Chinese Garden (Episode 3): Dream

Through the fog of uncertainties that may shroud the future, we all cherish some sort of dream. For the third-century scholar-poet Tao Yuanming, it was his utopian vision of the peach-blossom spring. Some have sought to achieve their dreams through extravagant expenditure, palaces for dancing girls and concubines. But such dreams never last, even for the few who can make them come true. However, Tao Yuanming's vision of simplicity has stood the test of time, haunting Chinese dreams ever since. Can we ever find a way to that perfect land? From the spirit of the forest, bamboo has become the essence of the Chinese garden. Strong, flexible, fast-growing, it's one of the most valuable materials known to man. It can serve a thousand purposes, from cooking and drinking vessels to spear shafts, from scaffolding to nourishment, nourishment for body and soul. Seclusion in a bamboo grove has been celebrated by poets and artists throughout history. Ji Kang was one of the seven sages of the bamboo grove. Ji famously liked to play the guqin, while his friend, Ruan Ji, would rail at the heavens. Yuan was given to extravagant behaviour, driving his carriage at full tilt through the forest, stopping only to empty his lungs with vigour. In the summer of 263, 3,000 scholars knelt before the emperor to petition for the life of a condemned man. The convict was Ji Kang. What had brought him to this? Recently, I heard that you have become an official, Yuan. I am very worried. I am afraid that you will be embarrassed to be an official alone, and will have to take me as your assistant. This means that I will have to hold a butcher's knife, and I will have to smell the smell of torture. The words were addressed to Ji's friend, Shan Tao. Shan once noted that Ji stood like a pine tree, and, when he was drunk, he was like a falling mountain of jade. Ji's fine looks attracted the attention of an imperial princess, and his subsequent marriage got him embroiled in the politics of the Wei dynasty. However, the Wei was but one of the three dynasties that ruled different parts of a now-divided empire. They were locked in a fierce rivalry within and without their domain. In particular, the Sima clan threatened the dynasty's grip on power. After Cao Mao, the fourth emperor in the Wei succession, angrily denounced Sima Zhao's ambition, he was assassinated by one of Sima Zhao's officers. After the Sima clan seized the throne, Sima Zhao wanted to draw Ji Kang into his orbit by offering him an official post. Ji's acceptance of the offer would be seen as a powerful endorsement of the Sima clan's usurpation of power. Ji was not prepared to play along. He was like a lost child. If he was brought up in an orderly manner, he would obey his master's instructions. If he was brought up in an orderly manner, he would jump around and try to escape the clutches of his master. Even though he was given a golden dragon head to feed him, he still yearned for the dense forest he was accustomed to, and the beautiful white grass. Ji Kang sought to retreat from the pressure to join official life in the Tianmen Mountains, northeast of the capital at Luoyang. There, he was gradually joined by other Refusenik scholar officials, the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. According to legend, Ji became a blacksmith, building a forge in his backyard and channeling spring water to fill a quenching pond. The mountain forests were his unrestricted garden. Ji Kang embraced nature, and it embraced him. Ji's latter was an attempt to try to break off his friendship with Shan Tao. This was partly to protect Shan from association with Ji. Ji's refusal to serve Si Ma Zhao's new Jin dynasty would seal his fate. Ji Kang declared that his son would never be an orphan as long as his friend Shan Tao was alive. Before his execution, Ji asked for his guqin and played his beloved instrument during his final hours. Ji was 39 when he was executed. His companion, Ruan Ji, died the same year. The histories of the era are littered with accounts of such tales of loss and woe. Ji was mourned by his princess bride. In China, it sprang from a particular reading of a classic Taoist Lao Zhuang philosophy. It exerts such a powerful hold on the Chinese imagination that inevitably it would be transported and reconfigured in the classic Chinese garden. Yang Yongliang is a contemporary artist. He was born in 1980. These illusory landscapes are composed from thousands of images of cities, an apparently bucolic scene concocted from industrial elements. He began photographing urban wastelands in 2009 as part of his own peach blossom spring project. The camera is his brush. He wanted to piece together a landscape that is being lost in the gap between modernity and a more natural way of living. In the autumn of 405 A.D., 