Entangled landscapes : early modern China and Europe 9789814722582, 9814722588

"The exchange of landscape practice between China and Europe from 1500-1800 is an important chapter in art history.

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Entangled landscapes : early modern China and Europe
 9789814722582, 9814722588

Table of contents :
Introduction: Entangles landscapes: a new research paradigm / Yue Zhuang and Andrea M. Riemenschnitter --
1. Western orientals?: the theme of the Tartar in the Elizabethan discourse on Ireland / Mark Dorrian --
2. Fear and pride: Sir William Chambers' Dissertation on oriental gardening, Burke's Sublime and China / Yue Zhuang --
3. Layered landscape: textual and cartographical representations of Hangzhou's West lake, 16th-18th centuries / Roland Altenburger --
4. Copperplates controversy: Matteo Ripa's Thirty-six view of Jehol and the Chinese rites controversy / Michele Fatica and Yue Zhuang --
5. The "true wonder" in emperor Qianlong's garden labyrinths / Hui Zou --
6. "Retreats or attacks?": scholars, poets and the politics of landscape gardening in China and the West / Stephen Bann --
7. Culture and nature: human landscapes in Chinese and European imaginations / David E. Cooper --
8. Postscript: Contemporary Chinese landscape aesthetics between crisis and creativity / Andrea M. Riemenschnitter.

Citation preview

Entangled Landscapes

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Entangled Landscapes Early Modern China and Europe

Edited by Yue Zhuang & Andrea M. Riemenschnitter

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© 2017 Yue Zhuang and Andrea M. Riemenschnitter Published by: NUS Press National University of Singapore AS3-01-02, 3 Arts Link Singapore 117569 Fax: (65) 6774-0652 E-mail: [email protected] Website: http://nuspress.nus.edu.sg ISBN 978-981-4722-58-2 (Paper)

All rights reserved. This book, or parts of it thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data Name(s): Zhuang, Yue, 1976- editor. | Riemenschnitter, Andrea, editor. Title: Entangled landscapes : early modern China and Europe / edited by Yue Zhuang and Andrea M. Riemenschnitter. Description: Singapore : NUS Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifier(s): OCN 979568400 | ISBN 978-981-4722-58-2 (paperback) Subject(s): LCSH: Landscape design--China--History. | Landscape design- Europe--History. | Art--China--History. | Art--Europe--History. | China- Relations--Europe. | Europe--Relations--China. Classification: DDC 712--dc23

Image on cover: “A View of the Lake and Island at Kew, seen from the Lawn”, from William Chambers, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763). © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, DC. Image on facing page: Travellers Among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan, circa 1000, painting 206.3 × 103.3 cm (Source: Wikimedia Commons).

Designed by: Nur Nelani Jinadasa Abdullah Printed by: Markono Print Media Pte Ltd

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Contents List of Figures viii Acknowledgements xi

Introduction: Entangled Landscapes: A New Research Paradigm

Yue Zhuang and Andrea M. Riemenschnitter

1

1. Western Orientals?: The Theme of the Tartar in the Elizabethan Discourse on Ireland

39

2. Fear and Pride: Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, Burke’s Sublime and China

56





Mark Dorrian

Yue Zhuang

3. Layered Landscape: Textual and Cartographical Representations of Hangzhou’s West Lake, 16th–18th Centuries

115

4. Copperplates Controversy: Matteo Ripa’s Thirty-six Views of Jehol and the Chinese Rites Controversy

144

5. The “True Wonder” in Emperor Qianlong’s Garden Labyrinths

187

6. “Retreats or Attacks?”: Scholars, Poets and the Politics of Landscape Gardening in China and the West

210

7. Culture and Nature: Human Landscapes in Chinese and European Imaginations

229

8. Postscript: Contemporary Chinese Landscape Aesthetics between Crisis and Creativity

242













Roland Altenburger

Michele Fatica and Yue Zhuang

Hui Zou

Stephen Bann

David E. Cooper

Andrea M. Riemenschnitter

Bibliography 275 List of Contributors 311 Index 314

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List of Figures Fig. 2.1

Richard Wilson (1714–82). Croome Court, Worcestershire (1758). A landscape created by Lancelot “Capability” Brown.

65

Fig. 2.2

Plan of Kew Gardens (1763).

76

Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.3 “A View of the Lake and Island at Kew, seen from the Lawn”, from William Chambers, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763).

76

Fig. 2.4

The bustling harbour landscape of Canton, from Jan Nieuhoff, An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperor of China (1669).

84

Fig. 3.1

“Song-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Songchao Xihu tu” 宋朝西湖圖), from Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (1547).

123

Fig. 3.2

“Present-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Jinchao Xihu tu” 今朝西湖圖), from Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (1547).

124

Fig. 3.3

“Complete map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全圖), from Gazetteer of West Lake (1734).

130

Fig. 3.4

“Villes de la Province de Tche-kiang: Hang-tcheoufou, capitale,” produced by d’Anville for Du Halde, Description … de la Chine (1735).

132

Fig. 3.5

“Hang-tcheou fou,” Chinese map.

133

Fig. 3.6

“Complete map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全 圖), from Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake (1751).

135

Fig. 4.1

Matteo Ripa (Italian, 1682–1746), after Shen Yu (Chinese, 1649– after 1728). View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Mountains” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨霞). 

151

Fig. 4.2

Zhu Gui and Mei Yufeng (both Chinese, fl. 1696– 1713), after Shen Yu. View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Mountains Hill” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨霞).

152

viii

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List of Figures 

ix

Fig. 4.3

Matteo Ripa, after Shen Yu. View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring” (Fengquan Qingting 風泉清聽).

153

Fig. 4.4

Zhu Gui, Mei Yufeng, after Shen Yu. View 16, “Listening to Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring” (Fengquan Qingting 風泉清聽).

154

Fig. 4.5

Comparison of details of trees at the bottom left corners in the copperplate version of View 2, “A Lingzhi Path on an Embankment in the Clouds” (Zhijing Yundi 芝徑雲隄) (top) and the wooduct version (bottom).

155

Fig. 4.6

Frontispiece in Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christo pelos Padres da Campanhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa [The East Conquered for Jesus Christ by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus of the Province of Goa] (1710).

159

Fig. 5.1

The restored baroque labyrinth in the Yuanmingyuan, Beijing.

192

Fig. 5.2

The rockery labyrinth in the Lion Grove, Suzhou.

192

Fig. 5.3

The Qianlong Garden in the Forbidden City, Beijing.

193

Fig. 6.1

William Williams, engraving of Collegium Novum (New College, Oxford), from Oxonia depicta (1733): ground plan of the college and bird’s eye view of garden.

214

Fig. 6.2

William Williams, Collegium Novum, detail of parterre with arms of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and King Charles I.

215

Fig. 6.3

A. Ollivault, Book-plate of Pierre-Clément, Marquis de Laussac, c.1790, from William Shenstone, Works (vol. II), 1777.

218

Fig. 6.4

Frontispiece and title-page of William Shenstone, Works (vol. II), 1777: with Apollo presenting a laurel wreath to the poet Shenstone, and Shenstone’s emblem of the kingfisher, with motto.

219

Fig. 6.5

Map of William Shenstone’s garden, The Leasowes, to accompany Robert Dodsley’s “A Description of the Leasowes”, in Shenstone, Works (vol. II), London, 1777.

220

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x   List of Figures

Fig. 8.1

Xie Nongchang 蟹农场 [Crab Farm], “Yi jiang daibiao xiang dong liu” 一江代表向东流 [A River of Representatives Flows East].

249

Fig. 8.2

Dashixiong 大尸兄, “Fine of 3000 Yuan for Disorderly Disposal of Pig Corpses”.

253

Fig. 8.3

Meng Chenshang 梦晨伤, “Casual Thought: The Huangpu River is a Mirror of the Chinese People”.

253

Fig. 8.4

Sadan Jun 撒旦君 [Mr. Satan], “The Pig Dipper”, Huaxia yishi lu 华夏异事录 [Strange Stories from Cathay].

254

Fig. 8.5

Dashixiong, “Life of Pig”.

256

Fig. 8.6

Bi Chuanguo 毕传囯, “Gushi nan yin” 古诗难吟 [Ancient poems are Hard to Recite].

266

Fig. 8.7

Bi Chuanguo 毕传囯, “Ku lin” 哭林 [Forest of Tears].

267

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Acknowledgements TO bring to fruition an interdisciplinary project such as Entangled Landscapes, many institutional and individual helpers have been indispensable. Knowing that it will be impossible to point out each moment of assistance we encountered, we want at least to thank everyone collectively for all the provocative criticism, encouraging comments and supportive gestures we received. We wish to thank the “Entangled Histories” research group at the University Research Priority Programme Asia and Europe, University of Zurich. Discussions contributed by members of the group—Hans B. Thomson, Angelika Malinar, Mareile Flitsch, Norman Backhaus, Sven Trakulhun, Christoph Uehlinger and Shalini Randeria—provided inspiration for the “Entangled Landscapes” project. Our heartfelt gratitude goes to the following academic institutions for their support and collaboration on this project: the Institute of Art History (Section for East Asian Art) and the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies (East Asian Studies) of the University of Zurich; the Rietburg Museum; the Study Centre for Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College of the Oriental University of Naples; Modern History of the ETHZurich; the Institute of Architectural History of the Tianjin University; and the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture of the University of Edinburgh. The following organisations and institutions sponsored this project at various stages: EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (Project IDs: 276241 and 631798), Swiss National Science Foundation, Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, China and Inner Asia Council (Association for Asian Studies), Hermann und Marianne Straniak Stiftung, as well as URPP Asia and Europe, University of Zurich and the College of Humanities, University of Exeter. Sheng-Ching Chang, Philippe Forêt, Daniel Greenberg, Kristina Kleutghen, Ya-Chen Ma, Jennifer Purtle, Klaas Ruitenbeek, Ming Wan and Qiheng Wang, along with “Entangled Histories” group members and our volume’s contributors, came together on the occasion of a symposium held in 2013 in Zurich, where we developed and discussed the concepts and ideas constituting the framework for the book. Special thanks are owed to Harald Fischer-Tiné, Heinz Gutscher, Albert Lutz, John Palmesino, Anne-Marie Werner as well as postgraduate colleagues at the University xi

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xii   Acknowledgements

of Zurich—especially Eric Alms, Sabine Bradel, Ulrich Brandenburg, Jeanne Egloff, Lisa Indraccolo, Justyna Jaguscik, Zhenshuai Jiang, Alina Martimyanova, Julia Orell, Dagmar Wujastyk, Dinah Zank and Yuheng Zhang—for their creative conversation, help and friendship. The assisting team at URPP—Inge Ammering, Roman Benz and Olga Rix—were ever patient and helpful. Colleagues at the University of Exeter in the Modern Languages Department and Art History & Visual Culture were a constant source of support and challenge throughout the revision and editing stage, especially Emma Cayley, Danielle Hipkins, Fabrizio Nevola, Melissa Percival, Sara Smart, Adam Watt, and Ulrike Zitzlsperger. The graduate assistants at the University of Exeter, Russell Sanchez and Maria Anesti, enriched the editing process. Finally, we wish to thank Peter Schoppert and Pallavi Narayan at NUS Press, and Chia Jie Lin, their Yale-NUS art history intern, for their invaluable encouragement, patience and professional support.

Notes on transcriptions All Chinese language in this volume uses the traditional style. All publications in the Chinese language cited in this volume are transcribed in the style (simplified or traditional) in which they were originally published. The postscript which draws upon many modern mainland Chinese publications uses simplified style throughout.

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Introduction

Entangled Landscapes A New Research Paradigm YUE ZHUANG AND ANDREA M. RIEMENSCHNITTER

LANDSCAPES were a distinct theme in the active cultural and artistic exchanges between China and Europe from 1500, when the Portuguese sought out a maritime route to China, until roughly 1800 when relationships entered a more confrontational phase. Representations of Chinese landscapes—rural and urban, agricultural and commercial—whether fanciful or factual, original or interpreted, were found in Europe in diverse forms on prints, books, porcelain, lacquer ware, wallpaper, pavilions and gardens. These landscapes not only inspired the new genres of chinoiserie and jardin anglo-chinois, but also entered European intellectual and social history, provoking debates about Chinese and European societies more generally.1 On the other side of the exchange, the Chinese were exposed to European landscape conventions. Religious and secular images—European palaces, cityscapes and world maps, drawn with meticulous precision— were introduced by merchants and Catholic missionaries, and attracted Chinese interest. European techniques of landscape representation and garden elements, since the Ming dynasty, were assimilated into Chinese visual tradition.2 Under Qing state sponsorship, in particular, this cultural assimilation produced a hybridity, which became an intrinsic aspect of Qing court art and cartography.3 These topics have certainly been studied by previous scholarship in terms of artistic exchange. However, recent turns in world history, anthropology, and landscape (geography)4 have demanded a reconsideration of landscape exchange. Contemporary studies in world history maintain that historical 1

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development does not take place exclusively within the boundaries of individual societies or cultural regions.5 Challenging the preoccupation of anthropology with cultural difference, anthropologists stress a reciprocal and multifarious approach as opposed to an ethnocentric narrative.6 Instead of innocent images of “natural” surroundings, late 20th-century Anglo-American scholars have argued that landscape be read as part of social and cultural history, or as a discursive field across which the focus of power and intellectual life may be mapped.7 All these new perspectives lead to new questions about Chinese-European landscape exchange. How was the shared interest in this landscape theme related to social formations that are characteristic of early modern conditions such as agrarian development and the expansion of commerce? What were the relations between China and Europe like then, and how did they shape, or themselves become shaped by, the landscape exchange? Which outcomes have been produced through the exchange beyond the formal aesthetics of landscape design or taste? To what extent did the landscape exchange contribute to the formation of national, social and cultural identities in both early modern China and Europe? Are these changes in the early modern period still relevant to our societies and identities today? Proposing “entangled landscapes” as a new research paradigm, we address these questions by focusing on the complex historical processes inherent in the landscape exchange between China and Europe during the period 1500–1800. In his Old World Encounters (1993), the historian Jerry H. Bentley argues that political, social and economic circumstances often have the effect of reinforcing cultural choices. Only by viewing cultural exchange in appropriate contexts is it possible to understand the complex dynamics of political, social and economic power that have influenced cultural developments in processes of sustained interaction between peoples of different societies.8 The three centuries preceding the industrial revolution (1500–1800), now generally known as the “early modern”,9 were an age of travel, expansion and global trade flows. These three centuries were also characterised as “the first wave of globalization”.10 Initiated by the Portuguese and Spanish Habsburgs in the 16th century, and followed by the Dutch East India Company, the French and the British, Western Europe was in the course of its colonial and imperial expansion. They acquired global territories that matched or were even larger than those of the ancient Roman Empire (such as the New World, India, South and Southeast Asia), and

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their economic power grew to levels unprecedented in their own history. However, overseas expansion did not automatically secure peace and social betterment at home. The Reformation, the secularisation of power and rival competitions in expansion led to prolonged wars and turbulence among Western European states during this period. Financial crashes at state level were common. The poor and destitute in society became more numerous. With traditional church-state collaboration in the cultural, educational and intellectual spheres slackening, the European intellectual arena grew more complex, fragmented and uncertain.11 Politically, the new centralised states insisted on new levels of cultural conformity on the part of their subjects. This concentration provoked reactions in various forms including furies of mobs such as the Gordon Riots (1780) in Britain. By contrast, China in these centuries was widely viewed by con­ temporary European nations as a world power that was enjoying great stability and prosperity. When the Portuguese explorers reached India in 1498, China (Ming dynasty [1368–1644]) was already the centre of the long established African-Asian trading system.12 By standard criteria such as size, population, agriculture, commerce, wealth, sophistication, technology, military might, cuisine, learning, literature and the fine arts, the Ming dynasty presided over the greatest nation in the world.13 The Qing state (1644–1911), founded by the warlike, expansive Manchus (or Tartars, as they were known in Europe),14 was an unprecedented multiethnic and multicultural empire consisting of not only the heartland of China, but also eastern Turkestan, Mongolia and Tibet. With its successful consolidation policy,15 the Qing restored order and prosperity interrupted by the dynastic transition. In its heyday it achieved a level of material productivity far beyond that of any earlier Chinese dynasty. The Qing institutions of administration and economic management were probably more ambitious and effective than any seen previously elsewhere in the world.16 Under the Qing empire, relations and mutual influences between the eastern and western ends of the great Eurasian landmass became more intense, and were more prone to conflict than they ever had witnessed before.17 The description above reflects the revisionist historiography that contrasts strongly with the prevailing conventional Western narrative of early modern European and Chinese societies and their relations.18 Drawing from 19th-century images at a time when China was dominated by Western imperialist powers, some historians projected this relation back

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to the early modern period. In that narration, China was an isolated, static and unchanging society, which could only be transformed from the outside by the impact of modernity, exemplified by the West. The limitations of that narrative may be seen as twofold. First, it assumes Europe and Asia to be two separate entities, with sharp divisions in their social, political and cultural systems; and second, progressivist and modern, the European system is considered inherently superior, triumphing over the stagnant orient. This limited view was passed on to scholarship in cultural and artistic exchanges. On the one hand, taking cultures as closed and static entities, exchange is considered as a transfer from A to B, crossing a kind of boundary. Thus incoming art forms were often confined within the narrow discipline of aesthetics and were discussed separately from economic, social and political structures and changes. On the other hand, China inevitably loses in such Eurocentric histories because it is treated as an archaic, wealthy nation that “failed” to successfully modernise and consequently suffered the indignities of defeat and subjection to Western imperialism. China’s reception of European culture (arts and sciences) was often addressed by scholars as determined by the demands of private entertainment of the emperors, who were unable to promote European (hence “modern”) learning among the public. Recent historiography and studies in literature and culture have dealt effectively with the first limitation of treating cultures as closed entities. Historians and anthropologists now use terms like “contact zones”, “shared history” and “connected history” to capture, depict and analyse the connections amongst nation-states and civilisations and the subsequent significance of such connections in social and cultural processes.19 In accord with the increasingly broad, anti-monocentric approach of postmodern criticism, scholars from comparative literature, art history and cultural studies also endeavour to overcome the rigid division between “the West” and “the Rest” by combining the formal rigour of European studies with the interdisciplinary reach of area studies. These changing approaches in turn have come to have an impact on scholarship on cultural exchange. Instead of arguing that cultural exchanges have beginnings and endings, scholars focus increasingly on contexts, “intercultural space” and appropriations, broadening their scope from aesthetic styles to socio-cultural discourses and the formation of national and individual identity.20 Whilst these outcomes are extremely valuable, there are still certain limitations and opportunities for development.

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First, on the subject of Europe’s reception of Chinese culture, recent scholarship has broken new ground in revealing the genre of chinoiserie as contributing to British (European) social changes—gender, class, taste and subjectivity.21 However, as has been pointed out,22 most of the accounts focus on the shift from the idealisation of China in the early Enlightenment period to its denigration in the late 18th century and 19th century. In essence, these accounts present a “progressive weakening” of the Chinese state amidst the “concurrent rise” of European powers, which carry the burden of progressivist historiography. Second, scholars of exchange studies have now become generally aware of the interconnections between cultures, which they examine in a multilateral global network. However, these narratives tend to neutralise the conditions under which this global network operates. Instead of an “Indra’s net”23 where the pearls are hung autonomously, each reflecting the others, the early modern global network was, rather, forged by imperial and colonial forces. Whilst there have been considerable efforts addressing such constraints in the broad subject of cultural imperialism such as Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), those research results are yet to be developed and applied within the context of the early modern ChineseEuropean exchange.24 Third, exchange scholarship has dedicated considerable attention to forms of material culture (objects, images, prints), but relatively less to concepts circulating between cultures and their relations to certain conceptual, philosophical or psychological frameworks embedded in different cultures. The notion of gardens “imitating nature”, for example— important as it was in the history of Sino-European exchange as well as intellectual thought—remains obscure amongst confusing Chinese and European narratives, which initially appear not to connect with each other. What is needed is an approach for exchange studies that will help to trace the circulation of concepts between diverse national philological and intellectual contexts and uncover the shift of their meanings according to certain transmitting and mediating social agents.

Entangled Histories In search of an approach suitable for tackling these limitations, students of cultural and artistic exchange may benefit from the “entangled histories” approach, first used in colonial and postcolonial studies.25 Contextualising

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exchange or contact on different levels within politics, society, culture and the economy, “entangled histories” describes the networks and processes which characterise situations of “connected people, places, things, ideas and images”.26 Meanwhile, the concept of “entanglement” highlights the complexity and constraints that are inherent in relations of exchange, but which are not in the foreground of other approaches that stress interconnections alone. A perspective of entanglement, in the sense of “intercrossing”, has also enabled inquiry into transfers not to be based on an assumption of static units of analysis, but on the study of processes of transformation.27 Adapted to the early modern period, “entangled histories” helps us to understand the complexity of the processes of social and cultural transformation taking place on both sides—in both China and Europe.28 As outlined below, the strengths of the “entangled histories” approach in our view are mainly threefold, including plural histories (multiple modernities), global network constraints and the negotiation of concepts. In addition, the “entangled histories” approach facilitates discussions addressing the contemporary relevance of early modern conditions.

Plural Histories (Multiple Modernities) The belief that modernity is driven by unilinear progress, absolute truths, the rational planning of ideal social orders and the standardisation of knowledge and material production has been challenged in recent decades.29 The study of “entangled histories” joins cognate intellectual trajectories like “multiple modernities”, “provincialising Europe” and “subaltern studies”; it questions the universal assumptions of history, most importantly by portraying the plurality of histories (multiple modernities).30 In his article “Sinicizing Early Modernity” (2010), David Porter highlights that a number of developments in early modern Europe, which we are accustomed to reading as characteristic of modernity, seem to have close parallels in China: intensive agricultural production, increasing commercial activities, the proliferation and growth of urban centres, and the imitation of foreign arts and architecture.31 Additionally, scholars have also shown parallels in landscaping and the mapping of territories.32 In contrast to the previous assumption of historical and cultural “incommensurability” between China and Europe, these cultural parallels, as we argue, reveal an analogue of ideologies of universal empires: a renaissance of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and the development of a universal empire

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in late imperial China.33 As has been extensively discussed, the Qing rulers, who acknowledged Europe’s advance in the arts and sciences, appropriated European knowledge and technologies into certain spheres encompassing calendar, weaponry and cartography, all of which served as Qing statecraft and are expressive of Qing early modernity.34 For early modern European monarchs, China, like the Roman Empire, functioned as “the locus for dreams of attaining a golden age of prosperity and abundance”,35 and superior to the Romans was China’s ability to ensure stability and good government built upon Confucian philosophy of moral cultivation.36 Highly esteemed by the early Enlightenment thinkers, China and its Confucian ideal became a useful model for European monarchs and moderate reformers, combining the interests of the individual and the common good of society.37 The resonance between classical Chinese and early modern European thoughts on economy and socio-politics, although increasingly acknowledged by contemporary historians,38 is yet to be fully explored in the cultural sphere.

Global Network Constraints “Entangled histories” works on the understanding of the world as a global network, in which each unit (of societies, communities, objects and people) is always interacting—in complex and frequently coercive or otherwise crisis-ridden relationships—with a wider world.39 ChineseEuropean relations in the early modern period were not episodes of contact between independent cultures struggling simply to make cognitive sense of each other. Rather, these relations were constrained, and dependant on multifarious social, political and cultural forces. Christian missionaries’ amenability towards colonialism (via Christian stewardship),40 European mercantilist capitalism’s pursuit of profit and their requests to remove obstacles, as well as their sense of cultural superiority (orientalism or Eurocentrism), all imposed constraints on Europe’s relations with China. In turn China’s (in particular the Qing’s) state imperialism, virtuous and prosperous “heathen” civilization, and trade advantage formed an intimidating force and, at times, even threatened Europe.41 The exchange activities between China and Europe in the early modern period were rarely voluntary, linear and smooth. Rather, effects and forms of exchange activities, whilst facilitating internal changes in societies, were constrained by disparate, often conflicting powers.

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Negotiation of Concepts Cultural exchange between early modern Europe and China often involved comprehension of concepts at a transcultural scale, and these concepts, when circulating across cultures, elicit tangled narratives and confusion. Within an entanglement perspective, as Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann argue, these concepts cannot simply be considered as a supplementary level of analysis to be added to the local, regional and national levels according to the logic of a simple change in focus.42 This is because representations of other cultures are never simply descriptive, but involve locating the other cultures within the symbolic frameworks of the observing culture.43 In other words, the transcultural scale formed one level that existed in interaction with the others embedded in cultural orders or frameworks of knowledge. The meanings of the circulating concepts must continually be negotiated by different groups, relating to different cultures of knowledge, thus producing its own meaning with feedback effects upon others. Viewed from this perspective, “entangled histories” can open up promising lines of inquiry for the writing of a history of Europe or China that is not reduced to a binary history, but rather takes into account the diversity of transactions, negotiations and reinterpretations played out in different settings. Often applied in a postcolonial context, the concept of “entangled histories” aims at more than the collection of global contacts and exchanges. Rather, it studies how “intercourse and exchange contributed to the production of the units we still operate with today”.44 This aspect proves valuable for comparative or inter Chinese-European studies. Just as today’s Chinese and European relations are not free from its past legacies, scholars in different disciplines and earlier time periods need to be encouraged to cross their perceived boundaries in order to enhance our understanding of a shared past, which continues to shape the present.

