"This Little Paradise": Aviaries in 18-19th century Guangzhou gardens

I am happy to have been given 4 pages to discuss 18-19th century Guangzhou aviaries in the latest issue of Historic Gardens Review! For now it is only a preview on their website and the physical journal, but in the future it will be available as an online article.

I notably included rare pictorial evidence of aviaries in Guangzhou and Macao, as well as comparisons with British vision of Chinese aviaries and their feathery inhabitants. I found that it was  a good way to capture the difference between chinoiserie and actual examples of Chinese garden buildings with contemporary evidence!

For a taste of what the article starts with, I invite you to read Patrick Baty's blog post on the aviary at Dropmore Park. The aviary as illustrated by Barbara Jones, was made with tiles from Canton and in a style reminescent of Chambers' chinoiserie, but surprisingly appears relatively close to what a late 18th- early 19th century aviary in Guangzhou or nearby Macao might have looked like.

New topic, new talk! Botanical Art, Botanical Commerce: Britain meets China at the Dawn of Modernity

I only recently passed my viva for my PhD on Hong merchant's gardens in Guangzhou during and after the Canton System. While I am writing corrections, I already have started a post-doc on a closely related topic: Sino-Western botanic exchanges!

This will be my first talk as part of my new project:

Botanical Art, Botanical Commerce: Britain meets China at the Dawn of Modernity

Oxford, March 24th

 

Learn more about the botanical interactions between Britain and China in the 18th century in this talk focused on an exceptional as of yet underused primary source.
    
Former director of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew Sir Peter Crane, author and expert in the history of science, medicine and culture Jordan Goodman and expert in Sino-British exchanges and China Trade paintings Josepha Richard discuss the John Bradby Blake collection.
     
Crane is inaugural President of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Virginia, USA, which contains the archive of 18th-century East India Company supercargo John Bradby Blake. Blake first visited Canton in 1767/68 as a trader and, before his death in 1773, his collaboration with the Chinese artist Mauk-Sow-U produced over 150 striking and botanically accurate paintings of Chinese plants. These paintings and the associated archives provide details of an interesting life and previously little-known dimensions of late 18th-century social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese, including British attempts to secure living plants that could prove useful at home and in its colonies.
 
The panel is part of FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival and will be introduced by deputy editor of FT Weekend Jane Owen.

This event is part of a series for FT day at the festival and lasts 45 minutes.

Book tickets here.

Dates announced for the next conference on Chinese gardens & landscape! Oct 26/27th 2017

A conference co-organised by the Gardens Trust & the Department of Landscape (University of Sheffield)

 Featuring engaging talks by specialists in several aspects of Chinese gardens and landscapes (such as history, poetry, botany, social life, layout). 

The provisional program will be announced shortly!
Disclaimer: The previous announcement was off by one day, the conference is confirmed for 26-27th of October 2017.

Online review of 'The Classical Gardens of Shanghai' by Shelly Bryant

I am always interested in Chinese local garden history, which is why I reviewed the following book:

Bryant, Shelly. The Classical Gardens of Shanghai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016.

To read it please click here to go on newbooks.Asia.

The book is available notably through JSTOR and its publisher HKUPress.

Here is reproduced the short biography for Shelly Bryant available on the HKUPress website:

Shelly Bryant, poet, translator, teacher, researcher, and writer, splits her time between Singapore and Shanghai. She is the author of six poetry collections and two travel guides, and has translated more than ten books from Chinese to English.

Guest blog at China Policy Institute: on Chinese-style gardens and soft power

Fanghuayuan, Orchid Garden, Guangzhou. Credit Richard, Josepha (2009)

This time I am happy to have a blog post published at the China Policy Institute Analysis blog platform.

The title is "Are Chinese-style gardens built outside of China a form of 'soft power'?" and it was a question I had been wondering about for quite some time. 

Feel free to comment on the original post in order to advance the debate.

The China Policy Institute is a centre of expertise on contemporary China based at the University of Nottingham, UK. Their blog platform, "CPI Analysis" hosts almost daily reflections on diverse aspects of Chinese life, news, politics, economics, etc.

CFPapers: Chinese garden and landscape history conference, Fall 2017, Garden History Society/University of Sheffield, UK

Following the success of the "New approaches in Chinese garden history" conference in June 2015, Jan Woudstra of the department of Landscape (University of Sheffield, UK) is helping the Garden History Society to organise another conference on the theme of Gardens and Landscape history of China, to be held at the University of Sheffield in the autumn of 2017.