41-year-old Tao Yuanming, wearied of the venality and corruption of official life, resigned from service to the Jin court and went into retirement. He returned to near where he was born, living on the southern slopes of Mount Lu, near today's Zhujiang in Jiangxi province. He adopted a pastoral life but remained a prolific writer, becoming the best-known poet of his era. When the weather is right, Yang Yongliang snaps photos in Shanghai's Lujiazui for his work, Peach Blossom Project. The skyscrapers cannot be denied their place in Yang's vision. In the summer of 408, Tao Yuanming's house was burnt to the ground. His family had to take refuge, living under an upturned boat on the site of their former home. In the fall of 427, Tao Yuanming passed away, aged 63, at his home on the southern slopes of Mount Lu. It's September now. It's cold and the night seems endless. Wild geese are flying southward. All the plants have withered, I'll pass away and return to where I came from. For Tao, death was a form of freedom, a release from the constrictions of our mortal coil. Tao has inspired many followers down the centuries. The great Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai and Du Fu were both admirers of his work. A blizzard descends around Zhejiang's Kuaiji Mountain. As darkness falls, the world is shrouded in white. One day in the late 4th century, writer and recluse Wang Huizhi sets out to visit a fellow recluse, Dai Kui, who lives many miles away. After travelling through the night along the river, Wang reaches Dai's home. But instead of knocking on the door, Wang simply turns around and goes home. When asked to explain his behaviour, Wang responded, Having travelled here in such high spirits, what need have I to disturb my friend's repose? Like Wang and Dai in their day, Lin Guofang is a prominent cultural figure. In Taiwan, he's known as a Zen Buddhist, musician and critic. According to the man himself, though, he's just a happy farmer. I wake up at 6am. I feed the fish and the weeds here at 6am. The altitude here is less than 100 metres. But when you come up here and turn around, you're in another world. It's the same as life. Sometimes in life, you just go with the flow. It's the world. You turn around. You don't have to have many conditions. But once you turn around, I often say, you look back and see the green mountains. And every day, you become an old farmer, making friends with the fish and the trees. Look at how beautiful this road is. See? The road up here is so beautiful. This type of fish is called Luo Ye. It's the colour of autumn. But this Luo Ye is very special. You can see that it's sparkling. Isn't it beautiful? You have to be very careful with this fish. If it's a big fish, you have to hold it steady. As long as it's a little bit bigger. If they really raise fish, they'll have a small fishing net. It's a long fishing net. It's made of cloth. You let the fish in. When the fish don't see the light, they won't jump around. They won't... Because we don't often use it, we don't have that setting. It's safe. If it's a big fish, you can't do it alone. It's not easy to... If you're not careful, you'll kill it. It's safer. Lin's fish fancying is well-known among his associates. He sometimes gifts his charges to them. Today's round-up, all for his friend Lin Binghui, who runs the Shiyang Culture Restaurant. In Taiwan, people who raise carp have a habit of raising a darker fish that's not too bright but still has a certain aura. From an aesthetic point of view or from a personal point of view, a fish that's not too bright but still has a certain aura is the most precious. It's a good gift. So this fish is special at home. I thought if Shiyang's new space is good, I'll send it as a gift for the new home. Get someone to help carry a big fish. Put it here first. After this... Two people. It's so big. And it's made into scales. It really looks like Wang Zhenshizun, doesn't it? It's like this. And this is the scale. This scale is silver. It shines. Silver. And look at the net. It's rare to see this color. Rare to see. The net. This must be in a clear water. Put it here first. We can't... take the fish out. Because we have to keep the water temperature outside. Look, these are all my fish. Look how big this is. We'll come back in half an hour. We'll come back. This place is actually the source of our meaning. Because it's not natural. But you can see how well it connects with nature. First, whether it's with the original wild west, it's all in one place. In some places, the natural forest they've cleaned up is also in one place. When I was talking about the three places of Shiyang, I was talking about the places you've never been to I said it's a modern net village. It can reach an extreme. But when you get to this place, it has not yet entered. So the plain is no longer