Entangled Landscapes: A New Research Paradigm Landscapes today are commonly defined as: “that portion of land or scenery which the eye can view at once”. The term “landscape” may refer to a picture or image of the land, as well as to the land itself. There is also the verbal form, “to landscape”—meaning “to physically shape and modify the land”. These customary understandings, with reference to the

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eye, picture and labour, inform us that landscapes are human, cultural and creative domains rather than natural or physical phenomena.45 Since the 1980s, Anglo-American scholars have provided a strong social and cultural turn to landscape studies. Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels and W.J.T. Mitchell, among others, have convincingly argued that landscapes, contrary to their appearance, are not merely constituted by innocent images of “the natural world” that surround us, nor are they only a projection of subjective ideas, shaping inert nature. Rather, landscapes are cultural practices, which manifest and perform changes at multiple levels of sustenance (material production), social formation and transition, as well as individual subjectivity and cultural identity at large.46 From their initial focus on Western European nation-states (Italy, Holland and England) between 1400 and 1900, scholars’ enquiry into landscape and its relations with social-cultural formation expanded extensively in both temporal (such as the Roman Empire and the interwar period Britain) 47 and geographic (such as colonial New World and notably China)48 dimensions. In accord with this social and cultural turn of landscape studies, in the last two decades or so, scholars from English literature, comparative literature, comparative art history and Chinese studies have, in different ways, shed new light on topics of Sino-European landscape exchange. For example, discussion of the Chinese taste (chinoiserie) by English literature scholars, as mentioned above, demonstrated in-depth how Chinese cultural elements were part of the process of English identity formation. This leaves unchallenged the implicit Eurocentric progressivism in their accounts. On the other hand, conversation on China’s reception of European landscape culture (such as visual technology and garden elements) went beyond superficial decoration, and penetrated to social and cultural levels such as Qing imperial diplomacy, ritual and military strategies, as well as foreign trade.49 Those scholars equipped with indepth grounding in several languages were not only able to move and dialogue between cultures, but also, by adopting inclusionary and interdisciplinary principles, were more able to transcend the built-in notions of exclusion and self-referentiality inherent in the Eurocentric or Sinocentric approach. Yet a sensitivity towards the complexity of the early modern global network restrained by colonial and imperial forces, as well as a more theoretical, methodological postulate are still required to develop more balanced future scholarship.

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By bringing together the above three strengths of the “entangled histories” approach—plural histories, global network constraints and the negotiation of concepts, this volume, dedicated as it is to the subject of early modern landscape exchange, seeks to critically develop this more balanced future scholarship. This nascent area of landscape exchange, which we see as being driven by entangled agencies of power, is not only about the “object” of the exchange processes—maps, gazetteers, paintings, follies, gardens, and texts or technologies that have been produced and exchanged by Europeans and Chinese over the early modern period. It is also about the exchange and transfer process between cultures. This includes cultural, economic and sociopolitical practices such as landscape imaginaries, landscape planning and the construction of landscape views, people acting as mediators of the exchange, and the institutions or power structures that manipulate these exchange activities as well as, finally, the process of circulation and negotiation of landscape concepts ranging from philosophy and ideologies to environmental discourses, from the past to the present. Cutting across a plethora of disciplines, “entangled landscapes” demonstrates that thinking about landscape exchange encourages a more wide-ranging and boundary-crossing exploration regarding the question of social formation and cultural identity. Because the “entangled landscapes” project covers a large field of inquiry over a long span of time and territory, it is not our purpose to offer a comprehensive survey for all the European and Chinese nationstates covered. The obvious danger of the “entanglement” approach is that it risks addressing not only too many levels of analysis (political, social and economic as well as formal and aesthetic), it also engages with varied perspectives, ideologies and social classes. We therefore aim first to establish, under the overarching framework of “entangled landscapes”, three major themes that organise this book—empire-building (through economic development, moral restructuring and urban and infrastructure construction), mediators’ constraints and aesthetic negotiations. These themes are by no means exclusive, but may serve as guides for further investigation and development.

Landscape Exchange and Empire-building Under the theme of “plural histories” (multiple modernities), we chose to investigate case studies of the landscape exchange around the theme of

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“empire-building”. This theme very deliberately counteracts a dominant idea in Anglo-American landscape history which considers landscape from a progressive individualist and capitalistic perspective, whilst early modern discourses on landscape were much more complex and at times contained conflicting ideological and political perspectives. Pioneering work by Denis Cosgrove, for example, theorises the idea of landscape as a product of capitalism, emerging in 14th–15th century Italy. Under the new situation of land commodification, the human relationship to land—and nature—became characterised by estrangement. Landscape, Cosgrove argues, appears at the historical moment which also saw the development of the theory of linear perspective, this being the technical correlate of the estranged view. For Cosgrove, both conventions of landscape and perspective “reinforce ideas of individualism, subjective control of an objective environment, and the separation of personal experience from the flux of collective historical experience”.50 This is a valuable account that analyses the idea and practice of landscape as embedded within capitalist relations. However, this early capitalism was not always dominant in socio-political organisation; it developed without ever being critiqued. Supplanting the republican regimes in 14th–15th century Italy (such as Florence and Venice), the widespread dissemination of imperial economic, political and moral-aesthetic ideals derived from ancient Roman precedents created a common socio-political culture and ambition throughout Western Europe, which was manifested or performed through landscape. In early modern Britain, for example, with classical inspiration such as Virgil’s Georgics, the cultivated agricultural landscape (or land) became the supreme expression—national, political and moral—of the “country”.51 Augustus’ exploitation of urban landscaping to create a unified sense of social history in Rome,52 was reinvented in the 18th century by the British patriot elites (Old Whig and Tory opposition to Robert Walpole) in order to mould Roman virtues for the new ruling class as well as to create national cohesion for the new centralised state.53 The reception of China was not excluded from these evocations of classical antiquity. Chinese gardens, as Rudolf Wittkower has noted, were seen as a useful source to supplement the lack of description of gardening in European classical literature.54 China’s national economy, based as it was on agriculture and aided by expanding commerce, also provided a living example that commingled with Roman precedent. A Welsh agricultural improvement society founded in

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1753 took China’s advance in agriculture as a truism, dedicating itself to bringing closer the day in which Wales might be “as flourishing as China”.55 China’s successful combination of virtue and commerce was particularly compelling for the British patriot elite audiences who, 56 following Roman epics like the Aeneid, advocated both agriculture and free trade as pillars of a moral economy as opposed to the new moneyed-interests.57 The associative links of China’s economy and sociopolitical stability, as well as the Chinese gardens’ capacity for moving the passions, all catered to the patriots’ landscape project aimed at providing social cohesion through shaping moral emotions. These reinvented classical ideas of landscape, with cross-cultural references to the oriental empires, were viable social and moral restructuring forces that shaped collective senses of belonging, citizenship and community (or commonwealth) for the British and Europeans. Inseparable from individualist and liberal values of landscape which have dominated previous scholarship,58 these classical ideas played an instrumental, yet little studied, role in creating national cohesion during Britain’s (and Europe’s) economic and sociopolitical transition. Together, both constituted the conditions of modernity. As such, the reinvention of these classical landscape ideas was not a nostalgic, internal European cultural process, as often assumed. Rather, the process of reinvention was in an active, multifaceted dialogue with the latest empirical observations, Enlightenment theories and knowledge of the oriental empires. Within this cross-cultural historical context, we shall explore the role of the Chinese landscape image in Europe’s social formation and cultural identity. The ancient Chinese had developed a set of landscape ideas bound up in a nexus which included habitation, moral-aesthetic cultivation and a reverence for Heaven or Dao (the Way).59 These landscape ideas are contained in the earliest poems in Shijing 詩經 collected by Confucius and the Daoist and Confucian classics like Daodejing 道德經, Analects 論語 and Zhuangzi 莊子. The nexus of ideas was popularised in folklore, featured in humanistic learning and perpetuated in the Chinese built environment which strove to make the man-made appear as if made by Heaven.60 The nexus resided deep within the literary and courtly milieu, within the Chinese collective consciousness, and also in their humanistic ideal of a cultivated life of joy and longevity. Landscapes became a central instrument of governance technology deployed throughout the Chinese empire: from

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the first emperor of Qin’s feng and shan 封禪 ceremony in the sacred mountains of China61 to the recurrence of the motifs of the Kunlun 崑崙 Mountain and the Penglai 蓬萊 immortals’ realm in the imperial palaces and gardens, and in urban plans such as Qing Beijing.62 Landscape as a “sacred silent language”63 expressed state power and painted a harmonious empire for the multi-ethnic people to imagine. In the course of the Ming and Qing dynasties, this cultural tradition of landscape shaping social imaginaries was apparently shifting, interacting with the incoming European elements, and produced significant hybrid products. Considered as “new knowledge” which nevertheless had “a Chinese origin”, the European conventions were assimilated into Qing’s statecraft, which excelled in a synthesis of multiple cultures and traditions.64 From cartographic surveying to linear perspective and copperplate engraving, the European landscape conventions converted the traditional Chinese landscape—the powerful symbolic system of a Han Chinese civilisation—into a distinctively new visual system that had immediate appeal to the eye. It was this immediate visual appeal that was characteristic of early modern Europe—its aestheticism, scientisim and religiosity.65 Similarly, this hybrid system distinguished the Qing empire from the Chinese past, and is expressive of Qing’s statecraft of reshaping imperial morals based upon knowledge. Focusing on the cultural dynamics—which possess a considerable level of complexity—among the English (British), the European, the late imperial China and their dream visions of empire, we demonstrate how the landscape conventions imported from each of these traditions engaged and facilitated the processes of the European and the Chinese empire-building on multiple levels. The European elites appropriated Chinese landscapes into their empire-building—often through the mirror of the Roman Empire—as a moral restructuring force to reinforce their sociopolitical programmes, while the Manchu rulers also manipulated European landscapes as an instrument to assist their imperial project of consolidation and persuasion. The landscape exchange between China and Europe will be shown not only as “an international, global phenomenon, intimately bound up with the discourse of imperialism”,66 but also as a fruitful field, revealing plural histories or multiple modernities beyond the totalising vision of “modernity”.

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Mediators’ Constraints In the landscape exchange of the early modern period, missionaries, travellers, writers and editors were important mediators within the global network. Focusing upon the idea of entanglement, rather than a simple network, we highlight that the mediators were not themselves transparent and autonomous intermediaries. Existing interests, political circumstances, cultural needs, academic contexts and legal binds may all have constrained their social situation, preventing them from being neutral or objective in their mediating activities. European missionaries in China, for example, had long been credited as bridges across cultures; works by missionaries together with Chinese craftsmen under the emperors’ commission are often referred to by modern scholars as “intercultural collaboration”. Such a narrative overly idealises the scenarios of transcultural encounters and neglects the fact that early modern art is integrally linked with power. Missionaries were, first of all, instruments of conversion. Instead of a united entity, they belonged to different orders and were often involved in complicated relations or even conflicts among themselves. The Chinese Rites Controversy, for example—a major crisis following the Reformation in Christian history—was provoked by the disparate views held between the Jesuits and the other orders on practising Chinese rites in China.67 With Clement XI’s ban of 1704 on Christians practising Chinese rites, the relations among the Church, the Qing court, the Portuguese authority and the various groups of missionaries in China became tense, and often ridden with violence. The Kangxi (r. 1666–1722) and Qianlong (r. 1735– 96) emperors were tolerant of the European mission in general (Kangxi issued an Edict of Toleration allowing Christians freedom to exercise their religion in 1692). However, when the Rites Controversy revealed the extent of foreign control over Roman Catholics within China, and the intolerance of some church authorities towards the basic features of the Chinese tradition, they intermittently enforced prohibitions on Roman Catholicism (1721, 1724, 1737). The political tensions among the Qing court, the Church and variant missionary orders constrained cultural and artistic exchange for which the missionaries had been the mediators. Explorations into such constraints on cultural intermediaries or agents will be helpful in revealing the “hard facts” of imperialism or “grey areas” of controversies that have often gone unnoticed in transcultural landscape historiography.

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Aesthetic Negotiation Within conventional scholarship on landscape exchange, it is frequently seen how the East and the West were treated as a simple dichotomy. The continuing debate on the connection between English gardens and Chinese gardens, divided between the “Chinese influence” and an “internal European development”, is one such example.68 A root cause of this debate may be carried over from the previous worldview of cultures being fundamentally separate entities. Instead of insisting on this previous binary approach, and attempting to ahistorically merge different semantic legacies, we propose the consideration of the subject as an “entanglement”—the effect of cultural exchanges on the subsequent tangled narratives, negotiations and reinterpretations of reciprocal concepts between European and Chinese cultures. Both European classical tradition and the Chinese classical culture, as we shall reveal, have parallels in terms of their conceptions of the relations between art, nature and human nature. For example, both European classical rhetoric and Chinese Confucian and Daoist thoughts have ideas that suggest art imitating nature, but they nowhere consider nature as merely external, objective nature. Whilst Renaissance critics considered nature, in the Aristotelian and Horatian sense, as human life idealised, Chinese scholar-artists regarded nature (Heaven-Humanity)—as the exemplary process (Dao) of cosmic transformation as a model for human life.69 Both Renaissance and Chinese scholars thus considered that through imitating idealised nature or following Dao, art cultivates human nature.70 Such reciprocity or parallel frameworks, which were often overlooked by previous scholars, we argue, engendered interests and imperatives of comprehending the other during the landscape exchange in the early modern period. Within these frameworks landscape concepts travelled or circulated across cultures.71 They were constantly negotiated by different individuals and groups, and made relevant to different cultural frameworks, thus producing new meanings. In this volume, we shall therefore identify certain hidden parallel frameworks in both China and Europe, and trace the process of negotiation of landscape concepts in relation to these different frameworks, their meanings to specific individuals, groups and the impact on the construction of their subjectivity or cultural identity at large. Investigating these themes through the volume, our focus, on the European side, is Britain, and to a lesser degree, the Vatican Church, France and the missionaries. Whilst this focus on Britain stems from our

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background and research abilities, it may help to attend to the dynamics of specific meanings of Chinese representation within a more closely delimited cultural milieu across the centuries. Similarly, on the Chinese side, our concentration on the Qing dynasty, with Ming dynasty light,72 may facilitate the grasp of the Manchu rulers’ reception and appropriation of European landscape technologies in accord with its own imperial ambitions and philosophical dispositions. These focuses are not a desire to privilege the importance of specific geographies and periods. In fact, we hope that more scholars will take up the challenge of exploring the question of “entangled landscapes” in the encounter between other European and non-European regions, epochs or media, not least in Scandinavia, Germanspeaking territories, Poland and Russia where the fashion of jardin anglochinois was embraced in the 18th–19th centuries.

Chapter Overview In accord with the concept of entangled landscapes, the book’s eight chapters include contributions of scholars from diverse disciplinary fields, including Sinology, literature, art history, architecture, history and philosophy. They explore the problems and trajectories outlined above under three themes: empire-building, mediators’ constraints and aesthetic negotiation. Throughout the volume, an interrogative and critical approach to the notion of landscape exchange is maintained, which involves directing questions towards the material that is examined as well as towards the concepts of landscape between China and Europe. Seizure of land was one of the main goals of early modern European expansion. The Christian myth of a fallen Eden, redeemed by Adam the Toiler (a figure of men’s labour) was presented as a blueprint for colonisation,73 especially in Europe’s encounter with nomadic civilisations. The Tartars,74 according to Marco Polo, lived in “marginal, waste places” and led a “nomadic, wandering life”. Framed within this Christian and orientalist myth, as Mark Dorrian, in Chapter 1, reads 16th-century English colonial literature on Ireland, the Irish nomads emerged as Western Tartars—bad husbandmen who failed to penetrate into the depths of the body of the land, thus neglecting her desire and fertility. The English colonialists of the arable cultivation, with their plough, by contrast, were able to penetrate and seed the land, giving rise to cultivation, husbandry and an ordered landscape. The crucial distinction between the English

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arable and the Irish pastoral modes of subsistence was highlighted by the deployment of the epithet of the Tartar which, for the English writers, the Irish seemed to echo. In opposition to the idea of Tartaric pastoralism, a rich yet “disordered” and therefore “waste” land and its social-cultural associations, the English asserted and legitimised colonisation as a Christianising and civilising project: from nomadic pastoralism to arable cultivation, from herding to tillage, from barbarity to civility, and from wasteland to the city. The image of Tartaric pastoralism facilitated 16thcentury Englishmen to see themselves as Romans, paradigmatic bringers of civility, order and form in their structural opposition to the barbarians. Turning to 18th-century Britain in Chapter 2, Yue Zhuang’s reading of Sir William Chambers’ A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772) in relation to Edmund Burke’s theory of the sublime, reveals the royal architect’s conception of “Chinese gardens”—an articulation of his landscape theory—to have been integrated with the then British discourses on emotions, constitutional liberty and public improvement. Based upon Burke’s sublime and the European classical rhetoric tradition, Chambers’ landscape theory aimed to cultivate the moral emotions of fear and pride among the British citizens. Instead of a mere mask for Burke’s theory, Chambers’ Chinese visual elements and their associative values, such as China’s socio-political stability based on Confucian moral cultivation, provide referents for him to promote landscape gardening as a means of moral reform. Chambers’ evocation of Burke’s sublime, together with the Chinese landscapes of concealment, cultivated moral fear and awe which sought to restrain the mechanical reasoning of contemporary British politics and the sense of unbridled liberty in English urban radicalism. On the other hand, the magnificence of Chinese infrastructure landscapes (roads, bridges, rivers and canals)—which Chambers largely drew from the Jesuit Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s A Description of the Empire of China (1738–41)—were rendered in terms of another Burkean sublime, the sublime of grandeur. With both visual and associative values from the fields of progressive commerce, technology and landscape urbanism in China, Chambers’ Chinese imagery stimulated the passion of pride among British artists to encourage them to emulate and surpass the Chinese. Chambers’ innovative landscape theory—an intertwining of ideas from the classical, the oriental and the Scottish Enlightenment—may be read as a demonstration of a Chinese modernity appropriated into Britain’s empire-building.

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Roland Altenburger’s study (Chapter 3) of the transformations of the West Lake in Hangzhou and its representations during the Ming and Qing dynasties provides a lens through which to view the cultural tradition of landscape’s shaping of the social imaginary. Carrying high reputation since the Song Dynasty, the West Lake was a destination of travelling scholars, and formed a focus for literary production. In the touroriented Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake by Tian Rucheng (1547)—a private Ming literatus—the landscape experience of the West Lake was that of free rambling or “armchair travelling”, and is companioned with rich literary and historical sources. By contrast, the Gazetteer compiled by an ambitious Qing official, Li Wei (1734, 2nd edition 1751), with an encyclopaedic approach, muted such free imagination. The West Lake, with its “Ten Views” redefined by the Kangxi emperor, was presented in “the Complete Map” of the Gazetteer (1734, 1751) in a single “totalising” vision with European convergent perspective. As many official gazetteers of its time, such a uniform, easy-to-survey layout implied its submission to the imperial view. The significance of the Qing court’s hybrid cartography, which assimilated European techniques, may therefore be read not only in terms of its accuracy in defining geographical boundaries—which could aid the Qing governance technically—but also as a new “way of seeing”, since the new maps were able to transform the old “mind map” of the West Lake in which Tian Rucheng and his Ming contemporaries had rambled. With these distinctive and unfamiliar (European) elements, the new Qing cartography submerged the Qing literati’s memories of—and loyalism to— the earlier dynasty, forging a national image of the new empire. Italian missionary Matteo Ripa is often noted by art historians as the painter who introduced copperplate engravings to the Qing court, where he produced a set of copperplate landscape engravings, Thirty-six Views of Jehol (1712–14). Ripa, ironically, was often mistaken as a Jesuit, whereas in reality the Jesuits were Ripa’s arch enemies. As Michele Fatica and Yue Zhuang remind us in Chapter 4, sent from Propaganda Fide, Ripa’s China mission was to reassert the papal ban on the Chinese rites against Jesuit practice, a mission he could not reveal at court, being constrained by the tensions around the Rites Controversy. The conflicts between Ripa and the Jesuits, which were detailed in Ripa’s original diary (Giornale) but removed by the priest-editors of Storia (1832) and consequently absent in Fortunato Prandi’s widely read, and often quoted, English abridged translation, Memoirs of Father Ripa (1844), were the constraining force in Ripa’s

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creation of the Views of Jehol. Retrieving these historical conflicts  and complexities surrounding the making of the landscape engravings, Fatica and Zhuang suggest that the distinctive visual incongruities of Ripa’s images from the Chinese woodcuts were not merely technical adaptations. Rather, they demonstrate a political and ideological battle surrounding the Rites Controversy—a battle in which the missionary Ripa was entangled. Restoring Ripa and his engravings to their own historical contexts alerts us as to how editors of missionary literature manufactured presentations of the past. The restoration illustrates how the transfer of landscape ideas and images could be far from an innocent process, but rather a process affected by contingent, personal and political conditions. Focusing on the Qianlong emperor’s persistent interest in building labyrinths—both Chinese and European—during his reign, Hui Zou, in Chapter 5, traces the cross-cultural negotiation of the concept of labyrinth. An image of the mind or body, labyrinth exists in both ancient Chinese (Daoist Dao and Buddhist nirvana) and European philosophies and literature (Plato’s Chora and the Greek daidala). These diverse traditions of labyrinth centring on “inducing wonder” or “seeking light in darkness” came to intersect in the various palaces and gardens of the Qianlong emperor: the rockery labyrinth (Lion Grove, named after the Lion Grove in Suzhou) in Changchunyuan, the European perspective labyrinth in the Western garden of Yuanmingyuan, and the hybridized labyrinthine residence in the Forbidden City. These concepts of labyrinth, for the Qianlong emperor, were by no means separate from each other, nor were European labyrinths a mere exotic interest. Rather, they were complementary and playful means for the emperor to exercise his imagination and seek universal enlightenment. Whether being the “perplexing buildings” decorated with European mirrors and fake doors in Qianlong’s labyrinthine residence or the baroque labyrinth where the court ladies meandering through carrying lanterns of yellow flowers, all were effortlessly fused with the winding path in Daoist or Zen traditions which constantly play upon the dichotomy of illusion (ultimate truth) and reality. The cross-cultural labyrinths thus, for the emperor, were a universal image of the memory theatre, by which his imagination was guided to a realm where Buddhist enlightenment, the Daoist paradise and Neoplatonic metaphysical brightness, all formed a “True wonder”. Juxtaposing the garden at New College, Oxford (founded in the 14th century) and the neo-Confucian Yuelu Academy (founded in the 10th

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century), Stephen Bann highlights, in Chapter 6, that both Chinese and English academic traditions utilised landscapes or communal gardens to impart humanistic and political values, a feature that indicates the parallel concepts of art cultivating human nature in both traditions. Bann then turns to 18th-century English poet William Shenstone (1714–63), designer and owner of The Leasowes, a landscape garden made famous by Robert Dodsley’s “Description”. Shenstone’s poetic experiences at the Leasowes, derived from Virgil’s Georgics, bear considerable resonance with the Chinese tradition, as in the example of Wen Zhengming’s “Record of the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician”. Both Shenstone and Wen were men of letters who lived in isolation from politics, but were nonetheless preoccupied with creating “a place to stand” or, rather, “a dialectic process in which the art of the poet consists in enabling Nature to have the upper hand”. Yet Shenstone was certainly unaware of this affinity with the Chinese tradition. Instead, references to China in Shenstone’s writings, as well as in Dodsley’s, were rather dismissive. Shenstone even considered China’s “alcoves” to be “meretricious” in contrast with the natural “English groves”. This paradoxical, negative English perception of the Chinese, as Bann reveals, was not separate from political ideologies. Just as the naturalness of the Leasowes was appreciated by the Marquis de Girardin (an admirer of Rousseau) in preference to the geometry of Versailles, so the Leasowes’ association with English liberty supported the anti-absolutism spirit in France before the Revolution. Similarly, the Chinese garden’s supposed “meretriciousness”—a construction of the image of China as a decadent, despotic regime, was written into England’s representation of itself, to help assert the English identity of liberty—an orientalist construction of the English garden as an example of the progression from the “artificial” to the “natural”.75 David E. Cooper, in Chapter 7, also focuses on an “affinity” between the Chinese and English traditions of landscape design in that both take landscape painting as their model. In both cases, Cooper suggests, a concept of nature—as a unifying power that courses through things—is expressed. This power, in the Chinese context, is “the Way (Dao) that runs through and connects everything”, including human beings, and thus emphasises the “co-dependence between human endeavour and natural processes”. In the 18th–19th century English context, shaped both by Christianity and the European Enlightenment, the power of nature is contrasted with the distinctively human powers of reason and technological control. These

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human powers are exercised to dominate nature, not to connect us with it, like the Chinese Dao. This lack of affinity, Cooper argues, was to have unfortunate implications for the subsequent Western discourses both of nature and of gardens. Because of this separation, nature becomes increasingly conceived of as wilderness, from which human cultural practice is excluded. This is a conception that encourages a sense of human estrangement from nature and allows no room for the idea that, through practices like gardening, it is possible to “promote an appropriate and authentic relationship between a person and the natural order”. This organic relation between man and nature, which the Chinese understood, and its earlier English admirers appreciated, was to be submerged beneath the fully fledged industrialisation of modernity by the 1850s. The idea of a modern landscape, as evidence of the estranged, divided relations between man and nature, dominated not only both European metropolitan centres and colonies from the mid-19th century; this idea continues to play a profound role in shaping our contemporary discourse of ecology, environment and ideas about nature—whether as wilderness in need of conservation or as a resource to be exploited for economic gain. The very equation between nature and wilderness or resource is among the most enduring legacies of Western colonial rule all over the world. On the other hand, facing the unprecedented environmental crisis, the classical values of landscape are being rediscovered and reinterpreted to address the felt gap between increasingly alienated man and nature. Certain forms of landscape practice and ethics may still be reactivated as an agency mediating the relation of ancient values and modernity, environment and local communities. From this perspective, at the intersection of environmental ethics, nature conservation, landscape and garden design, moral restructuring and environmental governance,76 there opens, for scholarly scrutiny, another field of entangled landscapes. Andrea Riemenschnitter’s postscript, Chapter 8, scrutinises the nature and resource equation further. Focusing on China in the 21st century, she sees a country which has realised its re-emergence as a supreme power in the world through “modernisation” but at the cost of its environmental humanity—its mountains, rivers, ancient territorial imaginary and “national space” are now subjected to “scientific rationalism, progress and linear time”. While a modernist world order of partition still characterises China’s state ideology, the premodern organic relationship resurfaces in the Chinese imagination. Marshalling material from the literature of the lower

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rungs of society, folklore and cartoons, to elite deliberation on landscape aesthetics in contemporary China, Riemenschnitter reveals an eco-aesthetic discourse which responds to, and criticises, the uncontrolled social and environmental devastation brought about by modernisation. Reinvigorating the classical eco-aesthetic tradition of landscape (shanshui), local artists, intellectuals and netizens conceive of a more organic interaction among humans, other species and matter, a poetic vision of man as an integral part of, rather than master and owner of, landscapes and nature. Drawing from Rey Chow’s reflections on the concomitant processes of the politicisation of identities and the dismantling of identification, Riemenschnitter further argues that feelings of loss among these Chinese environmental subjects haunt modernity on account of its disengagement from binding emotions such as empathy and compassion. The concept of entanglement aims here at unveiling the very image of modern “selves”, exposing them as trapped in a politics of modernisation that forces them to relegate their desire for a reintegration with the environment as residual, suppressed or sublimated feelings of attachment, which are, usually more assertively, captured in premodern Chinese views on human-thing relationships.