This initial call for paper has for aim to hear about any ongoing research, and come up with a theme. Speakers would preferably be based in the UK/Europe (because of travel expenses).

Please forward us your abstract of about 300 words before the 25th of September 2016, to: j.richard@sheffield.ac.uk

Guest blog at Visualising China - Documenting gardens of China through early photographs

 Photograph 486, Joseph Rock Collection, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Photo: J. Richard

This time I wrote a guest blog post for the Visualising China blog, about "Documenting gardens of China through early photographs".

"Visualising China is a JISC-funded project to allow users to explore and enhance more than 8000 digitised images of photographs of China taken between 1850 and 1950. It allows access to many previously unseen albums, envelopes and private collections and also major collections such as Historical Photographs of China, the Sir Robert Hart Collection and Joseph Needham's Photographs of Wartime China. These have many sub-collections and albums. We hope you will contribute by using your knowledge to comment on or annotate these images.

Read more about Visualising China"

Exploring Johnston's Archives (related to gardens of China) in Needham Institute part 3: Printed maps

Map 1 (Tube2): 北京市什刹海， 历史文化风景区远期规划，古迹分布分析图, December 1989

During the referencing of the Johnston Archives, I came across a number of printed maps (as opposed to the maps drawn by Johnston himself). Some of these are mostly interesting as memorabilia of tourism in China in the 1980-90s and will be treated in a separate post; the present post will review a few others that probably have historical value.

1) The map shown at the top of the article represents the planning of the historical zone of Beijing Shichahai (Beihai, Zhonghai, Nanhai), and could be of interest to urban planners and historians. 北京市什刹海， 历史文化风景区远期规划，古迹分布分析图, December 1989.

2) Specialists might also be interested in the map of Tongli, made in April 1980 (同里缜房屋分佈签 ). Its scale is 1 :1000, and according to my Chinese landscape architect friend was made by computer and hand (a type called 晒图 ). I wonder how it ended up in Johnston's collection as it was probably not something you could get easily as a foreigner at that time.

Map 2 (2016/1): 同里缜房屋分佈签, April 1980

3) Of similar technique is the map of Lili 黎里镇平面图 , scale of 1:5000, (晒图 type). Two dates appear: 1974 & 1982.

Map 3 (2016/1): 黎里镇平面图, 1982

4) A map of Ningbo that could not immediately be dated, titled 宁波市：交通导游图 & on the reverse 城，镇主要街巷图.

Map 4 (2016/1): 宁波市, 城，镇主要街巷图

5) A map of Shaoxing, titled 绍兴旅游交通图

Map 5 (2016/1): 绍兴旅游交通图

6) A map of PRC printed by the PRC cartographic publishing house. Annotation on the map indicates that it was distributed by China reconstructs, data up to 1981 June.

Map 6 (2016/1): Map of PRC, 1981

As usual, if you can provide more information or even corrections from what was presented in this post it is more than welcome. I can also provide closer up photos of the Tongli map, although the best would of course be to visit the Needham Institute.

Exploring Johnston's Archives (related to gardens of China) in Needham Institute part 2: Dongshan

 One page of the red album in Johnston's archives

One of the best surprises inside the Johnston archives were the trove of pictures representing traditional architecture in Dongshan 东山 and Wujiang 吴江 near Suzhou 苏州. Some of the photos offer a unique view in now disappeared gardens and residences.

The most coherent collection consists of 96 black and white photos arranged in a red album, of the type with sticky pages covered in translucent film. The difficult decision to remove them from the album was reached because one detached photo revealed Chinese writings at the back with a seemingly exact location.  

 A close up of one of the Dongshan pictures before removal from red album

The numbers and order of the photos as well as inscriptions in the album were recorded by a librarian of the University of Cambridge's Library. 

Among these inscriptions, the handwriting reveals that Johnston probably annotated the album, whereas a Chinese native was the one who marked the photos and some of the inscriptions. In one of his travel diaries, Johnston mentions going to Dongshan in 1984, so it is possible that he took the photographs himself.

Some of the scenes show close-up details of architecture and others provide insights into daily life in this village. Inscriptions include the following: 东山前山镇 严家祠堂内花园， 东台（山）周亮成住宅内园， 东山席氏启园入口.

 From the loose Dongshan photographs

However some photos of Dongshan are also scattered through other parts of the archives: 
1) in the form of one out of 29 pages of contact sheet photos glued on paper with inscriptions. 
2) a majority out of 87 loose items composed mostly of small black and white photographs. 
Both have also been inscribed by a (probably native) Chinese handwriting annotations.