separated. It is under the echo of man and nature, or even under the presence of a whole body. So in this place, the natural forest makes people return to nature, instead of letting nature become a tool or an object. The Shiyang Culture Restaurant was designed by its owner, Lin Binghui. It is exquisite, but not overly formal. It has the air of a zen garden. Friends often drop by. Wang Huizhong, the winter visitor, who declined to disturb his friends' peace and quiet, had another enigmatic encounter. Travelling to the Jin capital to take up office, he came across a carriage on the road. Enquiring who was travelling in it, he was told it was Huan Yi, also on his way to the capital to be honoured by the emperor. Huan was renowned as a musician and flautist. Wang sent a request to Huan that he might play. Huan looked askance for a while, but then began to play. Huan played the plum blossom melody, one of his own compositions. After he finished playing, he and Wang went their separate ways, without exchanging a single word. In China, there are two layers of meaning. One is natural, that is, you do not pretend. The so-called taking advantage of the situation, going against the situation, why wait? You used to want to visit your old friends, but you forgot the snow on both sides, the colour of the moon. Your old friend can come again. The colour of the moon is the only thing you can be sure of. September through to February is a good time for orchid picking. Lanzhu Mountain in Zhejiang Province became famous because of the legend that the king of the state of Yue, Gou Jian, planted an orchid there. Today's orchids are cultivated in greenhouses and are rarely picked in the mountains. Despite the name, wild orchid specimens are becoming scarce on their eponymous mountain. Don't go any further! You'll die! Don't go any further, you'll die! The early empire saw the organisation of the township system with a series of courier stations linking them. There was a courier station near Lanzhu Mountain known as The Orchid Pavilion. By the 4th century, it had fallen out of service and became part of the private garden of a wealthy man named Wang Xizhi. In the spring of 353, the 33-year-old Wang invited 42 men of letters to gather at his orchid pavilion. A stream zigzagged past the pavilion. Drinking games have always been popular in China and the one played by the scholars that afternoon has passed into legend. Wine vessels were floated down the stream and where they stopped, the nearest man had to compose a poem on the spot or drain the cup. 1400 years on the legend would inspire Emperor Qianlong's Xishang Pavilion in the Forbidden City. 37 poems were composed during the course of the afternoon and compiled into a collection named after the pavilion. Quite a feat when one considers that each forfeit would have contained over a pint of wine. Wang Xizhi wrote his preface to the orchid pavilion collection. He too was well in his cups. It goes, A fine day with a warm breeze, I look up into the boundless universe and down to all creatures on earth. A sudden flash of human insight can bridge the centuries. The feeling and emotions expressed in the poetry of the orchid pavilion are as fresh and relevant today as they were 1700 years ago. Wang Xizhi's preface is not simply about the refined arts of poetry or calligraphy. It is a celebration of physical nature embodied in a flower and a specific location. The archetypes of Chinese romanticism in nature, the bamboo grove, the peach blossom spring and the orchid pavilion, were all established in this hundred year period from the mid third to the mid fourth centuries. They were to have a profound and lasting influence of the spirit and principles of the Chinese garden ever after. The Chinese garden seeks to encapsulate the qualities of the natural world in an enclosed retreat space. Though highly stylized, it seeks an infinite variety in the careful arrangement of many different perspectives. It's a place of secret magic. As we age, we can recognize the eternal in nature static flood of regeneration. The nature in the Tao and the Tao in the nature. The Tao and the Tao in the nature. In Tao Yuanming's story, a fisherman falls asleep in his boat and drifts downriver. When he wakes, he finds himself in a cave from which he emerges to find himself surrounded by blossoming peach trees. He rows his boat to shore and makes his way to the nearest village. The kind and friendly villagers who take him in live lives of pacific bliss and satisfaction. They have had no contact with the outside world for many generations. Eventually, the fisherman must take his leave, but he vows to his host to return. He leaves back through the peach forest and returns to his hometown with tales of this amazing new found paradise. A paradise to which he never finds the way to return.