Conclusion The history that we have surveyed may be comprehended using the threefold concept of entangled landscapes, where landscape exchange is considered within the broader political, societal, economic and cultural contexts through which early modern China and Europe interacted. The strength of the “entangled landscapes” approach is first demonstrated in the contributors’ presentation of the plural histories of the landscape exchange. From the colonial discourse of the Elizabethan English in Ireland to the interaction between the “Chamberists” and “Brownists” in Georgian Britain, and to the West Lake landscape representations shifting towards a modern-looking Qing dynasty through assimilating European technologies, these stories multiply the previous unilinear narrative which stressed a progressivist European experience and an insular, arrogant Chinese mentality in the landscape exchange. The development of “naturalistic” European or English landscape gardens, set free from the narrative of a linear progress from ancient to modern, or artificial to natural, is revealed to entail complex processes of Europe’s societal changes in terms of colonisation, agrarian development, commercial and

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industry advancement, infrastructure and urban construction, as well as the conflict between the liberating drive and the restraining force. If the Tartaric landscapes of Marco Polo, as a token of Asiatic periphery, helped introduce the ideological legitimation for the English colonising project in a European periphery; the Chinese-Tartaric landscapes of the Qing Empire, as a symbol of a mighty empire, offered both a cure for the social and moral symptoms of British society and a model for the nation’s economic development and moral refinement. On the other side of the exchange, the Qing rulers appropriated European landscape elements and visual technologies, which have played a role more pivotal to Qing empirebuilding than mere aesthetic display. Instead, the European elements and techniques provided a language with which the Manchu rulers transformed landscape representation from a previously Han-Chinese dominant symbolic system into a culturally hybrid representation expressive of the “universal” character of their Asiatic empire. Second, the concept of entanglement is useful in contesting the linearity and neutrality of transcultural transmission. Despite the seeming innocence of landscape images or objective cartography, the interactions hidden underneath the landscape exchange were often characterised by opportunities, obstacles, inequalities and the violence of imperial and colonial operations. Contextualised within historical background such as the Chinese Rites Controversy, the missionaries were shown to be not free or autonomous cultural mediators; rather, they were constrained by circumstances—ideological, religious or political—and their subsequent impact on the outcome of the landscape exchange becomes manifest. Third, under the theme of aesthetic negotiation, entanglement is explicated as the tangled narratives and interpretations involved in the landscape exchange, particularly the confusion surrounding certain concepts or frameworks which have parallels in both Chinese and European culture. Discussions of concepts such as labyrinth and “imitating nature” demonstrate that a poetic experience was shared in a garden or landscape— whether in China or in Europe—which was conceptualised as an image of the human mind (or human nature, microcosm) and nature (macrocosm). Such parallels sometimes stimulated interest in creative appropriation (as in William Chambers) and synthesis (as in the Qianlong emperor); sometimes they went unnoticed or were ironically exploited as negative evidence to assert a modern landscape idea embodying a progressivist, individualistic ideology (as in William Shenstone). As an outcome of the

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triumph of industrialisation and acquisitive individualism, the ChineseEuropean landscape exchange ended up in the sorry partition between man and nature. The ancient, more organic relation, in its ghostly recurrences through contemporary ethico-aesthetic discourses, is reflective of our modern selves that are captivated by our own disengagement from binding emotions—“the most painful entanglements”. Attempted at a time when relations between China and Europe are attaining new importance in world history, and when interconnectedness has become a keyword in social and cultural discourse, this “entangled” approach offers a new way of thinking about landscapes in the making of in-between cultures and identities. Crucially, we share the criticism of a simple notion of modernity or unilinear European history as a universal process that is ultimately derived from core European experiences. Hence “entangled landscapes” aims to tell different kinds of stories about landscape and modernity. We also suggest that exchanges and encounters may signify more than the cultural cooperation and artistic fusion that is often argued in relation to landscape practices. Rather, they are agencies that perform the complex economic, socio-political and cultural relations of societies in a multilateral global network formed within constraints and dependencies. While through these internal changes, early modern China and Europe have obtained seemingly distinct social and cultural identities, the process of their formation, as we reveal through this study of landscape exchange, proves to be more entangled than is presented in conventional scholarship. A single volume such as this one cannot change that situation; however, a responsible practice that looks critically upon existing methods may help to pave the way for a more nuanced academic approach. Through this multifaceted study of entangled landscapes, we hope that new kinds of understanding of those historical legacies may be brought to the fore, and that new possibilities for thinking about these landscapes—as well as the societies that transformed and were transformed by them—will be opened.

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Notes 1.

The coinage of the term jardin anglo-chinois is seen in Georges-Louis Le Rouge’s Jardins anglo-chinois (a series sometimes entitled Details des nouveaux jardins a la mode and issued between c. 1776 and c. 1788). A brief list of canonical studies on jardin anglo-chinois or the Chinese connection of the English and European landscape gardens includes Arthur Lovejoy, “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism”, The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 32 (1933): 1–20; Eleanor von Erdberg-Consten, Chinese Influence on European Garden Structures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936); Osvald Sirén, China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990); John Dixon Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003); and Yu Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008). For major works on chinoiserie in Europe in the 16th–18th centuries, see Hugh Honour, Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay (London: J. Murray, 1961); Oliver Impey, Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration (London: Oxford University Press, 1977); Michael Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (London: Thames & Hudson, 1973); Lothar Ledderose, “Chinese Influence on European Art, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”, in China and Europe: Images and Influences in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Thomas H. C. Lee (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1991), pp. 221–37; and Dawn Jacobson, Chinoiserie (London: Phaidon, 1993). For more recent works on both topics, see David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins, A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in EighteenthCentury Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).

2.

A short list of scholarship in this field includes Sullivan, The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art; James Cahill, The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1982); Harrie A. Vanderstappen, “Chinese Art and the Jesuit in Peking”, in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B.C. Oh (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1988), pp. 103–29; Richard M. Swiderski, “The Dragon

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and the Straightedge, Part 1: A Semiotics of the Chinese Response to European Pictorial Space”, Semiotica 81, 1/2 (1990): 1–42; Mayching Kao, “European Influences in Chinese Art, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”, in China and Europe: Images and Influences in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Thomas H.C. Lee (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1991), pp. 251–303; Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding, eds., Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2015). 3.

Richard M. Swiderski, “The Dragon and the Straightedge, Part 2: The Ideological Impetus of Linear Perspective in Late Ming-Early Qing China”, Semiotics 82, 1/2 (1990): 43–106; Chongzheng Nie 聂崇正, Qingdai gongting huihua 清代宫廷绘画 [Qing Court Paintings] (Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu chubanshe, 1999); Elisabetta Corsi, “Late Baroque Painting in China Prior to the Arrival of Matteo Ripa: Giovanni Gherardini and the Perspective Painting Called Xianfa”, in La Missione Cattolica in Cina Tra I Secoli XVIII–XIX: Matteo Ripa E Il Collegio Dei Cinesi: atti dei colloquio internazionale, Napoli, 11–12 febbraio 1997 [The Catholic Mission in China between the 18th and 19th Centuries: Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College: Proceedings of the International Colloquium], ed. Michele Fatica and Francesco D’Arelli (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), pp. 103–22; Anita Chung, Drawing Boundaries: Architectural Images in Qing China (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004); “Jesuit Perspective at the Qing Court: Chinese Painters, Italian Technique and the Science of Vision”, in Encounters and Dialogues: Changing Perspectives on ChineseWestern Exchanges from the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Xiaoxin Wu (Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica Institute, 2005), pp. 239–62. On Qing cartography, see Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

4.

In both European and Chinese traditions, landscape, in the sense of a picture of the land, was not particularly differentiated from cartography and maps. There remained a continuum from map (cartography) to landscape painting in Chinese tradition. Both may be referred to as dili tu 地理圖, “geographic illustrations”. See Cordell D.K. Yee, “Chinese Cartography among the Arts: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Representation”, in The History of Cartography. Vol. 2, Book 2, Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 128–69; Edward S. Casey,

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Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), pp. 154–70. 5.

Jerry H. Bentley, “Cultural Exchanges in World History”, in The Oxford Handbook of World History, ed. Jerry H. Bentley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 343.

6.

Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).

7.

Denis E. Cosgrove, “Introductory Essay for the Paperback Edition”, in Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Denis E. Cosgrove (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. xi–xxxvii.

8.

Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York, NY and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), Chapter 1.

9.

Despite divergences, the year 1500 or thereabouts stands out in nearly all world histories as a key point of division. This period, the time of the first European transatlantic voyages to the New World continents, linked the Eurasian with the American landmasses continuously for the first time. The notion of the “early modern” is hence linked to a changed domain of global interaction that has to do with such diverse matters as the legacy of Chinggis Khan and Timur, the counter-Reformation and its overseas drive to proselytise, as well as the so-called voyages of discovery. See Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes Towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia”, Modern Asian Studies 31, 3 (1997): 735–62. For a different view, cf. Jack A. Goldstone, “The Problem of the ‘Early Modern’ World”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41, 3 (1998): 249–84.

10. See Victor B. Lieberman, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, C 800–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Timothy Brook, Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World (London: Profile Books, 2008). 11. Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 8. 12. This revisionist view is proposed by economic historians such as Andre Gunder Frank, Reorient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1997); Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy

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(Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000); Dennis Owen Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, China and the Birth of Globalization in the 16th Century (Farnham: Ashgate Variorum, 2010). It has been seconded by other historians of China, for example, Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). 13. D.E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800, 2nd ed. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), pp. 2–3. 14. “Tartar” was originally a linguistic not an ethnic category, the name of a Turkic-speaking medieval people of Central Eurasia. This people became a significant element in early Mongol federations of the 12th century, and the name became commonly applied to the Mongol peoples as a whole by the Europeans. By the 17th century, the Europeans bestowed the term “Tartars” on the newly powerful Manchus, who conquered China. A majority of European accounts of China published in the 17th–18th centuries refer to China as China-Tartary. In fact, the Manchus were a very distinct people from both the original Tartars and the Mongols, although their histories were often conflated. Prior to the early 1600s, these peoples were known as the “Jurchen”, but they adopted the name Manchu in a deliberate attempt to construct a coherent and separate identity that would supersede the tribal identities of the Jurchen and other north-eastern tribes associated with them. See Peter J. Kitson, “Tartars, Monguls, Manchus, and Chinese”, in Romantic Literature, Race, and Colonial Encounter, ed. Peter J. Kitson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 176–82. 15. On Qing’s consolidation, see Lawrence D. Kessler, Kang-hsi and the Consolidation of Ch’ing Rule, 1661–1684 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), esp. pp. 146–54. 16. William T. Rowe, China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), pp. 1–2. 17. Ibid. 18. Such conventional narration was developed by J.S. Mill, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and Max Weber and was embodied in canonical historiography on China such as that by Edwin O. Reischauer and John King Fairbank, East Asia: The Great Tradition (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1961) and John K. Fairbank, E.O. Reishauer and Albert M. Craig, History of East Asian Civilization, vol 2, East Asia: the Modern Transformation (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1967).

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19. Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Profession (1991): 33–40; Tim Murray, “Contact Archaeology: Shared Histories? Shared Identities?” in Sites: Nailing the Debate: Archaeology and Interpretation in Museums ed. Susan Hunt and Jane Lydon (Sydney: Museum of Sydney, 1996), pp. 199–213; and Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories”. 20. Scholarship in the field of Asian and European cultural exchange is substantial. See, for example, Francesco Pellizzi, ed. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 35 (Spring 1999) Intercultural China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Michael North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges between Europe and Asia, 1400–1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “A Roomful of Mirrors: The Artful Embrace of Mughals and Franks, 1550–1700”, Ars Orientalis 39 (2010): 39–83; Finbarr Barry Flood and Nebahat Avcioğlu,

ed., Globalizing Cultures: Art and Mobility in the Eighteenth Century (Special Volume of Ars Orientalis) (2011); Chu and Ding, eds., Qing Encounters. Rui Oliveira Lopes, ed., The Transcendence of the Arts in China and Beyond: Historical Perspectives (Lisbon: Artistic Studies Research Centre/Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, 2014). 21. Porter, Chinese Taste; Jenkins, A Taste for China; Sloboda, Chinoiserie. 22. Chi-ming Yang, Performing China: Virtue, Commerce, and Orientalism in Eighteenth-Century England, 1660–1760 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), pp. 24–5; Robert Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds: Imagining the British Nation through China”, in The Global Eighteenth Century, ed. Felicity Nussbaum (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 79–93. 23. Brook, Vermeer’s Hat, pp. 22, 123. 24. W.J.T. Mitchell’s Landscape and Power (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002 [1994]), which examines landscape as an agent of power, is one such example in landscape art history. 25. A brief list of key references of the idea of “entangled histories” includes: Sidney Wilfred Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York, NY and Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, 1985); Shalini Randeria, “Geteilte Geschichte Und Verwobene Moderne” [Shared History and Interwoven Modernity], in Zukunftsentwürfe: Ideen Für Eine Kultur Der Veränderung [Blueprints for the Future: Ideas for a Culture of Change], ed. Jörn Rüsen et al. (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2000), pp. 87–96; “Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, Caste

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Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India”, in Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, ed. Yehuda Elkana et al. (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2002), pp. 284–311; Wolf Lepenies, ed., Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals: Centers and Peripheries in a Changing World (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2003); Andrea Riemenschnitter and Deborah L. Madsen, eds., Diasporic Histories: Cultural Archives of Chinese Transnationalism (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2009); Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). For a theoretical exploration of the question of entanglement, this volume also incorporates scholarship (largely Francophone and Germanophone) on histoire croisée, for example, Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity”, History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50, esp. pp. 11–34; Jani Marjanen, “Undermining Methodological Nationalism: Histoire Croisée of Concepts as Transnational History”, in Transnational Political Spaces: Agents, Structures, Encounters, ed. Mathias Albert et al. (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2009), pp. 239–63. 26. Charles Bright and Michael Geyer, “Benchmarks of Globalization: The Global Condition, 1850–2010”, in A Companion to World History, ed. Douglas Taylor Northrop (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 285–300 quotes at p. 288. 27. Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison”, pp. 35–6. 28. For an earlier study in artistic and cultural exchanges which employs the term “entanglement”, see North, ed., Artistic and Cultural Exchanges. 29. See, for example, David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). 30. Ibrahim Kaya, “Modernity, Openness, Interpretation: A Perspective on Multiple Modernities”, Social Science Information 43, 1 (2004): 35–57; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Partha Chatterjee, “A Brief History of Subaltern Studies”, in Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen Und Theorien [Transnational History: Themes, Trends and Theories], ed. Gunilla Budde et al. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), pp. 94–104. 31. David Porter, “Sinicizing Early Modernity: The Imperatives of Historical Cosmopolitanism”, Eighteenth-Century Studies 43, 3 (2010): 299–306. For works on Chinese early modernity in addition to those by economic historians cited above, see, for example, Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski,

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Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987); Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure; Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996). 32. Philippe Forêt, Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000); Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise. 33. On the ideology of the Renaissance of Roman Empire in the Western European countries, see Thomas James Dandelet, The Renaissance of Empire in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); A.R. Pagden, Lords of All the Worlds: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France C.1500–C.1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995). For the idea of a multi-ethnic universal empire in late imperial China see Evelyn S. Rawski, “Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History”, The Journal of Asian Studies 55, 4 (1996): 829–50; Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Timothy Brook, The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2010). 34. See David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989); Joanna Waley-Cohen, The Culture of War in China: Empire and the Military under the Qing Dynasty (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006); Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise. 35. Robert Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 105. 36. As examples of such European perception, see João de Barros, Terceira Decada Da Asia De Ioam De Barros [The Third Decade. The Asia of João de Barros], vol. 2 (Lisboa: Ioãm de Parreira, 1563), p. 93; Isaac Vossius, Variarum Observationum Liber (London: Prostant apud Robertum Scott Bibliopolam, 1685), pp. 56–7, 77. These have been well documented in contemporary scholarship, for example, Gregory Blue, “China and Western Social Thought in the Modern Period”, in China and Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge, ed. Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 57–109. 37. On Europe’s esteem of Confucianism in the 17th–18th century, see Arnold H. Rowbotham, “The Impact of Confucianism on Seventeenth Century Europe”, The Far Eastern Quarterly 4, 3 (1945): 224–42; Edmund Leites, “Confucianism in Eighteenth-Century England: Natural Morality and Social Reform”, Phiosophy East and West 28, 2 (1978): 143–59; Walter W. Davis,

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“China, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment”, Journal of the History of Ideas 44, 4 (1983): 523–48; Jonathan Israel, “The Battle over Confucius and Classical Chinese Philosophy in European Early Enlightenment Thought (1670−1730)”, Frontiers of Philosophy in China 8, 2 (2013): 183–98. 38. Blue, “China and Western Social Thought in the Modern Period”; Victoria Tin-bor Hui, “Toward a Dynamic Theory of International Politics: Insights from Comparing Ancient China and Early Modern Europe”, International Organization 58, 1 (2004): 175–205; War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Antje Flüchter and Susan Richter, eds., Structures on the Move: Technologies of Governance in Transcultural Encounter, Transcultural Research—Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context (Heidelberg: Springer, 2012); Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, “Physiocracy and the Chinese Model: Enlightened Lessons from China’s Political Economy?”, in Thoughts on Economic Development in China, ed. Ying Ma and HansMichael Trautwein (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), pp. 12–34. 39. Thomas, Entangled Objects, p. 51. See also Mintz, Sweetness and Power; Flüchter and Richter, eds., Structures on the Move. 40. See Richard Harry Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 41. See, for example, Robert Markley’s analysis of Daniel Defoe’s Sinophobia, in Markley, The Far East and The English Imagination, pp. 30–70. 42. Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison”. 43. Roy Wagner, The Invention of Culture, rev. ed. (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1981). 44. Sebastian Conrad, “Circulation, ‘National Work’, and Identity: Debates about the Mobility of Work in Germany and Japan, 1890–1914”, in Lepenies, ed., Entangled Histories and Negotiated Universals, pp. 260–81. 45. John Wylie, Landscape (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 6–8. 46. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape; Denis E. Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Stephen Daniels, Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National Identity in England and the United States (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992); Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power. 47. Diana Spencer, Roman Landscape: Culture and Identity, Greece & Rome

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New Surveys in the Classics (Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Katharine T. von Stackelberg, The Roman Garden: Space, Sense and Society (London: Routledge, 2009); David Matless, Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). 48. Felix Driver and Luciana de Lima Martins, Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Feng Li, Landscape and Power in Early China: The Crisis and Fall of the Western Zhou, 1045–771 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Clunas, Fruitful Sites; Wen-hsin Yeh, ed., Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1998); Forêt, Mapping Chengde. Separate from Anglo-American scholarship, a group of Tianjin University-based scholars have, since the 1990s, conducted a series of studies on the Qing landscape in the Chinese language engaging the economic, socio-political and philosophical context. See, for example, Chunlan Zhao 赵春兰, “Qianlong zaoyuan sixiang yanjiu” 乾隆造 园思想研究 [Study of the Qianlong Emperor’s Thought on Gardening], MA thesis (Tianjin daxue, 1998); Qiheng (Wang) 戚珩(王其亨) and Yi Su 苏怡, “Qingyiyuan yu Qingdai Beijing chengshi shengtai jianshe” 清漪园与清代 北京城市生态建设 [Qingyiyuan and the Construction of Ecological City in Qing Beijing], in Zhongguo zijincheng xuehui lunwen ji 中国紫禁城学会论文 集 [Proceeding of Society of the Forbidden City] v. 3 (Beijing: Zijingcheng xuehui chubanshe, 2000); Xiaomin Wu 吴晓敏, “Qingdai huangjia gongyuan zangchuan fojiao jianzhu chuangzuo de leixingxue fangfa tanxi” 清代皇 家宫苑藏传佛教建筑创作的类型学方法探析 [The Typological Methods of Tibetan Buddhist Architecture in Qing Imperial Palaces and Gardens], Jianzhushi 建筑师 106, 6 (2003): 89–94. 49. Chu and Ding, eds., Qing Encounters is one excellent example of this scholarship. See also Hui Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2011); Corsi, “Jesuit Perspective at the Qing Court”. 50. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, p. 27. For an earlier critique, see Mark Dorrian and Gillian Rose, eds., Deterritorialisations: Revisioning Landscape and Politics (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2003). 51. Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor, eds., Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), pp. 2–4. 52. For article-length study on this subject, see Jas Elsner, “Inventing Imperium: Texts and the Propaganda of Monuments in Augustan Rome”, in Art and

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Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jas Elsner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 32–53; Eric M. Orlin, “Augustan Religion and the Reshaping of Roman Memory”, Arethusa 40, 1 (2007): 73–92. 53. Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds”, pp. 79–92; Philip Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Yue Zhuang, Imperial Arcadia: Architecture, Landscape and the Funereal Imagination in 18th Century Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, forthcoming). 54. Rudolf Wittkower, “English Neo-Palladianism, the Landscape Garden, China and the Enlightenment”, in Wittkower, Palladio and English Palladianism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1974), pp. 177–90. 55. Christopher Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780–1830 (London: Longman’s, 1989), pp. 80–1. 56. Yang, Performing China, pp. 7–10. 57. Zhuang, Imperial Arcadia. 58. Excepting, for example, Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds”; Tim Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Nebahat

Avcioğllu, Turquerie and the Politics of Representation, 1728–1876 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). 59. See, for example, Yi Wang 王毅, Yuanlin yu Zhongguo wenhua 园林与中国  文化 [Gardens and Chinese Culture] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1990); Rolf Alfred Stein, The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); John Makeham, “The Confucian Role of Names in Traditional Chinese Gardens”, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes 18, 3 (Autumn 1998): 187–210; Jiajun Cai, In Search of Moral Truth: Ming Literati Garden Design in the Sixteenth Century (Saarbrücken: Lap Lambert Academic Pub., 2012); Yue Zhuang, “Performing Poetry–Music: On Confucians’ Garden Dwelling”, in From the Things Themselves: Architecture and Phenomenology, ed. Benoît Jacquet and Vincent Giraud (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2012), pp. 373–405 and Yue Zhuang and Quiheng Wang, Zhongguo gudian yuanlin chuangzuo de jieshixue chuantong 中国古典园林创作 的解释学传统 [The Hermeneutical Tradition of Chinese Gardens] (Tianjin: Tianjin University Press, 2015). 60. “Sui you ren zuo, wan zi tian kai”, in Ji Cheng 计成, Yuan ye 园冶, in Yuan ye zhushi 园冶注释, anno. Chen Zhi 陈植 (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1999). For an English translation, see Ji Cheng, The

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Craft of Gardens, trans. Alison Hardie (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 61. Martin Kern, “Announcements from the Mountains: The Stele Inscriptions of the Qin First Emperor”, in Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared, ed. Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 217–40. 62. That the concepts of the Kunlun Mountain and Penglai immortals’ realm were applied in the construction of Xiyuan 西苑 (an imperial garden including today’s Zhongnaihai and Beihai Park located adjacent to the Forbidden City) and other imperial gardens were noted in the Qianlong emperor’s poems such as “Passing Qujian Huaxiang and touring several sites including Liubei and Rizhi pavilions” 过曲涧花香及流杯亭日知阁诸胜, in Rixia jiuwen kao 日下旧闻考, ed. Yu Mingzhong 于敏中 et al. (Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 2001), juan 22 and “On Haiyue Kaijin”, 海岳开襟歌, in Rixia jiuwen kao, juan 83. See also Wang and Su, “Qingyiyuan yu Qingdai Beijing chengshi shengtai jianshe”. 63. Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power, p. 13; Benedict R. O’G Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), p. 21. 64. Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 65. Pamela Smith, “Art, Science, and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe”, Isis 97, 1 (2006): 83–100. 66. Mitchell, ed., Landscape and Power, p. 9. 67. For a commonly accepted description of Chinese Rites Controversy, see N. Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China. vol. 1: 635–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 680–8. 68. For the idea of English landscape gardens being an outcome of the Chinese influence, see Lovejoy, “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism” and Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden. Their treating Europe and China as polar opposites perhaps veers towards not Eurocentrism but Sinocentrism. On the other hand, some Anglo-American scholars overlook the presence of Chinese imagery in the 17th–18th centuries and its associative values, insisting on the English landscape garden as an “internal European development”: see, for example, David Jacques, “On the Supposed Chineseness of the English Landscape Garden”, Garden History 18, 2 (1990): 180–91; Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe.

