu Shuiyang, WanLou Kunshan Yin", he called this garden Guyang Garden, calling himself Mr. Gu Yang.
There are buildings such as Huzhai and Wenlan Hall in Guyang Garden, which remained until the Qing Dynasty and became part of today's Drunken White Pond. Zhu Zhichun wrote in the poem "Lake Zhai": "Pinghu Lake is ten acres of water and ocean, proud of Mao Zhai and subservient. The garden planted small peaches are now bearing fruit, and the pond planted greenery smells more fragrant. The six turtles have been made for a thousand years, and the double crane looks like August auspicious. ”
The garden is also planted with peach trees, which can bear peaches, and the pond is home to lotuses, which can produce lotus roots, and is an economic manor. Zhu Zhichun said that when he was building a garden, he once picked up six turtles the size of copper coins on the roots of peach trees. He saw it as an auspicious omen and was overjoyed.
There is a crane temple next to Guyang Garden, and cranes fly in every autumn night. The Huating Crane, which began in the Three Kingdoms, remained a landscape in the garden until the Song Dynasty.
Many literati squires in the Song Dynasty were attracted by the landscape of Songjiang and came to build garden villas, and the gardens in Shanghai gradually formed a scale. In addition to Guyang Garden, there are also Liuyuan Garden, Shijiayuan, Donggao Garden and Yunjian Dongtian.
Yunjian Dongtian was the private garden of Qian Liangchen, a politician in the Southern Song Dynasty. It is said that the scale of this garden is very large, "wide round number of miles". Since the beginning of the Song Huizong, the wind of stone viewing has flourished, and the most eye-catching thing in the cloud cave is the artificial mountain stone, and there are twelve peaks of Wushan Mountain, Guanyin Rock and Peach Blossom Cave in the garden. The ancients regarded taihu stone as a "solidified cloud", and there was a pavilion built on the top of the rockery in the park, that is, named "Pengyun Pavilion", which means to be able to make friends with clouds. In 1990, the 4.5-meter-high Taihu Shili Peak was excavated in the Songjiang wasteland, and the cultural relics department identified it as the remains of the Yunjian Cave Sky.
There is also a library in the garden, which is used to enshrine the word "Tongru" in the imperial book of Emperor Guangzong of Song. Jing'an Temple contains the stone stele inscribed "YunHan Zhaohui Pavilion" inscribed by Song Guangzong when he was crown prince, which is also an old object of the Cloud Cave Heaven.
"Yuan Dynasty Garden: "Difficult to Move the Heart of the Hills and Valleys""
From a nationwide perspective, the garden construction of the Yuan Dynasty was far less than that of the Song Dynasty. However, in the Jiangnan region, especially in the area where Shanghai is located today, due to its distance from the war, there was a small climax of gardening at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.
He Liangjun, a scribe of Huating in the Ming Dynasty, recalled the elegance of the former dynasty and praised: "The rich family of Eastern Wu, only Songjiang Cao Yunxi, Wuxi Ni Yunlin, Kunshan Gu Yushan, Shenghua cultural relics can be called together, and the rest must not be listed with them." "The garden of the Songjiang painter Cao Zhibai, together with the Qingjue Pavilion of Wuxi Ni Zhan and the Yushan Jia of Kunshan Gu Ying, is even the first of the three.
Regarding Cao Zhibai's garden, Tao Zongyi, a great scribe at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, wrote a poem "Cao's Garden Pond Line", which began praising "There are not many ponds in Zhejiang's right garden, and Cao's operation is the most ancient." I used to avoid the head of the chaste creek, and the staff was a common garden."
Tao Zongyi, a native of Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, came to Songjiang to escape the war and visited Cao's Garden, leaving a deep impression. Later, he simply moved to Songjiang and built the famous Nancun Caotang, which was depicted in the "Nancun Villa Map" book.
Nancun Villa is located between the Nine Peaks and Three Mountains in Songjiang, and the literati and painters of that time often visited here, Shao Hengzhen, Yuan Kai and other inscriptions wrote poems, and Wang Meng, Ni Zhan and others created pictures.
The "Nancun Villa Map" in the Shanghai Museum, by Tao Zongyi's student Du Qiong, has a total of ten paintings, depicting the main bamboo residence, banana garden, Laiqingxuan, Min Yang Lou, Fujing Pavilion, Luogu Cave, Tateshina Flower Temple, Hetai, Yuyin and Luo Room, a total of ten landscapes. Dong Qichang believes that the Wumen School of painting was founded by Du Qiong, Shen Hengji studied under Du Qiong, and Shen Zhou studied under Shen Hengji.
The first "Bamboo Main Residence" in the "South Village Villa Map" depicts a simple courtyard with two huts and a tile house, which should be Tao Zongyi's residence. Tao Zongyi in the picture stands outside the door in a white robe, talking cordially with the guests; the children in the house have set up tea sets and waited for the adults to come in and enjoy; the bamboo forest behind the house is surrounded by green colors.
Tao Zongyi specifically mentioned this bamboo forest: "Autumn windows can grow bamboo, and the habit turns cool and shade." The letter is like a letter, and it is difficult to move the heart of the hill. "He moved from Zhejiang and lived in Songjiang, although he was a foreigner, he did not change the heart of the hills and valleys, and planted autumn bamboo to the opposite window. This reminds us of the Eastern Jin Dynasty King Huizhi, "temporarily send people empty houses, let the planting of bamboo", bamboo will feel good, then have a sense of homeland.