 From the loose Dongshan photographs

This Dongshan lot is likely to interest researchers of this area's architecture and social life. Although difficult to date with absolute certainty, these were probably taken in the 1980s. A deeper analysis of all the materials is necessary to reach a more accurate dating of these photos, yet Johnston's trip in 1984 is one of the biggest clue.

I confess that I am not a specialist of this region, therefore any interest or comments would be welcome, and I am sure would benefit the Needham Institute too.

Exploring Johnston's Archives (related to gardens of China) in Needham Institute part 1

 

The entire Johnston archive on tables of Needham Institute

During the week of 23-28th of May, I had the great opportunity to go through the papers of R.S. Johnston in Needham Institute, Cambridge, UK.

Who was R.S.Johnston? 

Late R. Stewart Johnston was part of the department of Architecture at the University of Nottingham. In 1991 he published Scholar gardens of China: a study and analysis of the spatial design of the Chinese private garden. Thus he become the first Western author (that I know of) to mention the gardens of Lingnan1 in an English language publication.

Librarian of Needham Institute, John Moffett, received Johnston's papers on behalf of Needham Institute from Johnston's widow. The archive contained a wealth of information on gardens of China that Johnston had systematically preserved throughout his research. Some twenty years later John Moffett generously opened this archive to me. This opportunity was sparkled by a conversation about Johnston's book in May 2015 when I underlined the fact that finding photos of Lingnan gardens was difficult, and John Moffett said that Johnston's archives were likely to contain such documents. Spoiler: I was not disappointed!

Johnston’s archive, occupying approximately 1.5m x 2m of archival shelves, had been well labelled by Johnston himself but not yet catalogued. It was therefore the occasion for me to both dig information for my thesis and contribute to the cataloguing as I went through the boxes. The exploration was well worth the effort as I discovered many black and white photographs of gardens in China, most likely dated from the 1980s (I am still working on datation): a few were taken before some of the 'rough' renovations that erased some interesting characteristics of gardens later on.

There are many interesting aspects to this archive, as I already tweeted about on @GardensOfChina; but I will underline some of the most unique parts in a few blog posts, hoping others will come to study them in more detail. 

One of the most pleasant part was to go through all the originals of the maps and drawings included in his publications: some of these were actually typed & photos and captions glued to paper as this was the case before computers changed our way of submitting manuscripts.

1.  岭南 Region located 'to the south of the five ridges' usually understood as either Guangdong province or Guangxi + Guangdong.

Illustrations for Scholar gardens of China

 

Talk: "The Illusion of Space: on Garden Design in China" Bianca Rinaldi

The "New approaches in Chinese garden history" conference of the 19th June has been an opportunity to develop another free talk on Chinese gardens after the one given by Alison Hardie in May. This time it is Bianca Rinaldi who will present on the topic of:

The Illusion of Space: on Garden Design in China. 

Monday 15th June. 

Doors open: 10.30am; Talk: 11.00am – 12noon.

Venue: The Discovery Centre, Sheffield Manor Lodge, Manor Lane, Sheffield, S2 1UJ. 

Presented in association with The Confucius Institute (University of Sheffield).

Tickets are free but please book in advance as places are limited. Email: info@greenestate.org

Telephone: 0114 2762828

Refreshments will be available at the event and the Rhubarb Shed Cafe will be open for lunches after the event.

Abstract (from the organisor):

The lecture discusses the Chinese garden focusing on the key characteristics of its design: its scenery of naturalness, its varied sequences of different ambiences and spaces, the arrangement of central elements (water, rocks, plants, architectural structures), the visual devices and methods used to manipulate the quality and apparent dimensions of garden space. The reading of the compositional structure of the Chinese garden will be applied to a renowned classical garden: the Wangshi yuan (Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets) in Suzhou.

Bianca Maria Rinaldi teaches landscape architecture at the University of Camerino, in Italy, and is visiting professor at the National University of Singapore. She is the author of The ‘Chinese Garden in Good Taste’. Jesuits and Europe’s Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in 17th and 18th Centuries (2006) and of The Chinese Garden-Garden Types for Contemporary Landscape Architecture (2011), which has been awarded a J.B. Jackson Prize for 2012 by the Foundation for Landscape Studies, New York. She is currently working on a book on Western views of Chinese gardens from the 13th to the 19th century.

Other "Chinese garden history" events to come at the University of Sheffield:

"New approaches in Chinese garden history" conference 19th June

See announcement & bookings here.

Guided garden visit to Biddulph Grange, 18th June

See announcement & bookings here.