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69. In Poetics II. 1, Aristotle says that both poets and painters imitate men, but see them as better or worse than ourselves. This fundamental passage explaining art’s edifying role was often quoted by Renaissance and baroque critics both of poetry and painting, who considered nature as ideal human nature, as it ought to be. See discussion in Rensselaer W. Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting”, The Art Bulletin 22, 4 (1940), n. 12, 41, 64. Horace’s notion that painting like poetry should instruct as well as delight (Ars Poetica 333 ff.) is also endorsed by Renaissance and Baroque critics. See Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis”, pp. 226–8. Chinese culture does not divide the natural and human world. Instead, as David E. Cooper notes in this volume, both the natural and human world are united in “great nature” (Heaven-Humanity) where Dao, or the Way, connects all things together and courses through them. See also Tu Wei-ming, “Continuity of Being: Chinese Visions of Nature”, in Confucianism and Ecology: The Interrelation of Heaven, Earth, and Humans, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Berthrong (Cambridge: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1998), pp. 105–22. Confucians and Daoists share the belief that the essential purpose of art is to assist in the perfection of the moral and spiritual spirituality. As is put in The Book of Zhuangzi, through creating art, the self can enter into fruitful communion with others and roam around with great nature in ultimate joy. See Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, trans. Brook Ziporyn (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009), Ch. 6, especially pp. 46–7. Confucian classics such as Zhongyong (“Doctrine of the Mean”, a chapter in the Book of Rites and was selected by Zhu Xi [1130–1200] to form one of the “Four Books”) stress that humans should strive to understand and follow the Way in order to be able to participate in the transforming and nourishing process of Heaven and Earth: see Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 107–8. The Confucian rites and music (also referring to art) tradition, as Zehou Li demonstrates, shaped the development of a universalised emotion form (moderation) in Chinese culture that defines humanity, see his The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, trans. Maija Bell Samei (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2010), chs 1–2. 70. Ibid. 71. For the notion of travelling concepts, see Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002). 72. For a historical and materialist account of Ming garden culture, see

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Clunas, Fruitful Sites. For the Ming gardens as a realm where aristocratic and educated elite cultures clashed and became entangled, and aesthetic landscape paradigms were renegotiated, see Andrea Riemenschnitter, “Traveler’s Vocation: Xu Xiake and His Excursion to the Southwestern Frontier”, in Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. Don J. Wyatt et al. (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 286–323. 73. Drayton, Nature’s Government, pp. 50–4. 74. See n. 14. 75. Jenkins, A Taste for China, p. 4. 76. For cross-disciplinary scholarship in these fields, see, for example, Peter Howard et al., eds., The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies (London: Routledge, 2013); Monica Janowski and Tim Ingold, eds., Imagining Landscapes: Past, Present and Future (London: Ashgate, 2012); Jeff Malpas, ed., The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Helaine Selin, ed., Nature across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003).

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Chapter 1

Western Orientals? The Theme of the Tartar in the Elizabethan Discourse on Ireland MARK DORRIAN

WHEN Sir Thomas Smith, Principal Secretary to Elizabeth I of England, wrote of the “… idle following of heards, as the Tartarians, Arabians, and Irishe men do ...”, 1 he was making an allusion that would have been widely recognised by his contemporaries and that was freighted with moral implication. In this short article, I want to explore the reference to the figure of the “Tartar” in late 16th- and early 17th-century English writings on Ireland. I will focus in particular on chorographical descriptions, which set out to give an account of the land and its inhabitants, their provenance and character. Such texts often self-consciously situate and identify themselves within a tradition of writing on the country and, taken in sequence, have the effect of an extended “internal” debate as each works upon its predecessors, referencing, re-performing, supplementing and “correcting” to various degrees. A chain of explicit reference runs, for example, from the Anglo-Norman Gerald of Wales’s Topographia Hibernica (c.1188)—very much the ur-ethnographic account of Ireland—to the English Jesuit Edmund Campion’s Historie of Ireland (1571), to Richard Stanihurst’s Treatise Conteining a plaine and perfect description of Ireland (1577), to the militantly protestant Barnabe Rich’s A New Description of Ireland (1610), the latter of which castigates its predecessors for popish indulgence towards the Irish and even accuses Stanihurst of practising alchemy at Antwerp.2 Consequently, my aim is to address the theme of this volume through the consideration of a very specific instance of entanglement, one in 39

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which the reference to the distant Asiatic “Tartar” was deployed in the construction of an understanding—or at least an interpretation—of the close-to-hand inhabitants of the island lying to the west of the British landmass. What I hope to illustrate is the way in which the term “Tartar” operates as an element within the Elizabethan and Stuart colonial discourse on Ireland—which is to say, to delineate its relations and interactions with other discursive elements and with the structuring distinctions that shape the discourse and that are presupposed by it. The article is limited to this, and it has no specific claim to make regarding more general uses or understandings of the term outside this context, such as that found in the domesticated and Arthurian depiction of the court of Cambyuskan (Genghis Khan) contained in Chaucer’s “Squire’s Tale”, in which the Tartar leader is shown as an exemplary medieval knight, replete with emblematic chivalric virtues. The poet Edmund Spenser, himself owner of lands in Ireland and the author of an extended dialogue on its present state, composed in 1596, admired the “Squire’s Tale” and developed a continuation of it in the fourth book of his epic allegorical poem to Elizabeth, the Faerie Queene.3 The texts with which we are concerned emerged within a very specific historical and political context—that of the Tudor and Stuart “re-conquest” of Ireland and the plantations associated with it. Notwithstanding state policy, Elizabeth was famously reluctant to financially underwrite colonial ventures, so projects tended to be driven by an entrepreneurial individualism—indeed the quotation from Sir Thomas Smith, with which we began, is drawn from a pamphlet that he circulated to advertise his own colonial enterprise, a text that is likely to be the first piece of printed publicity in England for a commercial venture of any kind.4 Against this background, a remarkable efflorescence of descriptive and survey literature on Ireland took place, in which a range of contemporary anxieties was reflected—from the creeping fear that Catholic Ireland represented England’s back door left ajar for Spanish invasion to the belief that, with the dissolution of the monasteries and the rule of primogeniture, England faced a crisis (to do with both population and occupation) for which, it was hoped, Irish land might prove the remedy. But at the same time it also registered new conditions and experiences, such as the repeatable contact with “New World” cultures that technological innovation had enabled. After the shattering of the medieval world-image, Ireland had maintained its moral, if not geographical, alterity and deviance. In a speech delivered in

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1617 on becoming Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Francis Bacon set out the imperative that compelled England to refashion its obstinate neighbour: Ireland is the last of the daughters of Europe which hath been reclaimed from desolation and a desert (in many parts) to population and plantation; and from savage and barbarous customs to humanity and civility. This is the King’s work in chief. It is his garland of heroical virtue and felicity, denied to his progenitors and reserved to his times.5

The strangeness of the world encountered in Ireland by the Elizabethans led to the search for parallels in the work of ancient authors such as Strabo and Solinus, and speculative attempts to derive the Irish from groups such as the Scythians (described in Herodotus and in Pliny and a particularly favoured example). The term “Tartar”, however, depended on textual sources that were historically closer to hand, such as Mandeville’s 14thcentury Book of Marvels and Travels. In Marco Polo’s Travels (of which there was an English translation by John Frampton, published in 1579),6 a kind of origin/exodus myth of the Tartars (the term which the traveller uses to encompass the Mongolian empire of Kublai Khan)—or at least of their polity—is recounted. In his telling, they are split apart and scattered by the Nestorian Christian overlord Prester John, who grows afraid of their strength. Subjugated to a position of thraldom, they agree to unite and flee to deserted lands from whence they eventually return under the leadership of Genghis Khan, who, demanding Prester John’s daughter in marriage, kills him in battle when the request is arrogantly refused. In Polo’s description, the origins of the Tartars are thus located in marginal, waste places, and they are characterised by their nomadic, wandering life, deriving from a place “… with no habitations in the form of cities or towns …” and subsisting “… on meat and milk and game [and eating] flesh of any sort”.7 16th- and early 17th-century texts emphasised the identity of Tartar and Scythian: Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587) was subtitled Who, from a Scythian shephearde, by his rare and wonderful conquests, became a most puissant and mightye monarque.8 The epithet “Tartar”, which for the Elizabethans echoed Gerald of Wales’s assertion that the native Irish “… live on beasts only, and live like beasts”,9 invoked a spatially unrooted and mobile pastoralism. It was a term

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closely implicated in the crucial conceptual distinction between arable and pastoral modes of subsistence, a dyad that in turn implied an extended sequence of related oppositions that structured the colonial discourse on Ireland. While the master polarity was undoubtedly that of civility and savagery, below it a related series of oppositions ramified—arable/pastoral; humanity/bestiality; form/formlessness; order/disorder; knowledge/ ignorance; reason/unreason; health/disease; sexual correctness/sexual transgression; city/country; industry/indolence; lawful/illicit; the agents of God’s will/the objects of his displeasure. In the texts, each of the privileged terms here implicates the others in a remarkably coherent and systematic way, and I will try to illustrate this in what follows, indicating the expanded network of relations within which the charge of Asiatic pastoralism gains a wider meaning. Important too is the consonance between apparently different domains of interest or concern, whereby—to take one example—the metaphysical imperative to bring what is formless into form turns out also, as we will see, to answer military imperatives to restrict movement within the landscape or administrative-disciplinary demands for immobile, and therefore easily destructible, goods (such as crops). In the first instance, then, we will turn to the body of the land, its surface and its depths. For Tudor observers the land of Ireland was a beguiling prospect, and commentators unfailingly assessed its riches. William Camden, the antiquary, thought it a country to which nature had shown unusual grace,10 and wrote that it was: ... so fruitful in soile, so rich in pastures more that credible, beset with so many woods, enriched with so many mineralls (if they were searched), watered with so many rivers, environed with so many havens, lying so fit and commodious for sailing into most wealthy countries, and thereby like to be for import and custome very profitable ....11

According to Richard Stanihurst “... nature seemed to have framed this countrie for the storehouse or iewelhouse of hir chiefest thesaure ...”,12 and Sir Thomas Smith, publicising his projected colony in the Ards of Down, confidently invoked Biblical precedent and divine promise, calling it a “... lande that floweth with milke and hony, a fertile soil truely if there be any in Europe” and asserted that all England produced, “... save fine wool ...”

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could, given the correct reforms, “... be had also moste abundantly there”.13 Dissatisfied with its inhabitants, this rich land seemed to our authors to beckon—to call out to—the colonist. This perception was not new. Already for Gerald of Wales, writing in the 12th century, the fertility of the land seemed to implore cultivation. He quoted Lucan: “the fields demand, but there are no hands”.14 For Gerald, the apparent idleness of the Irish was their unworthiness to people their country. Unfulfilled, the land cried out to the colonist to satisfy its yearning, for its present inhabitants misused it, lacking the correct relationship with it. In the Tudor and Stuart texts, the rhetoric that stresses the desire of the land has a strong spatial component—within it a conceptual duality of surface and depth can often be discerned. The vertical axis, the depths, belongs to the colonist. His vigour penetrates and goes beyond the surface of the land—he delves into its body, whether through navigation or agriculture, and in doing so satisfies it by making it productive. So, Spenser wrote of the multitude “... of very good ports and havens opening upon England, as inviting us to come unto them, to see what excellent commodities that country can afford ...”,15 while Luke Gernon, writing in 1620, in an extended characterisation of Ireland as a woman, suggested that “... betwixt her leggs (for Ireland is full of havens), she hath an open harbor, but not much frequented”. The rivers that ran through her body were her veins, the largest (the Shannon) being, “... if it were not for one knot ...”, navigable from top to bottom. Picturing her as having been born out of “the wombe of rebellion about sixteen yeares” she awaited, Gernon went on, a husband, “... she is not embraced, hedged and ditched, there is noo quicksett putt into her”.16 Spenser’s Eudoxus, one of the protagonists of his dialogue on the state of Ireland, displays a similar strategy of personification when, after having been told how the native Irish regained much of their old territory from the English at the time of the wars between the houses of Lancaster and York, he laments that “I do much pity that sweet land ...”17 Around the theme of penetration into the body of Ireland, not only the notion of the colonist-husband but also that of the colonist-physician was developed. The split between the “body of the land”, innocent but desirous, and an idle and inadequate populace, which is crucial to the idea of the colonist-husband, has no counterpart in the passages in which the colonist is pictured as a doctor. The allusion to the colonist as a physician is particularly strong in Spenser. Ireland is seen as a “... diseased

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patient ...”,18 and England’s method for its cure will adhere to that of “... wise physicians ...”.19 Later it is described as a “... wicked person dangerously sick ...” who needs physician first and preacher later,20 and again, as a tree with poisoned branches which need to be lopped to recover the health of the whole.21 Earlier Stanihurst likened the language of the Irish to an infection; emphasising its role in the subversion of the English he wrote that, when the Irish tongue began to be used in the English Pale, “... this canker tooke such deepe root, as the bodie that before was whole, and sound, was by little and little festered, and in maner wholte putrified”.22 And Sir John Davis, writing after the “Flight of the Earls” from Ulster in 1607, imagined plantation as something akin to transfusion: “If the empty veins of Ulster were once filled with good British blood, the whole body of this commonwealth would quickly recover perfection of health.”23 Where the colonist penetrated and consummated, the native malingered idly and impotently on the surface. The notion of Irish indolence and its conceptual alignment with pastoralism and the pleasure of liberty (a complex clearly evident in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica) were still operative at this time. Normally appended to the enticing descriptions of the country was a passage criticising the natives’ disinterest. According to Stanihurst, nature “... instilleth in the inhabitants a drouste lithernesse to withdraw them from the insearching of hir hourded and hidden iewels”. He gives us the striking image of a laden banqueting table surrounded by guests, who, through some bewitchment, sit paralysed and repulsed before the delicacies.24 In Camden’s view, the fraught coastline of the western province of Connaught invited and provoked navigation but “... the sweetnesse of inbred idlenesse doth so hang upon their lazie limbes, that they had rather get their living from doore to doore, than by honest labours keep themselves from beggary”.25 The conceptual wedge driven between inhabitant and land meant that the native could be seen as an observer of the land rather than as an actor upon it. The manner in which the natives drew upon their habitat went unrecognised as a basis for correct possession or ownership of the land—they did not seem to intellectually and systematically affect it, and it could therefore be seen as unclaimed, as waste, as a desert. The perception of native land as waste and as therefore unowned and open to appropriation was to become a recurring motif in New World encounters, and left a tenacious legacy.26 It is in Sir Thomas Smith’s pamphlet of 1572 that ideas of Irish land as “empty” and as “waste” are first articulated into a justification for colonisation, although there had

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been famous intellectual precedent in the colonising parties of More’s Utopians, who considered it “... perfectly justifiable to make war on people who leave their land idle and waste, yet forbid the use of it to others who, by the law of nature, ought to be supported from it”.27 Smith was a man of impressive intellectual range. His investigations ranged across the domains of law, natural science, economic history and the history of orthography. But most of all it was his classical scholarship, and his corresponding assurance that he moved in accord with classical precedent, that dominated his thinking about his colonial enterprise. When requesting Fitzwilliam, Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy, to make out a commission for him, he asked that it should be as a “colonel”, for “Here it betokeneth a leader forth of men to inhabit and till waste and desolate places who in ancient times were called Deductores Coloniarum, and the action was called deducere coloniam.”28 In his pamphlet, Sir Thomas argued that: To inhabite and reforme so barbarous a nation as that is and to bring them to the knoweledge and lawe, were both a godly and commendable deede, and a sufficient worke for our age. All those things happening togither in my time, when I had considered, i judged surely, that God did make apte and prepare this nation for such a purpose. There resteth only to persuade the multitude already destined therto, with will and desire to take the matter in hand.29

Where penetrating and seeding the land locationally rooted, giving rise to cultivation, husbandry and an ordered landscape, those who roamed upon the surface like Tartars were dangerously spatially ill-defined. The placelessness and indolence exemplified for the colonists by the natives’ pastoralism was of urgent political concern. Tillage was cognate with civility; its geographic stability (and the stability of people it demanded) permitted regulation, order, the enforcement of law, the growth of commerce, and the reliable receipt of rent and other exactions. When people and possessions could move, all this was problematic. It held a pivotal role in Smith’s colonial theory—“‘Nothing,” he wrote firmly, “doth more people the country with men, maketh men more civil, nor bringeth commodities to the sustenance of men than the plough”30 and, as we have already seen, his pamphlet insisted that the civility of the north of Ireland would increase more “... by keeping men occupied in Tyllage, than by idle following of heards, as the Tartarians, Arabians, and Irishe men

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do ...”31 In the Elizabethan texts, Irish idleness, a moral question in Gerald’s Topographia becomes also an administrative problem. At the end of the last war, Fynes Moryson lamented, when it was hoped that the Irish would be drawn to tillage, they instead embraced pastoralism “... as suitable to their innate sloth, and as most fit to elude or protract all execution of justice against them, while they commonly lived in thick woods abounding with grass”.32 The “out-villages”33 and the “boolies”,34 temporary settlements erected on pasturing grounds, were analysed by Spenser as being beyond the law, as sites of relief for robbers and outlaws. Moreover, the people that thus live in those boolies grow thereby the more barbarous and live more licentiously than they could in towns, using what manners they list and practising what mischiefs and villanies they will, either against the government there by their combinations, or against private men, whom they malign by stealing their goods or murdering themselves; for there they think themselves half-exempted from law and obedience, and having tasted freedom do, like a steer that hath been long out of his yoke, grudge and repine ever after to come under rule again.35

Herding, for Spenser, was the mark of a barbarous, uncivil and warlike people, and he argued that a result of the enclosure of land would be to channel and divide the landscape, defining passages of encounter within which the enemy could be engaged.36 Routes 100 yards wide were to be driven through woods, fords destroyed and defended and bridges built in their place, roads fenced in on either side, fortifications built to defend narrow straits and walled market towns developed.37 His recommendations for means to exert effective authority and control over the Irish furthermore involved bringing them to visibility through the atomisation of their clustered social forms and their dispersal in something akin to a grid of points over the landscape, thereby exposing and making each individual subject to inspection and regulation. Arguing that one of the greatest strengths of the natives was their grouping in septs (kin groups), he advised that individuals should be forced to take on different surnames, and leave off nomenclature identifying them with their sept. Every person should be individuated, distinguished from the other, and should “... in time learn quite to forget his Irish nation”.38 This identification and exposure of the individual was extended with the transplantation of certain tribal

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groupings into each other’s lands under the control of Englishmen. There were to be no Irish individuals living together; rather, they were to be “... dispersed wide from their acquaintance, and scattered far and abroad through all the country ...”39 The “verticality” of arable penetration and cultivation versus the “horizontality” of Tartaric pastoralism articulated with another longstanding spatial trope, that of the centre and the margin. This was a fundamental thematic that had structured Gerald of Wales’s text although in a complex way, whereby the periphery was by turns assigned positive and negative values. On one hand, Ireland, as world-edging and remote, was described in terms of an Eden-like youthfulness that displayed the “true course of nature”, before the corruption and decrepitude evident in the centre40 yet, on the other, it was a zone of grotesque medieval marginalia, into which a frivolous and distracted nature withdrew in order to play with form. Thus, in the Topographia’s dedication to the king, Henry II, Gerald wrote: ... what new things, and what secret things not in accordance with her usual course had nature hidden away in the farthest western lands? For beyond those limits there is no land, nor is there any habitation either of men or beasts—but beyond the whole horizon only the ocean flows and is borne on in boundless space through its unsearchable and hidden ways. 41

Here, nature, “sometimes tired, as it were, of the true and serious, she draws aside and goes away, and in these remote parts indulges herself in these secret and distant freaks”.42 In the case of the island’s inhabitants, their spatial marginality was equated with their barbarous pastoralism and was opposed to the city, the characteristic topos of rooted centrality. The identification of the city by classical authors as the site of civil society, of law, of the practice of virtue43 and as the guarantor of identity insofar as it enshrined custom, echoed through Gerald’s text, as it would the Elizabethan literature: This people is, then, a barbarous people, literally barbarous ... All their habits are the habits of barbarians. Since conventions are formed from living together in society, and since they are so removed in these distant parts from the ordinary world of men, as if they were

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in another world altogether and consequently cut off from wellbehaved and law abiding people, they know only of the barbarous habits in which they were born and brought up, and embrace them as a second nature.44

The barbarian, languishing at the periphery, is marked by an insistent shortfall, a series of deficiencies that point to corresponding excesses— beyond culture, convention and society, beyond the properly human, the barbarian gravitates to the material, the corporeal and the bestial. In castigating the pastoralism of the Irish, Gerald developed what is apparently an evolutionist argument, but it was one in which the barbarian displayed a perverse and wilful refusal to evolve. “They have not progressed at all from the primitive habits of pastoral living”, Gerald wrote.45 For when the order of mankind progressed from the woods to the fields and from the fields to towns and gatherings of citizens, this people spurned the labours of farming. They viewed the treasures of the city with no ambition and refused the rights and responsibilities of civil life. Hence they did not abandon the life of woods and pastures which they had led up to then.46

Christianity itself was implicated in the “civil complex” of arable cultivation, industry and the city, on which this passage turns. In a parable Gerald tells, two Irishmen are taken on board an English ship, where they express amazement at the elements of the Eucharist. As Robert Bartlett has pointed out, in the story their (pastoral) ignorance of bread, that crucial symbol of Christianity (and tillage), is equated with their ignorance of Christianity itself. One powerful trope through which the “Christianising” role of the colonist was articulated with his “civilising” project was that of imperial Rome. In her pioneering work, Frances Yates noted the currency among Elizabethan poets of the myth of the descent of the Tudors, via the Trojan Brutus, from the founder of Rome. “This legend,” she argues, gives the framework within which Elizabeth, as one who could trace an ancestry going back, via ancient British romance, to the founders of Rome, claims as by right the title of the imperial virgin who brings in the golden age of pure religion and national peace and prosperity.47

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Here Elizabeth’s earthly presence betokens, as does that of the virgin Astraea at the outset of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue, the arrival of a new golden age, unified under an imperial pax and expressed in the practice of an imperial (and not papal) Christianity which recalled that of Constantine. In Ireland, England’s Rome was confronted with its barbaric Other. The land could be seen, by a mind eager to embrace the analogy, as an informem terries,48 as the same in kind as that which had faced the venerable Roman colonists. Classical antiquity’s remarks on Ireland were interestedly quoted by authors such as Camden: the “... rude and savage ...”49 non-classical nations which had anciently peopled Ireland were determined by the Elizabethan historiographers, and assessment of linguistic elements and customary observances confirmed the continuity of the contemporary Irish race with its supposed savage forebears. To some, even, England seemed faced with a degree of barbarity that was unprecedented. Camden speculated that a unique concentration of savagery had condensed in Ireland, suggesting that the uncivil races of “... Spaine, Gaule, and Britaine ...” withdrew to Ireland in the face of the expanding Roman Empire “... that they might shake off that intolerable yoke of Roman slaverie”.50 He thus constructs Ireland as something of a Pandora’s box into which the prerational chaos of the old world was compressed. He continues: But a blessed and happie time had it been for Ireland, if it had at any time been under their subjection: surely, it had then beene reduced from barbarisme to civilitie. For wheresoever the Romans were victors, they brought them whom they conquered to civilitie: neither verily in any place throughout Europe was there any civility, learning, and elegance, but where they ruled. And very inconsiderately also they seeme to have neglected this Island.51

The analogy with the Romans—paradigmatic bringers of civility, order and form in their structural opposition to the (Scythian/Tartarian) barbarians—has particular spatial implications that, to close, are best illustrated through the colonial theory of Sir Thomas Smith, with whom we began. That England could legitimately play the role of modern Romans, Smith had no doubt—the English were, he argued, the true inheritors of the Classical tradition having, more than any other nation, remained true to the precepts of Roman law and order.52 The cardinal point of his colonial schemes was a fortress city erected in imitation of classical models

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of colonisation as a civil implant in barbarian soil. He was flabbergasted when his son, who was to lead the first colonising party, made no mention of it in proposals that he submitted to his father.53 Smith’s projected city, Elizabetha, which he called for his son to found in imitation of Romulus, was to be a little London, first a defensive stronghold, then a centre of civilisation and trade around which parishes and villages would be organised. Behind Smith’s thinking on the developmental aspects of his project lay the model of the Roman military encampment; Castra colonelli or “Smith’s tents” were his suggestions for the name of his colony’s initial settlement.54 The colonial encampment of antiquity was a proto-urban settlement within whose plan the “cosmic” structure of the future city was already inscribed. There are strong overtones of it in the geometricised space of the city of Amaurotum that had been described by More (who has been called the first Englishman to use the word colonia in its Roman sense55) in Utopia. Smith in fact had made explicit reference to More’s text in his pamphlet of 1572: “How say you now ...”, it draws to a close, “... have I not set forth to you another Eutopia?” Bounded and quartered, almost square, Amaurotum was also a colonial settlement that was redolent of London. Its plan, which had been established and passed down by its founder, Utopus, was an exemplary form, a repeatable “instrument” of colonisation that was itself withdrawn from historical time. To the future generations of Amaurotum, Utopus left, as Françoise Choay puts it, “... only the secondary, non-essential, and epiphenomenal tasks”.56 Smith, although his first scheme failed, went on to develop detailed plans for a second, which again hinged around a “princypall city or towne of strength” (now called the “Queenes new Colony or Smythes Colen”).57 Here, he himself, somewhat like King Utopus, “bequeathed” (as any “hero of culture” should) a city plan. The city, he wrote, should be laid out according “... to a drawght of dyvisions which I send” (before adding, pragmatically, “... or other dyvisions as shal be thought good to the captins and adventurers”).58 The surviving documents suggest an orthogonal arrangement with houses built on square “Iles” (redolent of Roman insulae) which measured 270 feet across from street to street.59 In the centre of the city was to be a marketplace and around its perimeter, outside the fortifications, was to run a wide highway adjacent to which each adventurer was to hold land. Spatially rooted and defined, grounded—literally—by the plough and arable cultivation, urban in intent, Smith’s proposals were evolved in

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express opposition to the idea of Tartaric pastoralism, with its attendant complex of associations, that he and his Tudor and Stuart contemporaries held and so despised. And as we have seen, that turned out to be an idea with which Utopia itself—or at least the cultural reception of it—was deeply entangled.