In addition to the bamboo forest, there are two tall pine trees outside the fence in the front yard, which is particularly eye-catching. Both the bamboo forest and the ancient pine are symbols of high purity and character, expressing Du Qiong's praise for her teacher Tao Zongyi.
The fifth painting, "Mirror Pavilion", depicts a water-facing pavilion where Tao Zongyi and his friends sit and talk. On the right, a boy walked with a red guqin in his arms, and was about to pass through the exquisite lake stone, next to which there were two tall sycamores. Legend has it that Shennong "cut the tong into a qin", and the tong wood is regarded as a good material for making the violin, so the guqin is also called "silk tong".
"Ming and Qing Dynasty Gardens: "Jia Di into the Clouds""
He Liangjun, who was active in the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, pointed out in the "Four Friends Zhai Cong" that social customs in the middle of the Ming Dynasty gradually turned to luxury, and this trend "began in Suzhou and spread to Songjiang". Ye Mengzhu, a scholar of the early Qing Dynasty, mentioned in the "Reading Of the World" that he entered Huating City when he was a teenager, but he saw "Jia Di into the clouds, the famous garden is intricate", and there are garden camps everywhere. It can be said that Shanghai reached the historical peak of gardening in the late Ming Dynasty.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the Gardens of Shanghai included the Famous Luxiang Garden, the Famous Confucian Wanzhu Mountain Residence, gu Zhengxin's Xi Garden, Pan Yunduan's Yu Garden, Chen Suoyun's Rishi Garden, Lu Shusheng's Suitable Garden, Chen Jiru's Xiaokunshan Reading Office, Qin Shaoshu's Yanshi Garden, and Shi Shaoxin's Xishe Mountain Residence, many of which are famous gardens.
As the name of the Luxiang Garden is located in the northwest corner of Shanghai County, the garden peach, diet, embroidery, opera are excellent, so that "the name of Luxiang, reached the world"; Chen Suyun's Rishi Garden is located in the southeast corner of Shanghai County, the park is famous for rockeries, there are four stone mountains and an earthen mountain, showing the superb level of The Ming Dynasty.
The most famous garden in Shanghai in the Ming Dynasty and the best preserved garden today is none other than Yu Garden. In 1577, Pan Yunduan returned from his post and returned to Shanghai to concentrate on building gardens. His father, Pan Enguan, was over eighty years old at the time, and Pan Yunduan built this garden to serve his father, taking the title of "Yu Garden" with the meaning of "happy old relatives". Later, the Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty built the Qingyi Garden in Beijing, also to worship the elders, reflecting the relationship between the garden and filial piety.
Today, the large rockery opposite the pond in Yangshan Hall in Yuyuan Garden is the original structure of Zhang Nanyang in the Ming Dynasty. The northern end is towering as the main peak, and the peak is built with a hexagonal Wangjiang Pavilion, which is the place where the Chongyang Festival ascends and admires the scenery, and you can see the Huangpu River outside the garden; the south is divided into two branches of the east and west by a deep valley, which gradually flattens out, and two bridges are set up above the valley, which not only connect the east and west mountains, but also cover the water veins, which are endless; there is a Ruxiu Pavilion at the foot of the mountain, the left pond and the right mountain, and the view is wide. This rockery is the largest and most complete Yellowstone Mountain in Jiangnan.
Entering the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai gardens continued the construction boom of the Ming Dynasty, and many existing gardens were fixed during this period. Located in Jiading, Qiuxia Garden, founded in the Ming Dynasty during the Zhengde and Jiajing dynasties, is the residence of Gong Hong, the Shangshu of the Ministry of Works. In the second year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty, Jiading was slaughtered three times. The descendants of the Gong clan participated in the anti-Qing struggle, and after the city was destroyed, they were martyred.
After the defeat of the Gong family, the mansion was returned to the Huishang Wang clan, which was greatly expanded and built, renamed Qiuxia Garden, with a total of ten scenes: Peach Blossom Pond, Songfeng Ridge, Yingyu Causeway, Hanxiang Room, Hundred and Five Terraces, Nian Han Trail, Stratus Yunshi, Counting Rain Zhai, Tiqingdu and Sprinkling Snow Corridor. In the fourth year of the Yongzheng Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the Wang family donated the Qiuxia Garden to the City God Temple. In the twenty-fourth year of Qianlong, the Shen Family Garden, which was built on the east side during the Ming Dynasty' Wanli Dynasty, was merged together as the back garden of the City God Temple.
In short, the garden construction of the ancients is a home made by combining the scenery of landscapes and rivers; the garden culture of ancient Shanghai leads the trend of the times in many fields such as calligraphy and painting, drama, embroidery, horticulture, etc., and constitutes Shanghai's precious urban historical and cultural resources. According to the plan, by 2025, the total number of parks in Shanghai will increase to more than 1,000, becoming a veritable park city. In this process, it is worth working together to sort out and taste the excellent culture of Shanghai's classical gardens, and integrate them into the urban construction of the new era, and further create a new landscape of contemporary gardens rich in Jiangnan cultural heritage and Shanghai cultural characteristics.
(The authors Are Liu Shanshan and Huang Xiao, respectively, Associate Researchers of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University and Associate Professors of the School of Landscape Architecture of Beijing Forestry University)
Column Editor-in-Chief: Gong Danyun Text Editor: Xia Bin Title Image Source: IC photo Image Editor: Cao Liyuan
Source: Author: Liu Shanshan Huang Xiao