Video: One of the four famous gardens of Lingnan, Qinghuiyuan

During my fieldwork in June/July 2014 I visited again the Qinghuiyuan 清晖园. It is considered one of the four famous gardens of Lingnan, an outdated term designing globally the region around Guangdong.

In reality this "top 4" only takes into account gardens relatively well conserved around Guangzhou, as the most renown were for the most part destructed.

Here is an amateur video of the main scene of this garden. 
 

The Qinghuiyuan is located in Daliang, Shunde 顺德. It was first a residence owned by Wang Shijun under the Ming Dynasty, but the current garden takes its origin in the constructions made for Long Yingshi at the end of the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796). It includes buildings such as the Returning Hall, the Chengyi Pavilion, the Bixi Caotang, the Xiyin Study, the main building being the Boat Hall which was supposedly built for the daughter of the owner. Two ponds are located on both sides of the boat hall, on the south-east is the original pond on which the garden is centred; and the south-west pond was added during modifications from the Jiaqing period (1796-1821). It has been largely renovated in the second half of the 20^th century, and only one of the pond has kept relatively intact appearance - the one you can see in this video.

Thanks to UCCL and to the Landscape Department at the University of Sheffield for funding my fieldwork.

Sources:

Most books on Lingnan gardens are written in Chinese, therefore I recommend this bilingual edition:
Lu, Q., Zhang, B., & Li, Y. (2004). Lingnan yuanlin yishu 岭南园林艺术 (Art of Lingnan gardens). Beijing, Zhongguo jian zhu gong ye chu ban she.

Biddulph Grange, videos

Wondering if you should come along to our guided visit to Biddulph Grange on the 18th of June? Here is something to convince you!

See also the short extract from BBC Four here. 

Any recommendations of videos welcome in the comments.

Book your guided visit from Sheffield here!

Free lecture to start the "Chinese garden history" events in the University of Sheffield

Jichangyuan, Wuxi, 2012. Credit: J.Richard. All rights reserved.

We are glad to announce that a free lecture will start the series of events on Chinese garden history in the University of Sheffield. The Confucius Institute of Sheffield is welcoming our main speaker, Dr Alison Hardie, to give a lecture on:

Chinese gardens: history, design and meanings. 

Lecture by Alison Hardie

Thursday 21 May 2015,  
3:00 - 4:00pm. 
4:00-4:30, networking with drinks and biscuits  

Location:
Conference Room, Alfred Danny Building, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, S10 2TN

Lecture:
This talk will cover the historical development of Chinese gardens, relating it to comparable or contrasting developments in European garden history.

It will outline the different types of Chinese gardens, including imperial, private and institutional (temple or academy) gardens. It will consider the cosmological ideas and design principles underlying the layout and features of Chinese gardens. Finally it will discuss the social significance and uses of Chinese gardens, particularly in the late imperial period.

Speaker biography:
Alison Hardie is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds and Director of the National Institute of Chinese Studies under the White Rose East Asia Centre, a collaboration between the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield. Since 2010 she has been a Senior Fellow (advisory committee member) in Garden and Landscape Studies at Dumbarton Oaks, the research institute in Washington DC affiliated to Harvard University. Dr Hardie holds degrees in Classics from the University of Oxford and in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh, and a doctorate from the University of Sussex. Her main research interest is in the social and cultural history of early modern China. She will retire this summer and a conference this 19th June will celebrate her career.


Enquiries to be sent to confucius@sheffield.ac.uk


Other "Chinese garden history" events to come at the University of Sheffield:

"New approaches in Chinese garden history" conference 19th June
See announcement & bookings here.

Guided garden visit to Biddulph Grange, 18th June
See announcement & bookings here.

Reduced delegate fee for the "New approaches in Chinese garden history" conference 19th June

19th JUNE 2015

We are pleased to announce that, thanks to the support of the Confucius Institute at Sheffield, we have been able to reduce the conference delegate rate for "New approaches in Chinese garden history".

 

This conference dedicated to Dr. Hardie on the occasion of her retirement will exceptionally bring together international scholars each interested in a different aspect of the Chinese garden and its wider theme: architecture, garden history, cultural history, translation studies, orientalism and chinoiserie, and the impact of Chinese gardens on the concept of English gardens.

The conference's schedule has been approved with a total of 7 academic speakers and 3 postgraduate speakers. Lunch and coffee breaks provided.

Student rate: £20

Delegate rate: £40

Full announcement here.
Book your seat here.
See also the Commented visit to Biddulph Grange on the 18th June here.