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Notes 1.

[Sir Thomas Smith], A letter sent by I.B. Gentleman unto his very frende Mayster R.C. Esquire (1572), no pagination. The current chapter draws heavily on my earlier paper “Some Spatial Aspects of the Colonial Discourse on Ireland”, published in The Journal of Architecture, 6 (2001): 27–51.

2.

Barnabe Rich, A New Description of Ireland: Wherein is described the disposition of the Irish whereunto they are inclined (London, 1610), p. 2.

3.

Brenda Deen Schildgen, Pagans, Tartars, Moslems, and Jews in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001), p. 38.

4.

It was highly successful. Within six months of its publication, around 800 adventurers had enlisted; D.B. Quinn, “Sir Thomas Smith (1513–77) and the Beginning of English Colonial Theory”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 89 (1945): 551.

5.

“The speech used by Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, to Sir William Jones, upon his calling to be Lord Chief Justice of Ireland (1617)”, in Constantia Maxwell, Irish History from Contemporary Sources, 1509–1610 (London, 1923), p. 273.

6.

The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo, Together with the Travels of Nicolò De’ Conti, edited from the Elizabethan Translation of John Frampton; with Introduction, Notes and Appendices, 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1937).

7.

Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Ronald Latham (London: Penguin, 1958), pp. 93, 98.

8.

Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great (London, 1590). Jean Bodin describes the Tartars as “… a kind of Scythian people …” in Book 1, Ch. 5 of The Six Bookes of a Common-weale (London: Impensis G. Bishop, 1606), p. 44.

9.

Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. J.J. O’Meara (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1982), p. 101.

10. William Camden, Britain or A Chorographicall Description of the Most Flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of the Islands Adjoyning, out of the Depth of Antiquitie (1637), p. 63. 11. Camden, Britain, p. 118. 12. Richard Stanihurst, “A Treatise Conteining a plaine and perfect description of Ireland etc.”, in The Second Volume of Chronicles: Conteining the description, conquest, inhabitation, and troblesome estate of Ireland; first

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collected by Raphaell Holinshed; and now newlie recognised, augmented etc. By Iohn Hooker alias Vowell gent (London, 1586), p. 31. 13. [Smith], A letter, no pagination. 14. Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, p. 102. 15. Edmund Spenser, “A View of the State of Ireland Written Dialogue-Wise Between Eudoxus and Ireneus”, in Ireland Under Elizabeth and James I, ed. H. Morley (London, 1890), p. 54. 16. Luke Gernon, “A Discourse of Ireland, Anno 1620”, in C. Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1904), pp. 349–50. 17. Spenser, “A View of the State of Ireland”, p. 55. 18. Ibid., p. 36. 19. Ibid., p. 37. 20. Ibid., pp. 124–5. 21. Ibid., p. 134. 22. Stanihurst, “A Treatise”, p. 10. 23. Letter from Sir John Davis to Salisbury, 10 June 1609, in Maxwell, Irish History from Contemporary Sources, p. 52. 24. Stanihurst, “A Treatise”, p. 31. 25. Camden, Britain, p. 98. 26. In his essay “Ordering the Landscape”, Rhys Jones cites the example of a claim to ownership of ancestral land which was brought to an Australian court by a group of Aborigines in 1971. It was ruled that they “did not, according to British and later Australian law, own this land. To own it, one had not only to have some formal title: one also had to work it, to use it. Property required the union of land and labour ... The judgement ... was that the Aborigines ‘have a more cogent feeling of obligation to the land than of ownership of it’ and, in a celebrated phrase, ‘it seems easier on the evidence to say that the clan belongs to the land than that the land belongs to the clan’”. Rhys Jones, “Ordering the Landscape”, in Seeing the First Australians, ed. Ian Donaldson and Tasmin Donaldson (Sydney and London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1985), p. 184. 27. Sir Thomas More, Utopia, ed. R.M. Adams (New York, NY, 1992), p. 41. 28. Cited in Quinn, “Sir Thomas Smith”, p. 547. 29. [Smith], A letter. 30. Mary Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith: A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London: Athlone Press, 1964), p. 166.

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31. [Smith], A letter. 32. Fynes Moryson, “Commonwealth” [Chapter 5, Book II, Part IV of the Itinerary], in C. Litton Falkiner, Illustrations of Irish History and Topography, Mainly of the Seventeenth Century (London, 1904), p. 250. 33. Spenser, “A View of the State of Ireland”, p. 140. 34. Ibid., p. 87. 35. Ibid., p. 199. 36. Ibid., pp. 122–3. 37. Ibid., pp. 205–6. 38. Ibid., p. 196. 39. Ibid., p. 165. 40. Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, p. 53. 41. Ibid., p. 31. 42. Ibid. 43. Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500–c.1800 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 17–8. 44. Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, p. 103. 45. Ibid., p. 101. 46. I have used Bartlett’s translation here; Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales 1146–1223 (New York, NY: Clarendon Press), p. 176. 47. Frances A. Yates, “Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea”, in Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 50. 48. As Tacitus describes Germany in “Germania” in Tacitus I: Agricola, Germania, Dialogus, trans. M. Hutton and W. Peterson, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 130. Simon Schama points out that the adjective means both shapeless and dismal. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 81. 49. Spenser, “A View of the State of Ireland”, p. 81. 50. Camden, Britain, p. 65. 51. Ibid., p. 66. 52. Letter to Fitzwilliam, 8 Nov. 1572 cited in Quinn, “Sir Thomas Smith (1513–1577) and the Beginning of English Colonial Theory”, p. 546. 53. Quinn, “Sir Thomas Smith”, p. 547; Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith, pp. 165–6. 54. Quinn, “Sir Thomas Smith”, p. 547. 55. D.B. Quinn, “Renaissance Influences in English Colonization”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26, 5th series (London, 1976), p. 75.

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56. Françoise Choay, The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, ed. Denise Bratton (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 145. 57. Essex Record Office: D/D Sh01/2 (“Orders set out by Sir Thomas Smith Knight ...” [1573]); D/D Sh 01/3 (“Deed of Covenant between Sir Thomas Smith knight and Sir John Barckely ...” [1573]; D/D Sh01/5 (“Deed of Covenant between Sir Thomas Smith knight and Frs. Brunyng ...” [1573]). 58. ERO: D/D Sh01/2. 59. ERO: D/D Sh01/3 and 01/5.

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Chapter 2

Fear and Pride Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, Burke’s Sublime and China YUE ZHUANG

A MAJOR episode of chinoiserie, Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1772) presents seemingly extravagant descriptions of Chinese gardens, consisting of three scenes—“the pleasing”, “the terrible” and “the surprising”—which include, for example, dancing concubines, howling wolves, and dragons in dark passages.1 Some readers dismissed these “Chinese scenes” as romantic flights of fantasy.2 Yet others took them seriously,3 suggesting that these scenes depict a landscape theory, as Chambers confessed in his private correspondence.4 Among these diverse interpretations, the art historian Eileen Harris5 points out that these scenes correspond with Edmund Burke’s theory of the beautiful and sublime (with terror being a sub-branch of the Burkean sublime) described in his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757).6 As Burke scholars suggest, the Enquiry, aligned with the classical rhetoric tradition and Scottish Enlightenment,7 has a clear moral and sociopolitical purpose: to identify the principles of how objects of the sublime and the beautiful affect human emotions and subsequently use them to prompt actions that support society, politics and religion.8 Building on Harris’ and the Burke scholars’ observations, this article interprets Chambers’ landscape theory and his references to “the Chinese” in the contested discourses on how landscape gardening affected

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emotions and the implications of emotions for society and politics.9 The dominant “natural”, English gardening style (developed by Lancelot “Capability” Brown) was widely celebrated as an icon of natural rights liberalism—the radical Whig principle “fostering the love of Power in Individuals”.10 For modern conservatives like Burke and Chambers, this radical Whig principle was at the root of urban radicalism, jingoism and the hubris of governance prevalent in 1760s–90s Britain. Instead of a personal resentment against Capability Brown, as is often assumed, Chambers’ criticism of English gardening, featuring in his Dissertation, was a reaction to this radical Whig discourse of liberty. Chambers’ landscape scenes, I argue, following Burke’s theory of the sublime, aimed  to  mould people’s moral-religious emotions, such as fear and pride,11 as a basis of constitutional and social stability as well as of national improvement. Imagery of Chinese landscapes with their associative values such as China’s socio-political stability based on Confucian moral cultivation (moderation), as well as China’s progressive commerce, industry and advanced urbanism,12 continued to make a plausible impression on the British public in the 18th century. They provided Chambers with a referent and a source of inspiration to flesh out Burke’s theory in the fields of landscape, transport and urban planning to help in moulding Britons’ moral-religious emotions and contributing to empire-building. This particular role of Chinese landscapes, as an integral part of Chambers’ multifaceted and ambivalent representations of oriental gardening, has been little explored. In one light, this exploration reveals how Chinese landscape elements and techniques were evoked as a means to criticise the unbridled liberty and intellectual hubris of the radical Whigs, to reform British morals based on ancient and theistic virtue, and to provide a stimulus for Britain’s national improvement. In another light, Chambers’ imagery of Chinese landscapes moulding emotions was neither mere foreign influence nor an internal European development. Rather, his reception of the Chinese landscapes and Chinese culture paralleled and commingled with his knowledge of European classical rhetoric tradition, Burke’s sublime and the related Scottish Enlightenment theories which, in reaction to modern theorists, stressed the moral, religious and sociopolitical purpose of art. Addressing these entanglements in the social and cultural process, this article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the landscape exchange between China and Britain in the 18th century.

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Moulding Moral-Religious Emotions: Chambers’ Dissertation, Burke’s Enquiry and China Eileen Harris’ observation of the Chambers and Burke link provides a key to understanding the intellectual calibre of Chambers’ Dissertation, because they both belonged to the 18th-century Anglophone discussions on “pleasures of the imagination”. What needs to be highlighted is that these discussions were not homogeneous, as Harris indicates,13 but divergent, and were often imbued with different ideological implications and values. Joseph Addison’s celebrated papers On the Pleasures of the Imagination,14 as Rensselaer Lee observes, began to drop the didactic conception of art as inherent in the classical rhetoric tradition of ut pictura poesis (that painting like poetry should instruct as well as delight).15 Attempting an explanation of pleasure in purely psychological and emotional terms, Addison’s writings, it was suggested, represented emergent bourgeois and individualistic values.16 Distinct from Addison—and the Lockean associationism from which Addison derived his theories, Burke’s Enquiry insisted on the function of art in the classical tradition, namely, to affect moral-religious emotions prompting actions in the interest of society.17 Fear and pride are two key moral emotions which the Burkean sublime set out to cultivate. In Burke’s Enquiry, fear (closely related to horror and awe or reverence) is an instinct towards self-preservation, but also acts as an antidote to restrain excessive reasoning; it highlights religious sentiments that work against unbridled liberty and hubris.18 Pride is this instinct extending beyond self-preservation, taking the form of ambition and driving men to outperform their fellows, while motivating social improvement.19 This moral, religious and socio-political emphasis on aesthetic sensibilities in Burke’s Enquiry resonated with Chambers’ view of art and architecture. Trained in the French Academy tradition,20 Chambers’ architectural as well as landscape or garden theory embodied the values and conventions of classical rhetoric, in which art, taking the idealised human life or nature as model, shaped moral human nature in support of society, politics and religion.21 In his Preface to the third (self-edited) version of A Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture (1791), Chambers states that architecture “is not only useful, but also contrived to … tending at once to preserve, to secure, … to delight, and give consequence to the human species”.22 Whilst classical architecture required learning to

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be properly admired, gardens had a universal appeal to people regardless of their educational background.23 As Chambers states in the Preface to the Dissertation: “[Gardening’s] dominion is general; its effects upon the human mind certain and invariable.”24 Like many associationists, such as Addison or Thomas Whately, Chambers emphasised the effect of architecture and gardens on the imagination. But unlike Addison and Whately, Chambers stressed that the emotional effect was not merely about the ease and gratification of aesthetic pleasure such as the “pleasing astonishment” or “agreeable surprise” in Addison.25 Rather, they were “opposite and violent sensations”,26 forming a leading theme of “Oriental gardening” in Chambers’ Dissertation. Such contradictory passions, the mixture of fear and joy, which Burke named “delight” (a remission of pain), represented an ideal form of pleasure imbued with religious sentiments in the classical rhetoric tradition of the sublime which was available to the Renaissance as well as 17th–18th century academies.27 From landscapes of variety and contrast like those by Claude and Poussin to Chambers’ master J.-F. Blondel’s sublime architecture,28 it was art’s mission to cultivate the human mind in concert with God’s reason, conceptualised through the classical cosmic order of concordia discors. Chambers’ “Oriental gardening”, in essence, renewed this function of neoclassical art in moral, aesthetic and religious edification among Britons confronted with modern values. On the other hand, unlike Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s popular English gardening, which was confined within private landscape estates, Chambers’ landscape theory in his Dissertation opened up to the infrastructure construction (roads, bridges, canals and rivers) which was an integral part of Britain’s rapid urban and economic growth in the second half of the century, a landscaping system that has received little notice from modern scholars. Chambers’ training in the “Grand Goût” (Great Taste) of 17th-century French public buildings and his four-year residence in Rome exposed him to the convention of public magnificence begun in the cities of antiquity. In this convention, public works, sculpture and all forms of visual art were a means of persuasion. As Longinus argues in his On Sublime, after exposure to the productions of great art, we are filled with a kind of “exultation”, as if we had somehow created what we are witnessing.29 Chambers was also familiar with Scottish Enlightenment social theories (those of David Hume and Adam Smith, for example)30 in which luxury as well as outstanding artistry and industry were considered key to economic and social improvement as they provided “gratification of the senses”

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and stimulated social emulation. The idea of social improvement through commerce was dear to Chambers’—the son of a Scottish merchant— heart. Burke’s discussion on the social passion of pride and magnificence was fully congruent with Hume and Smith’s social theory and resonated with Chambers’ own idea of constructing the kingdom as a “magnificent garden” embracing both the moral and commercial values of antiquity and the Scottish Enlightenment. It was this shared insistence on the moral or religious as well as the social purpose of art that formed the strong bond between Burke and Chambers. In 1757, Chambers, who had recently returned from his training and residence in France and Rome, was confronted by the blandness of urban environments in England,31 a result of the dominant mercantilism and the lack of national spirit. He quickly identified with Burke’s challenging ideas of the terrible and the sublime, and used them for his early account of Chinese gardens, “The Art of Laying Out Gardens”.32 Later, Chambers kept returning to Burke’s essay for inspiration for his Treatise on Civil Architecture (first edition 1759) as well as for his Dissertation, and for the preparatory notes to his Royal Academy lectures.33 Chambers’ appreciation of Burke was reciprocated. Burke, a self-declared “Chamberist” as opposed to the “Brownists”,34 was a constant supporter of the royal architect: he reprinted Chambers’ essay on Chinese gardens in his Annual Register (1758); he publicly supported Chambers’ Dissertation, which was attacked by radical Whigs as “Tory landscape” following its publication; 35 and he later backed up Chambers’ construction of the national building—Somerset House— which was being criticised for its expense.36 This link between Chambers and Burke that Chambers’ landscape theory, like Burke’s sublime—both aimed to mould moral-religious emotions in the interest of society rather than in the interest of the individual—has not been sufficiently stressed in previous scholarship. Accordingly, Harris’ well-received observation that the Chinese were a mere literary instrument of “the pleasure of the imagination”37 may be developed in accord with this moral, religious and social accent. During his service with the Swedish East India Company, young William Chambers travelled to China (Canton) twice in the 1740s.38 The experience of journeying to China, rare for contemporary European elite, was key to his career. He was connected with renowned Sinologists such as the Swedish diplomat Carl Fredrik Scheffer and, later, with Voltaire. Chambers’ Chinese expertise, especially his observations on Chinese

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architecture, granted him an advantageous link to the Hanoverian royalty. Frederick Prince of Wales, leader of the opposition camp, who was then actively supporting the oriental taste in art and architecture for his political reform, commissioned Chambers for a design of the “House of Confucius” at Kew in 1749.39 Later, following his appointment as architectural tutor to Frederick’s son (future George III), Chambers published Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils (1757) in which he deliberately differentiated his own approach from the popular commercial “Halfpennies” or, in his own words, his primary concern was to “put a stop to the extravagancies that daily appear under the name of the Chinese”.40 From 1757–63, Chambers redesigned the Kew Gardens (under the patronage of Frederick’s widow, Princess Augusta and Lord Bute) in a picturesque manner, in which an 11-storey Chinese pagoda was erected in 1761, along with other 20-odd follies including a ruinous Roman arch. As many have observed, Chambers is not a pronounced Sinophile—he considered Chinese architecture as inferior to the European antique.41 But he did wish to invest the British landscapes and gardens with great variety and contrast following the classical rhetoric convention of the sublime— the very contraries that may provide a stimulus to (quasi-) religious admiration (a mixture of fear and joy) rather than mere “agreeable surprise” or insipidity. Seeking a landscape capable of generating such admiration, the Chinese, whom he appreciated as “excel[ling] in the art of laying out gardens” and whose Confucian doctrines were deemed highly in 17th–18th century Europe as a model for “natural religion”, provided a suitable reference.42 As has been noted already,43 in Europe, since the 16th century, accounts and illustrations of China’s cities, landscapes and people undertaken by travellers, merchants and missionaries provided food for the pleasures of the imagination, not to mention the numerous luxurious commodities shipped to Europe.44 Yet what has not been emphasised by modern scholars are the moral, religious and social dimensions of such pleasures or “delight” and the capacity of Chinese imagery—the triumphal arches (pailou), the monuments in landscapes and the gardens which imitate nature45—in cultivating this particular kind of pleasure. Chambers’ Dissertation is an important example demonstrating how a European observer and artist engaged with these dimensions.46 Crediting the Chinese gardeners with being “philosophers”, “having a thorough knowledge of the human mind”,47 Chambers spoke in line with European Sinophiles for whom China, with

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its Confucian doctrine, demonstrated an ideal society built upon cultivated moral human nature. In China, as Sir William Temple had earlier extolled in the 1690s: [under the guide of Confucius], every man ought to study and endeavour the improving and perfecting of his own natural reason to the greatest height he is capable, so as he may never err and swerve from the law of nature in the course and conduct of his life . . . that in this perfection of natural reason consists the perfection of body and mind and the utmost or supreme happiness of mankind.48

European travellers and missionaries also stressed that the key to Confucian governance was the cultivation of moral emotion through habitual or ritual practices embedded in everyday life. The French Jesuit Louis Le Comte stated that the original lawmakers of China had used “natural feelings for the common good” in instilling through ceremonies a reverence for paternal power.49 The French traveller Pierre Poivre, in his Voyages (1768), referred to China as the happiest and best organised country in the whole world, because its government was founded upon laws which are an expression of Nature’s principles and which are rooted in the human heart.50 Such understanding reflects the European perception of the Confucian rites and music tradition which, as ways of internalising social values and processes of emotional training through habit formation, shaped the development of a universalised moral psychology as a basis of social order.51 This understanding resonated, and was cited and reproduced, in a number of important works including Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Law,52 to which Burke was indebted, and in the Preface to the English translation (Cave edition) of J.-B. Du Halde’s A Description of the Empire of China, which Chambers relied on for the Dissertation.53 Although these European accounts did not explicitly suggest Chinese gardens or landscapes as being a form of habitual or ritualised practice that was capable of shaping emotions (which, as it happened, gardens and landscapes were),54 the European accounts did not fail to emphasise the striking visual effects of Chinese gardens and landscapes. The account writers’ and their audiences’ own knowledge of the European classical rhetoric convention, in particular of what Caroline van Eck refers to as “visual persuasion” (namely art acting on the viewer, exciting emotions and inciting to belief or action),55 widely practised by artists

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and architects in early modern Europe, prepared them for noticing this connection. Sir William Temple, for example, in his “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus” suggested that Chinese gardens, with their irregular beauty or sharawadgi, were a contrivance for the imagination.56 The French Jesuit Jean-Denis Attiret, in his account of the Yuanmingyuan, to which Chambers acknowledged his debt, noted how the sight of a rock “strikes one with Admiration”.57 In the climate of the Scottish Enlightenment which stressed the effect of the environment on human emotions and actions, Chambers captured the theatrical qualities inherent in Chinese gardens and landscapes (such as grotesque rocks, winding paths and the technique of concealing the bounds), all of which were noted by the Jesuits and travellers and corroborated by his own experience, and played each to his own interest. Calling them the imitation of all the irregular beauties of nature,58 Chambers appropriated the Chinese authority in gardening to rejuvenate the Renaissance and 17th-century European landscape tradition59 in contemporary English social environment—through imitating “contrarieties in nature”, the landscape art sought to improve “unadorn’d (human) nature”.60 As I argue in the following section on the “landscape of concealment and liberty”, Chambers deployed the Chinese landscape device of “concealing the bounds” in accord with the Burkean sublime effect to orchestrate landscape scenes as divine mysteries, capable of cultivating moral fear. This moral-religious emotion was considered as an antidote to radical liberal sentiments and individualistic values, which both Burke and Chambers perceived as undermining British constitutional liberty. On the other hand, Chambers’ Dissertation dedicates a considerable number of pages to the Chinese practices in urban and infrastructure (roads, bridges, rivers and canals) construction, pointing to China’s enviable leading position in commerce, transport and urbanism in the early modern period.61 A traveller to China himself, Chambers was an eyewitness to the same vision of oriental splendour which had been widely circulating in Britain—and in Europe—since the 16th century. As William Temple had earlier noted: No country in the known world so full of inhabitants, nor so improved by agriculture, by infinite growth of numerous commodities, by canals of incredible length, conjunctions of rivers, convenience of ways for the transportation of all sorts of goods and commodities

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from one province to another, so as no country has so great trade, though till very lately they never had any but among themselves.62

Towards the late 18th century, Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, although denigrating the Chinese economy as being stagnant, still spoke of China as a civilisation that benefited from its foreign trade.63 China’s advanced status in commerce, as well as its excellent transportation network and landscape urbanism under the state’s organisation,64 as astutely noted by Jesuit travellers, appealed to Chambers as a model for improvement in the commercial age. In a later section entitled “Stimulating Pride”, I analyse Chambers’ discussion of building the whole kingdom as a “magnificent garden”,65 and point out how the imagery of Chinese urbanism, which Chambers drew from Jesuit and travellers’ literature, as well as his own experience of visiting Canton, were evoked to provide a foreign model of excellence. China’s infrastructure and city construction, which combined utilitarian and visual effects, were rendered in terms of the Burkean sublime. Chinese-Burkean scenes of the sublime were capable of stirring the social preoccupations with emulation and pride in British artists and architects, provoking them to surpass even the Chinese in these fields. Such achievement would not only improve the practicality needed by commerce, but also beautify the cities, towns and countryside, refining the taste of the British public and thus furthering Britain’s national improvement.

Cultivating Fear: Landscape of Concealment and Liberty In the Preface to Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, Chinese gardens are contrasted with the English style of gardens, typically represented in Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s (1716–83) “naturalistic” gardening (Fig. 2.1). Under the patronage of the large landed class, “Capability” Brown was one of the most active landscape designers during the era of “landscape improvement”. The Brownian style of gardening, as criticised by Chambers, banished “the assistance of almost every extraneous embellishment”.66 The gardening style was not only monotonous and insipid but also, as “an ax[e]” of “liberty”, it “laid waste

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Fig. 2.1: Richard Wilson (1714–82). Croome Court, Worcestershire (1758). A landscape created by Lancelot “Capability” Brown. Reproduced with permission of the Trustees of the Croome Estate.

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the growth of several ages”.67 Chambers’ criticism was not addressed to Brown personally, as is often assumed, but rather echoed contemporary moralists such as the Irish poet (his friend and ally) Oliver Goldsmith’s criticism of landowners’ complete disinterest in any responsibility for local agrarian communities. Meanwhile, Chambers’ axe-wielding image engaged the discourse on the liberty of the imagination that was associated with these large landscape estates. In the Spectator (1712), Addison famously exclaimed that the pleasure one enjoyed at an English landscape farm was “the freedom of sight”, which made immaterial contact with “unbounded views” and the “spacious horizon”, and felt a “delightful Stillness and Amazement in the Soul”.68 Thomas Whately, writer and politician, extolled Addison’s theme in his Observations of Modern Gardening (1770): [T]he scenes of nature have a power to affect our imagination and our sensibility; for such is the constitution of the human mind, that if once it is agitated, the emotion often spreads far beyond the occasion; when the passions are roused, their course is unrestrained; when the fancy is on the wing, its flight is unbounded …69

Nature, “being released now from the restraint of regularity”, Whately suggested, freed the imagination, which embarked on an unbounded flight. Whately continued the line of modern aesthetics begun in Addison’s landscape of “a spacious horizon” over which one’s eye could roam at will. Admiration for this kind of Addisonian sublime, as Richard Bourke discusses, was not only admiration at the greatness of nature, but was also a delight of the mind which at the same time joyed in its own boundless “liberty” or expansiveness.70 This unbounded liberty, characterised by Chambers, was the terrifying vision of an axe, an image of unlimited human will, or what Stephen K. White calls the false sublime.71 With this liberty-axe image, Chambers demonstrated his alignment with Scottish moral philosophers such as David Hume on the Lockean idea of the liberty of the imagination and association. Whilst Hume agreed with Locke on “liberty of the imagination” as the mind’s innate and vigorous capacity for creating associative chains of images and ideas, he took issue with Locke’s mechanical psychology. For Hume, there are dangers of excess in the imagination and a moral responsibility to

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constrain such excess.72 Burke’s Enquiry maintains the same position.73 Beauty, Burke holds, was “some quality in bodies, acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses”.74 In contrast, the sublime constrained, or suspended this mental activity of associations. Burke claims that: The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force.75

Here Burke describes the paralysis of the rational capacity by horror or fear as the exemplary reaction to the sublime. The sublime for Burke, as Vanessa L. Ryan discusses, is a question not of the subject’s increasing self-awareness, but of the subject’s sense of limitation and of the ultimate value of that experience within a social and ethical context.76 Whilst the Addisonian sublime empowers the human will to “embrace limitlessness itself”, the Burkean sublime overpowers the self, cultivating a sense of human limitation in the face of divine mystery.77 Stressing that the sublime is by definition beyond man’s capacity for control, Burke deliberately reduces the role of the imagination and minimises the mind’s reflective activity, which is encouraged by the beautiful, thus further highlighting the constraining function of fear in moral imagination. In his Enquiry, Burke goes on to afford a physiological analysis of the opposition between the beautiful and sublime. He relates the beautiful with ideas of pleasure, love and sympathy, which arouse an inner swelling and triumph that relaxes the nerves and reduces the body to a state of languor that—in its most extreme form—leads to self-destruction.78 The sublime, which Burke relates to pain, terror and self-preservation, on the contrary, causes a greater emotion of “delight” (relative pleasure occurred with the remission of pain). The delight occurs at a contradictory threshold, where “a change [such] as produces a relaxation, should immediately produce a sudden convulsion”,79 “a violent pulling of the fibres”. 80 The sublime is

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thus an antidote to the beautiful, because it intensifies vitality through “an exertion of the contracting power of the muscles”,81 keeping the organism in an active, healthy condition. Insisting on that power of the sublime, Burke’s physiologism and minimising of reflexive mental activity, as just discussed, set him distinctly apart from the emphasis of the associationist school. Designed to be compatible with the physiologists’ theory of the contractility of nerves (foremost Christopher Nugent, Burke’s fatherin-law),82 Burke’s sublime coheres with the “sentient principle” of the Edinburgh Medical School which, operating within the classical natural law, maintains that the body’s responses are purposeful and not merely the result of a blind mechanism.83 Eighteenth-century Scottish social thinkers generally emphasised the relation between the quality of sensibility and social life.84 Similarly, in Burke’s analysis of the beautiful and sublime, the psychological and physiological pairs of pleasure and pain, association and its suspension, relaxation and contraction, both connected with the discourse on liberty and constraint in morality and society. The term “liberty”, like nature (or human nature), has been a source of confusion and false generalisation in the historiography of ideas. Liberty has often been applied to two oppositional tendencies, one of them characteristic of classical natural law, which is a moral norm or practical rationality and the other, representative of “natural rights”, is drawn from Hobbes’ and Locke’s mechanical and empirical psychology, interpreting human nature as self-interested cooperation, and political communities as based upon an abstract “social contract”.85 Hobbes’ and Locke’s revolutionary concept of liberty, which paved the way for Tom Paine’s proposed egalitarian government in 1774, struck the conservatives as authorising excessive or arbitrary power. For Burke, himself a conservative, the constitution was necessarily opposed to all claims to absolute or arbitrary power, whether that of the king against the colonies or of advocates of popular power against constituted limited monarchy, such as Tom Paine, Richard Price and Dr Priestley.86 For Burke, true liberty was “not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish liberty, as if every man was to regulate the whole of his conduct by his own will”.87 Following Aristotle and Cicero, Burke understood that man is a political animal by nature, so that true liberty must be “social freedom”.88 As he states in his criticisms of the French Revolution, liberty “is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint”.89 Liberty is not a license to act from sheer self-will. “Without tuition and restraint”,

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Burke warns, liberty “is the greatest of all evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness”.90 To be fit for freedom, people need self-control and morality: “Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites … society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere.”91 Just as Burke claimed that liberty without wisdom and virtue was a great evil, Chambers understood that “without a little assistance from art, nature is seldom tolerable; she may be compared to certain viands, either tasteless, or unpleasant in themselves.”92 Chambers’ criticism was not only about the English or Brownian gardening which he perceived as being monotonous or, as Nicolas Pevsner rightly points out, which “expressed only one set of sentiments”.93 His language of “nature” and “art” actively engaged the discourse on liberty and authority in British society and politics. The John Wilkes riots and the journalistic wars against the Scottish minister Lord Bute and George III throughout the 1760s was an important backdrop to Chambers’ writing of the Dissertation. In the riots witnessed across a number of English cities, Bute’s effigies were hung on city gates, decapitated or burnt. His person suffered public insult as well as mob attacks on several occasions.94 Such hostility was not confined to the mob and accusation of Bute’s Jacobitism quickly extended to the Scottish nation. Crisp Molyneux, a transitory member of the Society for the Bill of Rights, remarked in 1771 that “Scotch tenets and doctrines … are diametrically opposite to the spirit of our Constitution”.95 Anti-Scottish toasts were drunk openly in the streets of English cities; in London anti-Caledonian clubs were formed and the Scots were booed and jeered in the theatre. A protégé of Bute and a favourite of the king, Chambers was deeply cautious of the fanaticism of the excessive liberty of English radicals. This sentiment is expressed in a letter to his friend the Swedish diplomat Count Scheffer: I am fully persuaded, that perfect happiness cannot exist in any state, where liberty is stretched to its full extent, and power confined to its narrowest limits; wherever the balance is thus nicely poised, it never can be at rest … The English are forever exulting in the excellence of their constitution, and ever drawing haughty parallels between their liberty and the slavery of others, ... A spirit of general discontent rages through the whole nation; they are; and at all times have been; dissatisfied with the prince, enraged at his ministers, displeased with their laws, disgusted with every thing about them: like children

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spoilt with too great indulgence, they cry for more while they have too much … Such, My Lord, is the situation of England, such the effects of its boasted constitution; and such I apprehend, must be the state of every free nation: for to unite excessive liberty with general happiness, can never be expected till the human mind is totally changed, and made up of quite different affections.96

These comments may be linked with the English sceptical tradition of Sir William Temple in the late 17th century and later Lord Bolingbroke (leader of the Opposition camp) in the 1720–40s. Preceding Burke and Chambers, they both considered that society’s equilibrium was threatened by corruption from above as well as by factions from below.97 Critical of the acclaimed power of abstract reasoning in politics, they stressed moral emotions as a foundation of social stability and aptly used China as a practical rebuttal to abstract reasoning.98 Considering the Chinese gardener-philosopher as a moral authority,99 Chambers echoed Temple, for whom the “unequal humours” and “even desires”100 of the English were in sheer contrast to the “exact temperance” of the Confucian Chinese.101 Chambers also resonated with Bolingbroke, who praised the Chinese as “a people in whose minds a great veneration for their forefathers has been always carefully maintained”.102 Like Temple and Bolingbroke, who both called upon the liberal arts as a moral restructuring force to ensure a moral order as embodied in China, Chambers perceived it appropriate to propose “oriental gardening” to change the affections in the minds of British people so that liberty and happiness might be united. Up until the 1780s, Burke was more concerned with English authority’s abuse of “liberty”. The Whig government, under progressive politicians such as George Grenville and Lord North, putting Hobbes’ and Locke’s theories into practice, was governed by arrogant and mechanical principles. Reflecting on the protests provoked by the Stamp Act of 1765—which imposed direct taxation on the colonies of British America and a series of riots against taxation at home, Burke’s famous Thoughts on the causes of the present discontents (1770) argues: That Government is at once dreaded and condemned; that the laws are despoiled of all their respected and salutary terrors; that their

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inaction is a subject of ridicule, and their exertion of abhorrence; that rank, and office, and title, and all the solemn plausibilities of the world, have lost their reverence and effect … that we know neither how to yield nor how to enforce; that hardly anything above or below, abroad or at home, is sound and entire; but that disconnection and confusion, in offices, in parties, in families, in Parliament, in the nation, prevail beyond the disorders of any former time: these are facts universally admitted and lamented. 103

The root causes of society’s discontent, as posited by Burke, were the visionary minister’s (such as Grenville) “grand scheme” of taxing the colonies, and behind that the Hobbesian theory of believing that all things can be reduced to a single set of abstract principles.104 It is this same fervour satirised by Chambers in the Dissertation that is applied in Brownian landscape gardening: a green field, a border of flowers, a little serpentine path and a seat.105 This favourite plan is repeated in both small gardens and larger ones: “more green fields, more shrubberies, more serpentine walks, and more seats; like the honest batchelor’s feast, which consisted in nothing but a multiplication of his own dinner”.106 In contrast to this kind of English gardening, which followed mechanical principles, Chambers stressed that “the Chinese gardeners are very expert, and very circumspect”.107 The Chinese, he says, avoid all “unnatural windings” in building roads and walks, “particularly the regular serpentine curves, of which our English gardeners are so fond.” Instead, The Chinese gardeners take nature for their pattern; and their aim is to imitate all her beautiful irregularities. Their first consideration is the nature of the ground they are to work upon, whether it be flat or sloping; hilly or mountainous; small or of considerable extent; … To all which circumstances they carefully attend; choosing such dispositions as humour the ground, hide its defects, improve or set off its advantages ...108

Chambers’ Chinese approach of “imitating nature” was in concert with Burke’s view of prudence and veneration as the core political principles that accorded with the classical natural law. In this natural law tradition, society, law and duty, as well as civil life, involved a transcendent moral duty imposed by the “primaeval contract” of God or Nature—a mixture

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of tradition, local loyalties (customs) and circumstances or differences (as with the American colonies)—binding man to his civil obligations. Christianity and chivalry in the Middle Ages, Burke believed, enabled a god-fearing and virtuous life of prudence and veneration, which together ensured the rule of law of nature. By being bound, we are free; by submitting ourselves to the ancient order, we maintain our proud liberty.109 With the feudal and chivalrous ages in England long gone and human reason becoming the official guide to truth, the patrician virtues of daring, honour and reverence were cancelled. The Enlightenment philosophe saw that there were no secrets of the universe that would remain unrevealed to him if he were only to pursue the paths of science and reason. Nature, deprived of its mystery, was now merely to serve man’s needs. However, as David Punter, following the Frankfurt School, argued, reliance on reason may appear to remove mystery from Nature, but only at the expense of outlawing large expanses of actual experience, the experience of the emotions, the passions.110 According to such an interpretation, fear is both at the root and is the product of the attempt to bring all things under rational control.111 In order to avoid spiritual emasculation and political speculation, the qualities of fear, reverence and awe must be preserved in any liberal society. To cultivate a sense of fear—not in real time, but through the mechanism of mimesis—is a mental exercise of putting “moral chains” on the infinite self-love of modern man and a remedy for our imprudence. Chambers’ landscape scenes of the terrible and the surprising, therefore, like Burke’s terror and sublime, are not flights of fantasy; rather, they reflect the 18th-century architect’s awareness of and response to the overconfident rationalism of the Enlightenment. Just as Burke, for his sources of terror, cited widely from the Biblical, classical, English and colonial literature and also drew upon examples in nature, so Chambers explored corresponding architectural and landscape expressions to create landscape scenes that were capable of provoking fear and reverence: howling wolves, dragons in dark passages, earthquakes and smoking volcanoes. It is correct to say that in a large proportion of these scenes of “the terrible” and “the surprising”, the use of “the Chinese” was a mask for themes in the European cultural tradition, in particular, those Renaissance and Baroque gardens which were theatres of the imagination, sites where the senses were cultivated and reason was teased.112 What cannot be ignored, however, is that Chinese gardens or landscape devices in their own right struck the imagination of

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European spectators, with the oriental visual effects of art following nature (such as rockeries, winding paths and concealment). These visual effects of art imitating nature, for European elite audiences, were also connected with their perception of Chinese government and morals as being in accord with classical natural law (reconceptualised in the 17th–18th century, this natural law is at once an analogy of both the divine and political order as well as moral psychology).113 Thus these Chinese landscape elements, with their associations of Chinese socio-political stability, vindicated this renewed European classical and theological view of nature. They also reconfirmed the classical function of art reasserting the moral and theological order which was being undermined by the modern, rational approach. The example of “concealment” as described in the Dissertation and practised in the design of Kew Gardens was one such example of Europeans appropriating the Chinese performance of “imitating nature” to reassert the jeopardised classical values. Early in 1712, appropriating Temple’s sharawadgi, Addison described the perfections of Chinese gardens as “always concealing the art by which they direct themselves”. “They have a word, it seems, … by which they express the particular beauty of a plantation that strikes the imagination at first sight, without discovering what it is that has so agreeable an effect”.114 Addison’s “concealing the art” appears to be echoed by Alexander Pope’s famous lines: “He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,/Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds” (Epistle to Burlington [1731] lines 55– 6). The underlying ideas of Pope and Addison, however, are disparate. For Addison, who valued the pleasures of the imagination so highly, the method of “concealing the art” operated to activate the “whole prospect or garden” in the imagination, helping “to open a man’s thoughts, and to enlarge his imagination”.115 Pope’s “concealing the bounds”, by contrast, was not to celebrate man’s free imagination, but a means to reassert God’s reason in art: “In all, let Nature never be forgot./But treat the goddess like a modest fair,/Nor overdress, nor leave her wholly bare” (lines 50–2). The classical moral concept of nature as God’s grace, inherent in Pope’s understanding of “concealment”, towards the end of the century, was overshadowed by the Addisonian notion of the expansive or unlimited capacity of man’s understanding, of which Horace Walpole’s celebration of the acclaimed English invention of the ha-ha (a sunk fence) was an example: “The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was

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to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without.”116 Contrary to this Whiggish presentation of concealment as a liberal force leading to the mind rejoicing in its own boundless liberty, Chambers continued Pope’s classical approach and developed the method to embody effects such as “obscurity” and “infinity”, the sources of the sublime in Burke, resulting in reverence for nature’s divine mystery. “To make any thing very terrible”, Burke states, “obscurity seems in general to be necessary. When we know the full extent of any danger, when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes.”117 In particular, Burke stresses that “in nature dark, confused, uncertain images have greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions than those have which are more clear and determinate”.118 Similarly, objects of which “the eye not being able to perceive the bounds” “seem to be infinite”; and “infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime”.119 On such occasions, the imagination is limited by its incapacity to grasp objects and subsequently is trapped in confusion and ignorance, leading to astonishment, fear or reverence. Corresponding to Burke, Chambers’ Dissertation emphasises that an open space would appear mysterious by hiding boundaries and exciting the imagination. For example, in dealing with a flat ground, instead of leaving the middle entirely open, as “it is too often done amongst the Europeans”, Chambers suggests that the Chinese “us[e] objects to frequently break in upon the open space”, and hide many parts of it from the spectator’s eye. “These projections produce variety, by altering the apparent figure of the open space from every point of view; and by constantly hiding parts of it, they create a mystery which excites the traveller’s curiosity.”120 Turning to the Chinese designs of lakes and rivers, a feature which Chambers found most capable of enchanting the imagination, he writes, “The terminations of rivers the Chinese artists hide either in woods, or behind hills and buildings; or they turn them under bridges, direct them into caverns, or lose them amongst rocks and shoals.”121 The same principle of imitating nature was applied by the Chinese to lakes, which: … are so shaped, that from no single point of view all their terminations can be seen; so that the spectator is always kept in ignorance of their extent. They intersperse in them many islands;

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which serve to give intricacy to the form, to conceal the bounds, and to enrich the scenery.122

Chambers’ design of the lake and certain views at Kew Gardens embody the idea of “concealing the bounds”.123 The L-shaped lake (Fig. 2.2) spanned the Kew gardens from east to west; it narrowed towards the north-east. At the north-east end was the House of Confucius. Re-sited by Chambers, the building blurred one’s sight of the termination of the body of water.124 The lake was broader at the west end. An island was inserted in the middle of the lake, creating more layers within a single view and thus producing the illusion of the water as a larger lake with the ends beyond sight, a view illustrated in a folio volume under the title Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (1763) (Fig. 2.3). Trees, small hills and various decorative buildings further concealed the physical bounds of the garden and fed the imagination with variety: the Temple of Victory (a monument to the Seven Years’ War) crowned the hilltop to the east and the Temple of Arethusa (a nymph in GrecoRoman mythology) was tucked away in the woods to the west. The little Palladian bridge (reminiscent of the Italian Renaissance), in the centre of the image, extends towards the south and thus points towards the lofty Chinese pagoda in the far distance. Despite its seemingly pleasing effect to our modern eyes, the hidden boundaries of the garden and the lake challenged the 18th-century viewers’ imagination that was accustomed to visions of clarity and certainty in the age of Enlightenment. Their imagination might also have been confounded by the pastiche of architecture of separate times and geopolitical spaces, resisting any logical, clean-cut classification. The pagoda in the distance, as the empire of China itself, remains obscure and mysterious. Instead of occasioning “pleasing astonishment”, leading the viewer to an experience of self-exaltation above nature, as celebrated by the philosophes, these scenes re-performed the Renaissance landscape and garden precedents with oriental elements, techniques and associations. Acting as a psychological force that is amenable to suspending reasoning, the scenes evoked uncertainty and unease, and reinforced a sense of mystery being distanced from the human imagination. Introducing the pagoda from the East to the royal garden in London, Chambers, not without purpose, exposed spectators not only to a grand object, but also to the associated values of the iconic Chinese structure: the infinite, sublime forces that the

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1

3 5

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Fig. 2.2: Plan of Kew Gardens (1763) © The British Library Board 25/07/2017 Maps.K.Top.40.46.m

1 Lake, 2 House of Confucius, 3 Island, 4 Temple of Victory, 5 Temple of Arethusa, 6 Palladian Bridge, 7 Pagoda (The numbers are inserted by the author. The map is oriented with north to the left.)

2

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Fig. 2.3: William Marlow (1740–1813) after William Chambers, “A View of the Lake and Island of Kew” (1763), in Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surrey. ©Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, DC.

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oriental empire and its religions were known to command.125 In a liberal society like Britain where the once absolute power and values of the ancien régime had been expelled, the sublime, as Burke and Chambers understood, represented the absolute power transmuted into “structures of feeling”126 to constrain unbridled liberty. At the core of the landscape of Kew was a classical vision that man is, after all, the creature of an omnipotent God, perhaps best signified by the extraordinary clouds in the view which escape the jurisdiction of perspective and, therefore, man’s scrutinising eye.127 Man is thus a creature capable of feeling fear, awe or reverence in the face of that omnipotence.

Stimulating Pride: The “Magnificent Garden” and Public Improvement The cultivation of fear through the Burkean sublime is, however, only one part of Chambers’ theory of “Oriental gardening”. As mentioned above, a greater portion of Chambers’ Dissertation is dedicated to a detailed account of how to construct the British cities and countryside in “the Chinese manner” of “magnificence”: [T]he many noble feats and villas with which it abounds, would give uncommon consequence to the scenery; and it might still be rendered more splendid, … if all your public bridges were adorned with triumphal arches, rostral pillars, bas-reliefs, statues, and other indications of victory, and glorious achievements in war: an empire transformed into a splendid Garden, with the imperial mansion towering on an eminence in the center, and the palaces of the nobles scattered like pleasure-pavilions amongst the plantations, infinitely surpasses any thing that even the Chinese ever attempted.128

Many of Chambers’ contemporary critics found such descriptions to be filled with sentiments of Toryism. One author in the Monthly Review (1772) wrote that: The extravagance is more than even sovereigns have a right to be indulged in. It is impossible for them to support the expence [sic] without injury to their subjects, by wantonly wasting their lands, and

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needlessly draining their purses; and all for what? for a mere article of amusement—in which, too, they can never hope to partake!”129

Critique as such did not do Chambers justice because his vision was not about the prerogatives of royalty, but rather one of public magnificence congruent with the promotion of both Britain’s economic and urban development as well as moral refinement among its people. In Europe, public magnificence was a tradition that originated in the “beauty and adornment of the city” in the Greek-speaking world,130 which was perfected in the Roman Empire before its revival in Renaissance Italy—observed in a city such as Florence under the Medici family. In England, Christopher Wren in the Restoration and Lord Burlington in the early 18th century, for example, had put forward proposals for urban improvement.131 The lack of state coordination and patronage was, however, a key factor in the slow progress of urbanisation in Britain.132 Distinct from the earlier Hanoverian kings, George III, following his ascension in 1760, showed a clear interest in the “salvation of British art”133—best evidenced by his help in founding the Royal Academy of Art in 1768. Various proposals for urban improvement were put forward. For example, Chambers’ colleague, the English architect John Gwynn, who had formerly been the prince’s tutor in perspective and drawing and, like Chambers, was a founding member of the Royal Academy of Art, presented “A Discourse of Public Magnificence” as a preface to his London and Westminster Improved (1766). Gwynn wrote: [P]ublic magnificence may be considered as a political and moral advantage to every nation; politically, from the intercourse with foreigners expending vast sums on our curiosities and productions; morally, as it tends to promote industry, to stimulate invention and to excite emulation in the polite and liberal arts. 134

Such statements revealed a distinctly socio-political perspective for public magnificence in 18th-century Britain, when the empire was undergoing rapid urban growth and becoming increasingly aware of itself as “polite and commercial”; a change occurred not just in London but also in provincial towns and cities throughout the country.135 For architects like Chambers and Gwynn, public magnificence was not simply related to the display of the “majesty of power”. Rather, it involved a revival of aesthetic-

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social psychology for stimulating imitation and pride in the citizens who were spectators, with consequences in the development of the economy, morality and politics, which together led to national improvement. Relevant expressions on this theme were available in a wide range of sources, from ancient writers on rhetoric such as Cicero, Vitruvius and Longinus, to 17th–18th century aesthetic theorists like Jean-Baptiste Du Bos and John Dennis, with whom the 18th-century social and political thinkers like Burke, Hume and Smith were aligned. As Burke discussed in the Enquiry, we all have a desire to imitate, and consequently gain pleasure in doing so. It is by imitation far more than by precept that we learn everything; and what we learn thus we acquire not only more effectually, but more pleasantly. This forms our manners, our opinions, our lives. It is one of the strongest links of society.136

Like poetry or painting, the grand spectacle of a public building or structure, therefore, has great power in influencing our manners and passions.137 Yet if we give ourselves up to imitation entirely, Burke warned, “there never could be any improvement”. To prevent this, Burke observes, Providence adds the passion of pride to sociability. Pride is “a satisfaction arising from the contemplation of his excelling his fellows in something deemed valuable amongst them”,138 thus imbuing human society with a principle of improvement; we take pleasure in “excelling” our fellows and thereby “signallising” ourselves. In other words, we are motivated by pride as well as animated by imitation. These passions, although rooted in an instinct towards self-preservation, lead to social improvement. In Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary (1770), Hume showed how a similar aesthetic psychology of outstanding artistry overpowering our emotions and leading to actions was key to his theory of social improvement. Considering that humans care about the aesthetic qualities of objects, Hume argued that the flourishing of art and industry promoted improvement in all aspects of society. In times when industry and the arts flourish, men are kept in perpetual occupation. … The spirit of the age affects all the arts; and the minds of men, being once roused from their lethargy … carry

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improvements into every art and science. Profound ignorance is totally banished.139

Crediting Hume, Adam Smith also states that “the whole industry of human life is employed” in satisfying “the nicety and delicacy of our taste”.140 Such a refined taste for excellent products or artistry, and an opportunity to gratify such a taste provides incentives that are key to economic development. For Smith, this is how the commerce of the towns and cities contributed to the improvement of the country, and “gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals”.141 Such a view underpinned Chambers’ view of architecture and landscape gardening which, combining utility and artistry, directly contributed to both the development of commerce and formed the occasions for cultivating good taste. Architecture, Chambers stated in the Preface to the third edition of his Treatise on Civil Architecture: [S]mooths the way for commerce; she forms commodious roads through marshes or other grounds naturally impracticable; fills up valleys, unites or levels mountains; throws bridges over deep or rapid waters; turns aside or deadens the fury of torrents; constructs canals of navigation, builds ships, and contrives ports for their secure reception in the hour of danger; facilitating thus the intercourse of nations, [by] the conveyance of merchandise from people to people.142

Both a great aid to and honourable landmark of economic pre-eminence, architecture was also capable of refining our moral emotions: Pride and pleasure give birth to a thousand refinements; the greater part of which cannot subsist without the assistance of Architecture. Palaces, stately Dwelling-houses, magnificent Temples, public squares, Mausoleums, triumphal Arches, … are all either necessary instruments of pleasure or striking marks of preeminence.143 [W]henever by commerce they acquire wealth, she [architecture] points the way to employ their riches rationally, nobly, benevolently,

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in methods honorable and useful to themselves and their descendants, which add splendour to the state and yield benefit both to their contemporaries and to posterity.144

Underpinned by the Scottish social theory of commerce and manufacture as pillars of the national economy, Chambers’ landscape system (a proto-theory of urban and country construction integrating landscape gardening, town planning and infrastructure or transport development) aimed at bringing forth consequences in both utility (commerce and manufacture) and morality, functioning as a means of public improvement for the benefit of society. With the frontispiece presented to King George III, the Dissertation on Oriental Gardening is a proposal for extending royal patronage to urban and infrastructure construction. The oriental garb assumed several important roles: principally an evocation of the empire of China’s prosperity built upon progressive commerce, manufacture and urbanism under the state’s coordination and also, possibly, an evocation of associations with the Roman Empire and Renaissance Italian city states. As a traveller to both China and Continental Europe, Chambers knew well that Britain had no advantage over both the oriental empire and the Italian city states in terms of inland trade and transport system.145 Seeking to surpass these empires and states, he was, very likely, attracted to Hume’s theory stressing the importance of foreign influence on improvement.146 As Anthony Brewer discusses, for Hume, in a society with no manufacturing sector beyond the local production of basic necessities, no one was in a position to develop anything better.147 Acquaintance with the pleasures of luxury (afforded by foreign trade) provided the necessary stimuli to provoke domestic changes. In Britain, the Roman achievement in the construction of roads, bridges and aqueducts had been a long-living legacy, and there were general sentiments among British artists regarding the Romans as their models. A Grand Tourist and a resident of Rome for four years, Chambers was a strong voice among them. He admired Roman city construction under their former emperors’ patronage, declaring that “all must be sensible how powerfully the example of princes operate upon the minds of their subjects, inspires the same passions, and excites to the same pursuits”.148 China, as held by Enlightenment Sinophiles, possessed a superior position to contemporary Rome on the natural path of progress.