Conference abstract: "Cantonese gardens in the 19th century"

Yuyin shanfang, Panyu, Guangzhou suburbs. Picture: J.Richard 2010, all rights reserved.

New approaches in Chinese garden history, conference abstract

19th June 2015, at the University of Sheffield

 

Josepha Richard, PhD candidate, University of Sheffield, UK

"Cantonese gardens in the 19^th century"

Gardens in Lingnan, particularly those located in and around Guangzhou (Canton), were among the first Chinese gardens to be visited by Westerners, as until the Opium Wars, movements of foreigners were restricted to the city of Guangzhou, with the exception of a few missionaries who were able to enter Beijing. Thus Guangzhou gardens, and more specifically the Co-Hong (or merchant) gardens of the 19^th century, have largely informed Western understanding of Chinese gardens at a time when Suzhou gardens were inaccessible to foreigners. However, despite its historical importance the Lingnan region has not been thoroughly explored by Western scholars, and research in China has mostly seen local exposure. This paper will present a conjectural reconstruction of Co-Hong merchant Howqua’s garden, built at the beginning of the 19^th century in the suburbs of Guangzhou. This reconstruction is based on Western diaries, records and photographs, as well as Chinese sources such as annals, export paintings and poetry. Howqua’s garden is presented in the context of social life of late Qing Guangzhou, when its inhabitants were developing a discourse of local culture in the wake of the creation of the Xuehaitang Academy.

See Josepha's profiles here and here.

Conference abstract: "The evolution of Chinese public gardens in the concessional Shanghai, 1840-1940"

Representation of the Yuyuan 豫园 in Shanghai, 1884 申江名胜图说 p83

New approaches in Chinese garden history, conference abstract

19th June 2015, at the University of Sheffield

Mo Fei, PhD candidate, University of Sheffield, UK

"The evolution of Chinese public gardens in the concessional Shanghai, 1840-1940"

The Chinese notion of public recreation changed dramatically after the establishment of English, French and American concessions in Shanghai from the 1840s. Traditional public spaces for recreation did not satisfy the evolving social demands for recreation, particularly after the opening of the Public Garden on the Bund by the British in 1868. The majority of the Chinese were not allowed to access, but it triggered a general desire to experience foreign gardens and increased tensions between Chinese and foreign communities in the use of public open space, particularly as the Chinese, rather than foreigners, contributed the majority of rates in the foreign concessions. From the 1870s to the 1920s, privately owned ‘commercial’ gardens acted as public gardens for the Chinese population, as well as traditional sites such as temple compounds. The Nationalist Government of Republican China elected at the end of the 1920s first provided the conditions to develop municipal parks. In the post concessional period after 1943, the Chinese government developed transformed foreign and Chinese public gardens, parks and recreation grounds into park systems for the benefit of the population.

See Mo Fei's profile here.

Conference abstract: “A critical history of rockwork in Chinese gardens”

 

Garden of a Piece of Rock (Pian Shi Shan Fang), April 2013. Credit: L.Gu, all rights reserved.

New approaches in Chinese garden history, conference abstract

19th June 2015, at the University of Sheffield

Liyuan Gu, University of Sheffield, PhD Candidate

“A critical history of rockwork in Chinese gardens”

Rockwork plays a significant role in Chinese gardens. It appears as one of the features that at first instance is difficult to understand, but then starts to intrigue. There is considerable variation in rock formations in gardens, and the various techniques employed are not only revealing of the philosophy, but also of the era and region in which they were conceived. Construction techniques and appearance evolved over thousands of years. This paper aims to provide a critical review of the development of rockwork in Chinese garden by exploring how notions of aesthetics, religion and philosophy influenced fashions in the design of rockwork.

Chinese rockwork can be divided into three types according the construction materials----‘earth hill’, ‘stone rockery’ and ‘earth-stone rockery’. Additionally there are a variety of stones that were used in the construction, with Taihu rock and Yellow Stone being the two favourite choices. The choice of stones was usually directed by costs for initial acquisition and by transportation. The fashions in rockwork construction however were influenced by particularly mythology, Confucianism and Taoism. These contributed to notions of aesthetics as well as life, whereas policies of different dynasties affected size and format of gardens, and thereby the size of rockwork. Additionally the rise of specialized rockwork craftsmen in the Qing dynasty resulted in remarkable strides in the quality of design and construction of rockwork, with different schools emerging. The critical review of rockwork history has been conceived in order to inform conservation practice; this paper produces some of the initial findings relating to the historic research. 

See Liyuan's profile here.