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Unlike the Roman Campagna, which invariably gave rise to reflections relating to the pernicious effects of corrupt government or papal power on the affluence of a country, China’s flourishing commerce, virtuous civilisation and advance urbanism vindicated Scottish social thinkers such as Hume and Smith’s belief in the benign effects of trade. In his Dissertation Chambers availed of his Chinese knowledge, albeit often deliberately mixed with his Roman expertise, and rendered it in accord with the Burkean sublime, so as to create a hybrid model with which Britain ought to catch up. Unlike the 19th-century Western stereotype of China as a stagnant empire, China was the crown of world trade of the early modern period. J.-B. Du Halde, in the Author’s Preface to his Description, spoke of “the incredible Trade carry’d on in the Heart of the Empire”,149 which summarised numerous similar opinions held by European observers. 150 Even in the late 18th century, as indicated in the writings of Adam Smith, China was still a state which prospered on account of its foreign commerce and whose finer and more improved manufactures would stimulate the desire for social emulation in Britain, and subsequently helped the process of development domestically (Chinese porcelain and Josiah Wedgewood’s Etruscan factory serve as good examples).151 Directly linked to commerce (both internal and foreign trade) and manufacture, China boasted a number of outstanding cities, especially in the south, where the prosperous economy, advanced transport system and city construction all integrated to form a landscape of magnificence. European travellers were impressed and wrote enviously of Chinese public spectacles. The sophisticated Dutch merchant traveller Jan Nieuhoff described that China was an empire that “exceed[s] all other parts of the world for the number of most rare Edifices and Rich Cities”.152 The Preface to Du Halde’s Description (1741) promises to present to the readers “a great number of splendid Cities, celebrated on account of their Situation and Extent; … the Beauty of their publick Buildings, and Plenty which reigns therein”.153 On his two journeys to Canton in the 1740s, Chambers would have seen the scenes of the bustling port, which was illustrated in Nieuhoff’s Embassy (Fig. 2.4) and described by fellow Scots merchant Alexander Hamilton in 1703, who claimed “there is no Day in the Year but shews 5000 Sail of trading Jonks, besides small Boats for other services, lying before the City”.154 Chambers’ experience would also have sat well with

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Fig. 2.4: The bustling harbour landscape of Canton, from Jan Nieuhoff, An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperor of China (London, 1669). EC65.Og454.669e, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

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the description in Du Halde’s volume, under titles such as “Magnificence of the Chinese, in their Journeys; in their Publick Works”,155 which explain in detail the Chinese achievements in many areas of public improvement, such as roads, bridges, canals and navigable rivers, which the Europeans considered as either being on a par with or even excelling their own. As we shall see below, through his interpretation of Du Halde’s Chinese materials, Chambers put forward his scheme of landscape gardening in terms of urban and country construction (building roads, bridges, canals, towns and buildings), which “smooth[s] the way for commerce”, “facilitating the intercourse of nations”.156 Furthermore, such landscapes, with their aesthetic qualities of the sublime, would become sites for shaping moral-religious emotions embedded in the everyday environment. The Chinese artists, Chambers stressed, were so skilful in their “walks, roads, bridle ways, navigable rivers, lakes, and canals” that they “introduce as much variety as possible; not only in the forms and dimensions, but also in their decoration: avoiding, nevertheless, all the absurdities with which our antient European style of Gardening abounds”.157 Rendered in the terms of the Burkean sublime (for example, magnificence, magnitude, excellence in artistry, as well as variety and contrast), Chinese landscape practices were presented as a model capable of provoking passions towards imitation and pride for British artists who in turn could imitate and excel.

Roads, Bridges, Rivers and Canals Chambers discussed at length Chinese roads in terms of their utility (pavement, method of laying the foundations and drainage) as well as their aesthetics (their various shape and their relationship to trees and the environment).158 At the time Chambers was writing, road transportation in Britain had improved considerably since the early 18th century, owing to the rapid growth of turnpikes. Accordingly, city streets were being widened and improved, especially after about 1750. Yet progress was slow—the shifting of maintenance responsibilities from the individual householders to an effective, collective body (such as improvement commissions) took until 1800.159 The lack of coordination resulted in poor, often broken pavements. One writer in 1754 lamented it as “public nusance [sic]”: “one housekeeper mends or paves with small Pebbles, another with great, a third with Ragstones, a forth with broken Flints, a fifth is poor, a sixth is able, but backward and unwilling”.160 Westminster, as John Spranger described

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in the same year, was a hellhole of “scarcely passable” streets whose “Foulness and Darkness” and “broken or irregular Pavements” rendered them unpleasant and unsafe. Pedestrians in this urban darkness risked “losing one’s footing, losing one’s way, disease, and death”.161 Improvement at Westminster was not complete until the early 1770s. By contrast, the Chinese roads in European travellers’ descriptions were generally held to be exemplary, in terms of their breadth, evenness and excellent paving (often marble). These roads were both urban and rural, they were well-maintained, and the safety and comfort with which one travelled on them, along with their aesthetic qualities, were all well-noted. The Jesuits spoke of the care of the Chinese government approvingly, stating that they were as “careful” to “preserve Peace in the Cities” as “to render the great Road safe, handsome and commodious”; “One great Conveniency to those that travel by Land in China is, the Ease and Safety wherewith their Goods are carried by Porters”.162 In sections of “The travels of several Jesuit missionaries in China”, which recorded the journeys of the French Jesuits Joachim Bouvet, Jean de Fontaney, Jean-François Gerbillon, Louis le Comte and Claude de Visdelou, from Ningbo to Beijing, passing through the provinces of Che-Kyang (Zhejiang), Kyang-nan (Jiangnan [today Jiangsu, Anhui and Shanghai]), Shan-tong (Shandong) and Pe-che-li (Beizhili [Hebei]) from November 1687 to February 1688 as well as “The journey of P. Fontaney” from Beijing to Jiangzhou, Shanxi Province in March 1688, it was frequently noted how the roads in a number of cities and towns such as Yangzhou, Zhuozhou, Baoding and Beijing, to name only a few, were “most even and handsome”, “as neat and commodious as one could wish” or so broad and “so straight as a Line”, “extending still beyond the Reach of Eye”.163 The Jesuits also stressed the beautifying effect of planting trees along the roads, claiming that they “afford[ed] beautiful Avenues to the Villages”, and that the roads looked like a “Garden Walk”.164 Accounts like these provided Chambers with valuable materials to compose his theory of road construction in the Dissertation. In opposition to the increasingly mechanical English countryside landscaped with the Brownian serpentine style, Chambers referred to the Chinese practices to demonstrate the qualities of the Burkean sublime in landscape construction— the greatness of dimension and the vastness of extent.165 For instance, he emphasised the fact that “the Chinese are … no enemies to strait [sic] lines; because they are … productive of grandeur”.166 “There are few objects more strikingly great than a spacious road planted on each side with lofty trees

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and stretching in a direct line, beyond the reach of the eye.”167 “It conveys to posterity instances of the grandeur of their ancestors; and gives birth to many sublime and pleasing reflections.”168 Chambers, however, by no means rejected winding roads. Instead, he approved those winding roads in China which were variously entertaining. Unlike the English gardeners who were “so fond” of “the regular serpentine curves”, the Chinese considered that “these eternal, uniform, undulating lines, are, of all things, the most unnatural, the most affected, and most tiresome to pursue”.169 Revering Nature, the Chinese gardeners “seldom turn their walks, without some apparent excuse; either to avoid impediments, naturally existing, or raised by art, to improve the scenery”.170 Carefully integrated into their environment, then, the winding roads in China, “opening gradually to the sight, discovers at every step, a new arrangement”.171 Here Chambers probably had in mind the Chinese emperor’s garden, Yuanmingyuan, thus described by the Jesuit Attiret: “[the Chinese] go from one of the Valleys to another, not by formal strait Walks as in Europe; but by various Turnings and Windings, adorn’d on the Sides with little Pavilions and charming Grottos”.172 For Chambers, the Chinese examples of winding paths as well as the Jesuits’ recording of their sensational experiences became an ideal to vindicate the intense psychological effect resembling Burke’s physiological sublime—“such a change [as] produces a relaxation should immediately produce a sudden convulsion” and “a violent pulling of the fibres”. Chinese gardeners, as Chambers suggested, presented new objects at “every change of direction” in the winding roads in order to “occasion surprise”. “When the extent is vast, and the repetitions frequent”, the effect created “astonishment and admiration”.173 This effect was similar to the effect discussed in Burke’s analysis of “succession”—that our “imagination has no rest” when it is impressed “by frequent impulses”. This grand effect was thus achieved with the formation of the Burkean idea of infinity, which “every change must check and interrupt, at every alteration commencing a new series”.174 Bridges are another focus in the Dissertation, which indicated Chambers’ appreciation of China’s achievement in bridge-building, a common sentiment among the European travellers at the time.175 The Jesuits were impressed with their great numbers—“a surprising Multitude of Stupendous Bridges”176 which were not only limited to cities, as in Europe, but also found in rural areas. They also commented on the ornament of the bridges “embellished with divers Ornaments of sculpture” which were, by their

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own aesthetic, “very handsome”.177 The Jesuits also noted Chinese bridge technology—elevated causeways, large span arch bridges and, in particular, suspension bridges. “The Passage of King-tong” (Lanjin Bridge in Jingdong, Yunnan Province), for example, an iron-chain suspension bridge reportedly built in the Han Dynasty, was described by the Jesuit Martin Martini in the sixth volume of John Blaeu’s Atlas (1655). Lanjin Bridge also aroused great admiration by Athanasius Kircher, who claimed in his China Illustrata (1667): “I find it impossible sufficiently to admire the skill of the Chinese engineers, who have executed so many and such arduous works for the greater convenience of wayfaring men.”178 Du Halde’s volumes provided further accounts on notable bridges in China which were appropriated by Chambers in the Dissertation. The Passage of King-tong, he describes, “is a communication between two precipices, composed of twenty enormous chains of iron, each two hundred feet in length”.179 The bridge at Swenchew-fu, built over an arm of the sea, was “above three quarters of a mile long, thirty-five feet wide, and consists of one hundred and thirty piers, of an astonishing height”. The Cientao (Zhandao, Shanxi Province), or Way of Pillars, “is a communication between many precipices, built to shorten a road to Pe-king. It is near four miles long, of a considerable width, and supported over the vallies upon arches and stone piers of a terrifying height.”180 The largest and most surprising work of the sort, the bridge of Lo-yang (Luoyang Bridge, in Quanzhou, Fujian Province), was “composed of three hundred piers of black marble”, “with a length of sixteen thousand two hundred feet, or upwards of three miles; its width is forty-two feet; and the blocks of which it is composed, are each fifty-four feet long, and six feet diameter”.181 In the second half of the 18th century, bridges in Britain were only beginning to be transformed from their medieval status. As the historian David Harrison shows in his study of stone bridges in England (from 400–1800), in terms of width, span and building techniques, major bridges in England were similar in 1750 and 1550. It was normal for bridges to have a width of about 12 feet, and the size of each arch span on average was about 7 metres.182 Piers were not often used in English bridges. The Chinese stone bridges, by comparison, reached over greater widths (often 36–45 feet), length and height, as noted in detail by the Jesuits, than many European bridges.183 After 1760, the number of bridges in Britain increased rapidly, and there were also important changes in design and construction

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techniques. Iron bridges were built. Old bridges were widened (for example, Norton Bridge in Ribblesdale from 8 feet 6 inches to 18 feet in 1765), and new bridges were built to new designs. Bridges over the Thames were replaced with large arches: the central span of Kew Bridge (1784–89) was 66 feet; that of Blackfriars Bridge (1760–69) was 100 feet. Bridges on small rivers in the lowlands were built with many small arches long after 1750. Longham Bridge, Hampreston, Dorset (probably of 1792) has 11 arches spanning 70 metres in total.184 Moreover, new bridges built after 1760 were decorated with new forms of ornament. It was often noted that Palladio was a major inspiration for British bridge designers in the 18th century. The intertwined role played by the Chinese peers, however, was not sufficiently addressed. Chambers was one of the advocates of bridges being considered as grand architecture as well as in terms of their utility. The great length, width and single arch span of the Chinese bridges in his description indicated his knowledge of the technological achievement of the Chinese bridge builders under government sponsorship, which was itself worthy of George III’s emulation. Chambers’ narration on Chinese bridges also stressed multiple elements of the Burkean sublime, with the clear aim of provoking British bridge builders’ imagination—and their ambition to exceed the Chinese artists. The extraordinary natural surroundings he described in China—mountains, precipices, lakes, torrents and arms of the sea, which were all 18th-century associationists’ favourite objects of the natural sublime, were juxtaposed with the wondrous human industry of the Chinese. Highlighting how every obstacle was conquered with “amazing industry” and at “almost incredible expence”185 in China, Chambers’ writing resonated with Burke’s discussion of “Difficulty” being “a source of greatness” in the Enquiry: “When any work seems to have required immense force and labour to effect it, the idea is grand.”186 Furthermore, phrases like “lofty vaulted passages”187 stressed the extraordinary height at which the Chinese bridges were built, and indicated an effect of looking down from a precipice which, according to Burke, would have struck us more than looking up. Our gratification, Burke asserts, was further magnified by the fact that “we are conversant with terrible objects” yet “without danger” to ourselves.188 Chambers’ Chinese images of bridges set up exhilarating visions of the sublime for British engineers in the 19th century to model and surpass.

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Waterways—rivers, canals and lakes—were another realm where Chambers presented the Chinese as an example of utility, technology and aesthetic effects in order to excite the ambition of the British artists. The Chinese gardens, he wrote, “abound with lakes, rivers, and water-works of every contrivance; and with vessels of every construction, calculated for the uses of sailing, rowing, fishing, fowling and fighting”.189 In particular, Chambers stressed the canals in China, which were “from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet wide, being sufficiently deep to admit gallies [sic] and other small vessels; with horse-ways on each side of the canals, for the convenience of towing them, either against the wind or the stream”.190 Water navigation had been an essential cheap, bulk means of transportation before the railway. Before the canals, water transport was confined to the coast and navigable rivers; canals could be constructed to link places at will by deliberate, economic calculation. China had a long history of government-organised waterway construction and maintenance.191 Its extensiveness and efficiency greatly facilitated China’s economy, as explicitly noted in Du Halde’s volume.192 The construction of extensive navigable rivers and canal construction in China was matched by its advanced technology in water engineering. Missionaries such as Louis Le Comte widely praised this aspect of Chinese technology.193 The historian of Chinese sciences and technology, Joseph Needham, noted that the Jesuits were perfectly right that the Chinese people had been outstanding among the nations of the world in their control and use of water.194 Chambers was an astute observer of China’s water technology. In his second visit to China he did a sketch of a water pump, which was sent to the Swedish architect Baron Hårleman and later published in his 1757 book.195 China’s advance in water engineering was a feature in the Dissertation. They have many ingenious inventions to collect water; and many machines, of simple construction, which raise it to almost any level, at a trifling expence [sic]. They use the same method for overflowing vallies [sic], that is practiced in Europe; by raising heads of earth or masonry at their extremities: where the soil is too porous to hold water, they clay the bottom, in the same manner that we do to make it tight: and in order to prevent the inconveniences arising from stagnant waters, they always contrive a considerable discharge to procure motion, even where the supply is scanty; which is done by

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conveying the discharged water back, through subterraneous drains, into reservoirs; whence it is again raised into the lake or river, by means of pumps, and other machines, proper for that purpose. They always give a considerable depth to their waters, at least five or six feet, to prevent the rising of scum, and the floating of weeds upon the surface; and they are always provided with swans, and such other birds as feed on weeds, to keep them under.196

Chambers’ descriptions of the Chinese canals and China’s water technology were linked with the speedy improvement of canal and river navigation in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. Britain was rich in waterways and has always had more usable coastline per square mile of territory than any of the other main countries of Europe. From 1600, river navigation steadily increased. About 40 British rivers were improved between 1660 and 1750.197 More significant progress was achieved with the construction of numerous canals, beginning in about 1765. In the following decade and half, at least 50 Acts of Parliament were passed authorising individual canals and navigation routes.198 In 1771 a group of canal and harbour engineers formed the Society of Civil Engineers, led by John Smeaton,199 with whom Chambers worked at Kew.200 Canals were to play a central role in Britain’s industrialisation, ranking among “the most spectacular and typical innovations of this period”. In 1770, the full benefit of canal navigation was just beginning to be understood: in addition to the Sankey Brook and Bridgewater canals, substantial sections of the early Midland’s canal promotions were open, but still far from complete. Presenting China’s excellence in canal construction and water control, the Dissertation acted as a powerful catalyst, if not a model to surpass, for the coming golden age of canal navigation in Britain. For Chambers, the aesthetic effect combined with the great use of canals in China was also a key feature to be highlighted for British engineers. He would certainly have resonated with what Le Comte praised of the Chinese canals that “besides their great usefulness …, they add also much Beauty to it [the country]”.201 Indeed, waterborne journeys in China afforded the occasion for travellers to admire the variety of landscapes, which the Jesuits detailed in both written and pictorial form. For example, on the boat journey between Suzhou and Changzhou, they noted:

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The Country is even as Glass, and very well cultivated; one sees a continued Series of Hamlets and Villages, which may be easily distinguish’d in Plains as level as our Gardens. When the View is bounded by some large City, it yields a most delightful Prospect.202

Yet waterborne journeys could also be dangerous, the Jesuits noting, for example, that the largest lake, ho-yang Lake (Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province) “is subject to Hurricans [sic] like the Seas of China … and sometimes sink the largest Barks”.203 These diverse experiences, in Chambers’ creative imagination, were synthesised and condensed into a journey for the British artist to affect the travellers’ emotions: Instead of being intercepted in your passage, the vessel, together with the whole river, are, by the impetuous and particular direction of the current, hurried into dark caverns, overhung with woods … after having been furiously impelled for some time, you are again discharged into day-light, upon lakes encompassed with high hanging woods, rich prospects on mountains, and stately temples.204

In this transition from darkness into light, from places of horror to scenes of grandeur, Chambers rendered a waterborne journey in terms of the Burkean sublime effect, a psychological and physiological thresholding experience that “powerfully agitates the human mind”.205 Again he invokes “the Chinese” to highlight the opportunity of constructing canals and navigable rivers in Britain for waterborne journeys as with road journeys, not only for commercial and transport uses, but also as a vehicle for inserting the sublime effect into the social fabric of everyday life, thus serving as a tool for shaping the moral-religious sentiment of the public. Chambers was also clear that the journey itself constituted a public spectacle for onlookers. Under the title “Magnificence of journeys”, the Jesuit travellers noted that Chinese mandarins often travelled on imperial barks on the Grand Canal when going to take up their government appointments in Beijing: “these imperial barks are painted, gilt, embelish’d with Dragons, and japan’d both within and without”.206 Such waterborne journeys were not only efficient, comfortable and aesthetically enjoyable but also took the form of a public spectacle, impressing themselves on the people’s imagination. Fully aware of such journeys as a performance, Chambers translated from the Jesuits in the Dissertation:

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On these the emperor, and Chinese mandarines [sic], are frequently conveyed, in large magnificent sampans or barges, divided into many splendid rooms; being sometimes attended by a considerable train of smaller vessels, of different constructions, adorned with dragons, streamers, lanterns of painted silk, and various other ornaments; the whole composing a very brilliant and entertaining show.207

Chambers would have been aware that such practices had been performed by Frederick, Prince of Wales earlier in the 1740s, who, in his gold and graceful state barge, relished letting the Thames carry him through his capital city in style.208 It is unlikely that Frederick was unaware of the Chinese mandarins’ habit of travelling in boats, as he had political interest in promoting Chinese taste and was the dedicatee of Edward Cave’s edition of Du Halde’s Description. According to Sloboda, the prince had also had Thomas Wright design a pleasure barge in Chinese style for him, which comprised a floating garden and a Chinese-style temple.209 Chambers reperformed this idea in his rococo design of a state coach for George III. When the King used it for the first time at the opening of Parliament in November 1762, people hired window space and the streets were packed with an unprecedented number of onlookers.210 With its ritual splendour rivalling the orient, the royal journey of George III, like that of his father Frederick on the barge, forged a strong visual impact on the public. The spectacle not only helped to define the public image of a patriot monarch whose moral-aesthetic and commercial values would be in the interest of the whole, but also promoted such values among the public. Chambers was very much aware of the power of the royal example; in his Preface to the third version of the Treatise in 1791, he stated that: Artists of all degrees look up with reverence to the Throne; and so powerful is the example, such the influence of Royal Patronage, that the same spirit of encouragement has rapidly been diffused through all classes of Your Majesty’s subjects; even men of inferior rank now aspire to taste in the Fine Arts; and by a liberality of sentiment formerly unknown, excite the artists to emulate and excel each other: circumstances not only much to their own honor, but contributing greatly to augment the splendour of the nation, to improve its taste, and stamp additional value on its manufactures, to extend its commerce, and increase the profits arising therefrom.211

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Written in 1772, the Dissertation is burdened with Chambers’ expectations for the king. Oriental magnificence, as well as its coordination by the Chinese government, as Chambers hoped, would convince George III that it was necessary to support the construction of British cities and countryside with sufficient government funds and stately coordination to a greater extent in order to benefit society. As he made plain at the end of his Dissertation: European artists must not always hope to rival Oriental grandeur … yet let them always boldly look up to the sun, and copy as much of its lustre as they can: circumstances will frequently obstruct them in their course, and they may be prevented from soaring high; but their attention should constantly be fixed on great objects, and their productions always demonstrate, that they knew the road to perfection, had they been enabled to proceed on the journey.212

Conclusion Exploring Chambers’ landscape scenes of concealment and magnificence and their effect on cultivating fear or stimulating pride, we see an image of chinoiserie and English landscape gardens which is quite different from the one normally considered. We no longer see the usual imperial curiosity about “the Other”. Nor do we see the Chinese as a mere “exotic colouring” of the European cultural convention regarding the pleasures of the imagination. A hybrid fruit grown from his classical learning and from his reception of the landscape environment and Confucian culture in China, Chambers’ oriental gardening indicates that the two traditions, to him, as with many European thinkers, shared parallel rather than opposite values: for one, that art, through following idealised nature, cultivates moral emotions in support of socio-political stability. This is a value that was being undermined in Britain by the modern, self-centred theorists and a value that China was evoked to vindicate. “Exciting [the] opposite, strongest passions”, Chambers “oriental gardening” may appear extravagant, yet it was part of the continuing process of classical art and culture being reinvented in order to deal with problems of the present. It was hoped that such a landscape system capable of moulding moral emotions would bring about or rehabilitate the sense of social cohesion

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in Britain that was disintegrating at the advent of modernity. His Chinese magnificence, on the other hand, embodied mingled classical and Scottish Enlightenment values in embracing commerce, manufacturing and urbanism, as well as moral refinement, all of which were perceived as the natural path of progress. Chinese excellence in these fields was recognised through their own values, and served as a stimulus for Britain’s national improvement. In Britain the prevailing atmosphere of the radical Whigs disfavoured the reception of the Dissertation among the public, despite the support of Chambers by his allies like Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. The story of the Dissertation in the continent, however, was very different. Chambers’ Dissertation proved to be one of the most widely circulated and influential books on gardening of the period in Europe and helped to set the fashion for the Jardin Anglo-Chinois (as seen in the designs by Georges-Louis Le Rouge in France, Fredrik Magnus Piper in Sweden, and Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff at Wörlitz).213 It may be assumed that the popularity of the Dissertation among the continental elite was built upon a nuanced understanding of the role of Chinese elements in Chambers’ system. Count Scheffer, one of the most noted Sinologists in Europe, for example, did not dismiss Chambers’ descriptions as fictional or unreliable. Instead, he proposed that the gardens at Ulricksdal should be redesigned in the manner Chambers described in the Dissertation.214 The German architect Ludwig Unzer, in his On Chinese Gardens (1773), following Chambers, noted that the winding curves of the Chinese gardens were an expression of the mobility of the mind, and that Chinese gardens possessed a power of arousing “a succession of lively feelings in the human soul”, an idea widely accepted among European theorists in the late 18th century.215 To what extent, then, did the Anglo-Chinese gardens, with their now revealed function of moulding moral-religious emotions, play a role in the transition of the continental European countries to modernity may be a worthy subject for future enquiry.

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Notes Earlier versions of this article have been presented at various conferences and symposia including “Urbanism, Spirituality & Well Being” (Forum for Architecture, Culture and Spirituality and the Harvard Divinity School, 2013); “Cityscapes in Europe and Asia” (University of Zurich, 2014); and “Artistic Exchanges as Cultural Transfers between China and Europe in the 17th and 18th Centuries” (University of Lille, 2016), where it received useful comments. Many thanks to Mark Dorrian, David Porter, Regenia Gagnier, Suzanne Ewing and Igea Troiani for their remarks and to EU Marie-Skłodowska Curie Actions (Career Integration Grant) and the University of Exeter for sponsoring the research. 1.

William Chambers, A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, 2nd ed. (London, 1773). The main text of the second edition was greatly enriched. It also included “An Explanatory Discourse by Tan Chet-qua”. Subsequent textual references to the Dissertation will be to this 1773 edition, henceforth Dissertation.

2.

John William Draper, William Mason: A Study in Eighteenth Century Culture (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1924), p. 243.

3.

Isabel Chase, “William Mason and Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening”, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 35 (1936): 517–29; Nikolaus Pevsner, “The Other Chambers”, Architectural Review 101 (1947): 195–8; R.C. Bald, “Sir William Chambers and the Chinese Garden”, Journal of the History of Ideas 11, 3 (1950): 287–320. Eileen Harris, “Burke and Chambers on the Sublime and Beautiful”, in Essays in the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, ed. Douglas Fraser et al. (London: Phaidon, 1967): 207–13 and “Designs of Chinese Buildings and the Dissertation on Oriental Gardening”, in Sir William Chambers: Knight of the Polar Star, ed. John Harris et al. (London: Zwemmer, 1970), pp. 144–163; Stephen Bending, “A Natural Revolution? Garden in Eighteenth-Century England”, in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 241–66, esp. pp. 252–7; David Porter, “Cross-Cultural Aesthetics in William Chambers’ Chinese Garden”, in The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 37–55; Yue Zhuang, “‘Luxury’ and ‘the Surprising’ in Sir William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental

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Gardening (1772): Commercial Society and Burke’s Sublime-Effect”, Transcultural Studies 2 (2013): 45–76. 4.

Chambers to Frederick Chapman in Stockholm, 28 July 1772, in Sir William Chambers’ Letter Books, vol.1, BL Add. MS 41133, p. 78.

5.

Harris, “Burke and Chambers on the Sublime and Beautiful”, pp. 207–9; cf. her “Designs and the Dissertation”, pp. 150–4.

6.

Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) ed. Adam Philips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), henceforth Enquiry.

7.

The Enlightenment in Scotland reasserts equal commitments to church and state, thus differing from, as elsewhere, a general triumph of rationalism over superstition. This two-worlds ideal was undone by encroaching English influence during the 19th century. See George Elder Davie, The Scottish Enlightenment and Other Essays (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1991); Mark Kingwell, “Politics and the Polite Society in the Scottish Enlightenment”, Historical Reflections 19, 3 (1993): 363–87. For scholarship on understanding Burke in the context of Scottish Enlightenment, see Frans De Bruyn, “Edmund Burke’s Natural Aristocrat: The ‘Man of Taste’ as a Political Ideal”, Eighteenth-Century Life 11, 2 (1987): 41–60; Daniel I. O’Neill, The BurkeWollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), Chapter 2.

8.

Richard Bourke, “Pity and Fear: Providential Sociability in Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry”, in The Science of Sensibility: Reading Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry, ed. K. Vermeir and M. F. Deckard (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), pp. 151– 75. See also David Bromwich, “The Sublime before Aesthetics and Politics”, Raritan 16, 4 (1997): 30–51.

9.

Although the Enlightenment is traditionally viewed as stressing moral reasoning in its concept of morality, studies have shown that moral emotions are central to Scottish moral philosophy. Francis Hutcheson’s system of ethics typically placed morality on a non-rational, instinctive footing rooted in a constant and uniform human nature. This assumption was followed by all Scottish thinkers as well as Edmund Burke. See James Moore, “The Two Systems of Francis Hutcheson: On the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, Michael Alexander Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 37–59.

10. For a critique of the “Whiggish” history of English gardens championed by Horace Walpole, see Stephen Bending, “Horace Walpole and Eighteenth-

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Century Garden History”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994): 209–26 and “A Natural Revolution?: Garden in Eighteenth-Century England”, in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 241–4. 11. In addition to fear and pride, in the Enquiry Burke also discussed other fundamental emotions such as pity and sympathy. Without exploring these emotions further here, I should like to note that a reading of Chambers’ landscape scenes (for example, the terrible) in relation to pity and sympathy would also be fruitful. 12. On China’s socio-political stability based on Confucian moderation and the ways in which art cultivates moral emotion see Zehou Li, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, trans. Maija Bell Samei (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2010), chapters 1–2; see also Introduction, n. 69. On the Confucian concept of emotion being central to morality, see David B. Wong, “Is there a Distinction between Reason and Emotion in Mencius?”, Philosophy East and West 41, 1 (1991): 31–44. On moral emotion as the social glue in Confucian political philosophy, see Tongdong Bai, “Early Confucian Political Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance”, in Dao Companion to Classical Confucian Philosophy, ed. Vincent Shen (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), pp. 338–42. On China’s progressive commerce and industry in the early modern period, see Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000). On China’s urbanism and transport, see Youshinobu Shiba, Zhongguo dushi shi 中国 都市史 [A History of Chinese Towns and Cities], trans. Bu He (Beijing: Peking University Press, 2013), original Japanese edition published by University of Tokyo Press, 2002; Yinong Xu, The Chinese City in Space and Time: The Development of Urban Form in Suzhou (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2000); Joseph Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technology. Pt. 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics (London: Cambridge University Press, 1971). On 18th-century Europe’s perception of China’s socio-political stability based on Confucian moderation, progressive commerce and industry, the Jesuit publications constitute important primary literature, for example, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, Description Géographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, Et Physique De L’empire De La Chine Et De La Tartarie Chinoise [Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political, and Physical Description of the Empire

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of China and of Chinese Tartary] (Paris: P.G. Lemercier, 1735); English version: A Description of the Empire of China (London: Edward Cave, 1738– 41). See also Introduction, n. 36 and n. 37. For modern scholarship on these subjects see, for example, Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue, ed., China and Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Pomeranz, The Great Divergence; and Robert Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 13. Harris considered that there were numerous similarities between Chambers and British works on this theme which include, besides Addison and Burke, William Shenstone’s Unconnected Thoughts, in William Shenstone, Works, 5th ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1777) and Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening, 2nd ed. (London, 1776). See Harris, “Designs and the Dissertation”, pp. 150–4. 14. Joseph Addison, “On the Pleasures of the Imagination”, Spectator, e.g. no. 414, 25 June 1712. 15. See Horace, Ars Poetica no. 333ff., in Horace: Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones, ed. Niall Rudd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). “Ut pictura poesis”: “as is painting so is poetry” is from Ars Poetica no. 361. See Rensselaer W. Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic Theory of Painting”, The Art Bulletin 22, 4 (1940): 203, 226–8 and n. 69 in the Introduction. For a recent study on the visual art and architecture of early modern Europe as part of the classical rhetoric tradition see Caroline van Eck, Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 16. See Lee, “Ut Pictura Poesis”, p. 227; Carole Fabricant, “Aesthetics and Politics of Landscape in the 18th Century”, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century British Art and Aesthetics, ed. Ralph Cohen (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 49–82; and Tony C. Brown, “Joseph Addison and the Pleasures of Sharawadgi”, ELH 74, 1 (2007): 171– 93. For a contending opinion, cf. William Walker, “Ideology and Addison’s Essays on the Pleasures of the Imagination”, Eighteenth-Century Life 24, 2 (2000): 65–84. 17. Bourke, “Pity and Fear”, see also n. 7. 18. Enquiry, pp. 35–6. 19. Ibid., pp. 46–7. 20. In 1749–50, Chambers studied at the Ecole des Arts with JacquesFrançois Blondel, who was later elected to the French Academy. Following

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Paris, Chambers left for Rome. In his four years there he did his best to achieve the same results as the French graduates of the Académie royale d’Architecture. See Janine Barrier, “Chambers in France and Italy”, in Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III, ed. John Harris and Michael Snodin (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press in association with The Courtauld Gallery, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1996), pp. 19–35. 21. For the didactic function of art imitating idealised human life or idealised nature, see n. 15 and Lee, “Ut pictura poesis”. In Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts, van Eck discusses how early modern art and architecture as visual forms of the classical rhetoric (as persuasive communication) was deployed as statecraft. For the analogy between the natural and moral world, an idea still present in the 18th century, see E.R. Wasserman, “Nature Moralized: The Divine Analogy in the Eighteenth Century”, ELH 20 (1953): 39–76. 22. “Preface to the Third Edition”, in Sir William Chambers, A Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture (1759, 3rd ed. 1791), rev. and ed. W.H. Leeds (London, 1862), p. 55. Unless otherwise noted, subsequent references to the Treatise will be to this 1862 edition. 23. Dissertation, p. i. 24. Ibid., p. ii. 25. Spectator 3: 540–1. 26. Dissertation, p. 42. 27. Virgil’s Arcadia is an exemplar of this tradition in the classics. Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition”, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Papers in and on Art History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 295–321 remains a canonical study. For a book-length study on the theme of the sublime in politics in antiquity, see Henry J.M. Day, Lucan and the Sublime: Power, Representation and Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). The sublime, in terms of strong contraries and being related to religious sentiment, featured in 17thcentury landscape tradition: see K. Claire Pace, “‘Strong Contraries ... Happy Discord’: Some Eighteenth-Century Discussions About Landscape”, Journal of the History of Ideas 40, 1 (1979): 141–55; H.V.S. Ogden, “The Principles of Variety and Contrast in Seventeenth Century Aesthetics, and Milton’s Poetry”, Journal of the History of Ideas 10, 2 (1949): 159–82; H.V.S Ogden and M.S. Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1955). Van Eck’s Classical Rhetoric

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and the Visual Arts, pp. 110–23 explores the role of Longinus’ sublime in 17th-century British architecture. For how “contrariety” was thought to characterise the logic of God’s reason among 16th–17th century French critics, see Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 48–50. For an assessment of historical approaches to the sublime, see Emily Brady, The Sublime in Modern Philosophy: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 28. For such a reading of the Claudian and Poussinian landscapes, see, for example, Pace, “Strong Contraries … Happy Discord”. See J.-F. Blondel, Cours d’architecture [Architectural Courses] (Paris: Dessaint, 1771–77), pp. 378, 380; for Blondel and his contemporary French artists extolling the sublime in architecture see Harry Francis Mallgrave, Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 145–57. See also G.L. Hersey, “Associationism and Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Architecture”, Eighteenth-Century Studies 4, 1 (1970): 71–89. 29. Longinus, On the Sublime, rev. Donald Russell, trans. W.H. Fyfe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), VII, pp. ii, 178. 30. From his patrons and clients such as Lord Bute and Lord Charlemont (James Caulfield), with whom many Scottish thinkers such as Hume and Smith were related or in correspondence, Chambers would have had first-hand knowledge of the latest thoughts on Scottish social theory. 31. He complained of the perfunctory and often forbidding appearance of the street fronts of London’s great houses, many of which, he wrote, “look like Convents: nothing appear but a high wall.” Sir William Chambers, A Treatise on Civil Architecture (London, 1759), p. 69. 32. Chambers discussed the scenes of the pleasing, the horrid and the enchanted in this essay, which is included in his Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils (London, 1757), pp. 14–9. 33. Harris, “Burke and Chambers on the Sublime and Beautiful”, p. 207. 34. See Oliver Goldsmith’s letter to Chambers: most of the companies that I now go into divide themselves into two parties, the Chamberists and ye Brownists, … Mr. [Edmund] Burke was advising me about four days ago to draw my pen in a poem in defense of your system, … Mr. Burke you may say upon my authority as also on that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is a profest [sic] Chamberist.

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He always speaks of your System with respect. (Sir William Chambers’ Letter Books, vol. 2, BL Add. MS 41134, 21b, 21c, 21d)

35. A major attack is from An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers (London: J. Almon, 1773). The anonymous author was revealed to be William Mason, the poet and garden amateur, aided by Horace Walpole. For a recent discussion of the political contents of the Heroic Epistle, see Bending, “A Natural Revolution?” Burke encouraged Oliver Goldsmith to launch a counter-attack: see Goldsmith to Chambers, in Sir William Chambers’ Letter Books, vol. 2, BL Add. MS 41134, 21b, 21c, 21d. 36. Edmund Burke, The Speeches of Edmund Burke (London, 1816) vol. 2, p. 273. 37. Harris, “Designs and the Dissertation”, p. 150. 38. Chambers’ first voyage to China was from 1743–45, and his second from 1748–49. See John Harris, “Sir William Chambers and Kew Gardens”, in Sir William Chambers: Architect to George III, ed. John Harris and Michael Snodin (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press in association with The Courtauld Gallery, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1996), pp. 55–7. 39. Frederick Prince of Wales, along with Lord Bolingbroke, was a leader of the opposition camp (members including Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and Dr Arbuthnot, among others) to Robert Walpole’s government in the 1730–40s. See Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and His Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968). For the prince’s support of the Chinese taste being related to notions of self-representation and national politics, see Nebahat Avcioğlu, Turquerie

and the Politics of Representation, 1728–1876 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011). For Chambers’ design of “House of Confucius” under Frederick’s commission, see Harris, “Sir William Chambers and Kew Gardens”, pp. 56–7. 40. Chambers, Designs of Chinese Buildings, p. a. 41. Ibid., page facing p. b. 42. 17th–18th century European humanists considered Confucianism as a philosophic and tolerant “natural religion”, dedicated to promoting virtue—a deistic substitute for the “priest-ridden” religions in Europe. See Walter W. Davis, “China, the Confucian Ideal, and the European Age of Enlightenment”, Journal of the History of Ideas 44, 4 (1983): 523–48. 43. For example, David Porter, The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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44. In addition to Du Halde’s Description, earlier literature includes Domingo Fernandez Navarrete, Tratados Historicos, Politicos, Ethicos y Religiosos De La Monarchia De China [Historical, Political, Ethical and Religious Treatises of the Monarchy of China] (Madrid, 1676); English trans., An Account of the Empire of China, Historical, Political, Moral and Religious (London, 1704). Jan Nieuhoff, Legatio Batavica Ad Magnum Tartariæ Chamum Sungteium, Modernam Sinæ Imperatorem, Historiarum Narratione Quæ Legatis in Provinciis Quantung, ... Nanking, ... Peking, Et Aula Imperatoria Ab Anno 1655 Ad Annum 1657 Obtigerunt, ... Conscripta Vernacule Per J. Nieuhovium, ... Latinitate Donata Per ... J. Hornium (Amstelodami: Apud J. Meursium, 1668); English trans. An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham Emperor of China (London, 1669). Louis Le Comte, Nouveaux Memoires sur l’Etat present de la Chine [New Memories of the Present State of China] (Paris: J. Anisson, 1696); English trans. Memoirs and Observations ... trans. from the Paris edition, 2nd ed. (London, 1698). 45. Triumphal arches and monuments in Chinese landscapes were widely noted by the Jesuits; see, for example, Du Halde, Description, pp. 95, 107, 283, 285–90. For an early mention of Chinese gardens imitating nature by the Italian missionary Matteo Ripa on the Kangxi emperor’s Bishu shanzhuang [The Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat] in Chengde in 1711, see Matteo Ripa, Giornale, ed. Michele Fatica (Naples: Napoli Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1991–) vol. 2, pp. 22–3. 46. Chambers described Chinese funeral monuments in relation to the emotions of sorrow and reverence; see Dissertation, pp. 43, 60–2. This is not explored here because of the limits of space. 47. Dissertation, pp. 13–4. 48. Temple, “Heroic Virtue”, in Sir William Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Samuel Holt Monk (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1963), p. 114. 49. Louis Le Comte, Lettre du R. Pere Louis Le Comte, de la Compagnie de Jesus. À Moseigneur Le Duc Du Maine, Sur Les Ceremonies De La Chine [Letter to the Duke of Maine on the Ceremonies of China, in: The Ceremonies of China] (Liège, 1700), p. 44. Cited in Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ and Chichester: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 185–6. 50. Pierre Poivre, Voyages d’un philosophe, ou Observations sur les moeurs et les arts des peoples de l’Afrique, de l’Asie et de l’Amêrique [Voyages of a

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Philosopher, or Observations on the Manners and Arts of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and America] is based on Poivre’s extensive journeys in the years 1740–56, though the book itself was published several years later (1768). Cited in Osvald Sirén, China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990 [Orig. Publ. Ronald Press, 1950]), p. 5. 51. On the subject of the Confucian rites (li 禮) and music (yue 樂) tradition and its role in politics, see Li, The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition, pp. 29–31; Scott Cook, “Xun Zi on Ritual and Music”, Monumenta Serica 45 (1997): 1–38. For a comparison of Confucius’ notion of rites or ritualisation and Aristotle’s ethos, see Jiyuan Yu, The Ethics of Confucius and Aristotle: Mirrors of Virtue (New York, NY and London: Routledge, 2007). 52. For Montesquieu, law is but one way of affecting human conduct. The society as a whole uses other means: religion, morals and customs to restrain human passions, will and imagination. Despite his overall negative opinion of the Chinese government, China comes out, in his Spirit of the Law, as an example of a society less ruled by laws than by ritual, in which law, religion, morals and customs are merged. See Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, The Political Theory of Montesquieu, selected and trans. Melvin Richter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 99–102. 53. The translator of the Edward Cave edition of Du Halde’s Descriptions of the Chinese Empire claimed in the frontispiece that: “No Laws or Institutions appear in the general so well contrived as the Chinese to make both King and People happy. By them the People are taught to look on the Sovereign as their Father, and the Sovereign on all Occasions to consider his subjects as his children.” Chambers had a copy of the Cave edition of Du Halde’s Description. See D.J. Watkin, ed. Architects, vol. 4, Sale Catalogues of Libraries of Eminent Persons (London: Mansell with Sotheby ParkeBernet, 1972). 54. Chinese gardens have their origin in the landscape (mountains and rivers) environment for holding ritual ceremonies in the West Zhou dynasty. See Yi Wang 王毅, Yuanlin yu Zhongguo wenhua 园林与中国文化 [Gardens and Chinese Culture] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1990); Yue Zhuang, “Performing Poetry-Music: On Confucians’ Garden Dwelling”, in From the Things Themselves: Architecture and Phenomenology, ed. Benoît Jacquet and Vincent Giraud (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2012), pp. 373–405. For an exemplary study explaining the role of sensory experience in religioius ceremonies in ideas of self-cultivation and morality

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in early China, see Roel Sterckx, Food, Sacrifice, and Sagehood in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). At the latest in the second–third century, the Chinese literati consciously used gardens as a site for cultivating their senses and emotions; see, for example, Zhongchang Tong 仲长统 (179–219), “On Happiness”, trans. from the French of Étienne Balazs by H.M. Wright, in Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations, vol. 1: From Antiquity to the Tang Dynasty, ed. John Minford and Joseph S.M. Lau (New York, NY and Hong Kong: Columbia University Press and Chinese University Press, 2000), pp. 592–3. In his “Essai Sur Les Jardins De Plaisance Des Chinois” [Essay on the Pleasure Gardens of the Chinese] (1782), in Ideas of Chinese Gardens: Western Accounts, 1300–1860, ed. Bianca Maria Rinaldi (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 155–82, the French Jesuit Pierre-Martial Cibot’s citation of Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元, a Tang prose writer (773–819), suggested that this notion was known to the Jesuits: “What does one look for in a pleasure garden? … to engender in the soul the same sentiments, and to satisfy the eyes with the same pleasure.” An English version of Cibot’s essay is available in Ideas of Chinese Gardens, ed. Bianca Maria Rinaldi (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), pp. 156–75, 169. 55. Caroline van Eck traces this “visual persuasion” to the view held by rhetoricians such as Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian or Longinus. See her Classical Rhetoric and the Visual Arts in Early Modern Europe, pp. 1–9. 56. Sir William Temple, “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus”, in Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 29–30. The origin and use of sharawadgi has long been a focus of scholars’ enquiries. For an overview of their inconclusive results, see Ciaran Murray, Sharawadgi: The Romantic Return to Nature (San Francisco, CA and London: International Scholars Publications, 1999 [1998]). 57. For Jean-Denis Attiret’s account of the Yuanmingyuan, see “Lettre du Frère Attiret de la Compagnie de Jésus, peintre au service de l’empereur de Chine, à M. d’Assaut. A Pékin le Ier novembre 1743” [Letter from the Brother of the Company of Jesus, a Painter in the Service of the Emperor of China, to M, d’Assaut. In Pekin on 1 November 1743], in Lettres Édifiantes Et Curieuses Écrites Des Missions Étrangères Par Quelques Missionnaires De La Compagnie De Jésus [Edifying Letters and Curious Writings of Foreign Missions by Some Missionaries of the Company of Jesus], vol. 27 (Paris: Guérin, 1749), pp.1–57. The citation in its English version is: A

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Particular Account of the Emperor of China’s Gardens near Pekin: In a Letter from F. Attiret to His Friend at Paris, trans. Joseph Spence (alias Sir Harry Beaumont) (London: R. Dodsley, 1752), p. 18. 58. Dissertation, p. 14. 59. See n. 27. 60. Dissertation, pp. 15–6. 61. European travellers’ and missionaries’ account on these aspects are important sources. See, for example, Navarrete, An Account of the Empire of China, Historical, Political, Moral and Religious; Nieuhoff, Embassy; Le Comte, Memoirs; and Du Halde, Description. For scholarship on transport in China, see Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics. For an excellent case study of the city of Suzhou (“the regional metropolis” from the early 16th century) in terms of its infrastructure, commerce and urbanism, see Xu, The Chinese City in Space and Time, chapters 5–6. See also Shiba, Zhongguo dushi shi. 62. Temple, “Heroic Virtue”, in Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 110–1. 63. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. R. Campbell, A. Skinner and W. Todd (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), vol. III, p. i. 64. Chinese authority paid consistent attention to the construction of public buildings and infrastructure, which formed the foundations of the sublimity in Chinese cityscapes. For Chinese palace building embodying the idea of dazhuang 大壯 [the sublime], see Guixiang Wang 王贵祥, “‘Dazhuang’ yu ‘shixing’: zhongguo gudai jianzhu sixiang tanwei” “大壮”与“适形”: 中 国古代建筑思想探微 [“The Sublime” and “Appropriateness”: Exploring Ancient Chinese Architectural Thought], Meishu Daguan 美术大观10 (2015): 90–3. The Jesuits and other early Western observers remarked on the responsibility of the Chinese central government for road building and maintenance as well as all other forms of public communication: see Le Comte, Memoirs, p. 304; Du Halde, Description, pp. 264–5; see also Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics, p. 32. 65. Dissertation, p. 134. 66. Ibid., p. 161. 67. Ibid., p. 11. 68. Addison, Spectator, no. 412 (23 June 1712). 69. Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening, p. 156. Whately was secretary to the Treasury under George Grenville and Lord North. 70. Bourke, “Pity and Fear”, p. 160.

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71. Stephen K. White, Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics (Thousand Oaks, CA and London: SAGE Publications, 1994), p. 75. 72. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: Penguin, 1969), pp. 57–62. 73. Hume first referred to the Enquiry in a letter to Adam Smith, describing it as “a very pretty treatise on the Sublime”. David Hume to Adam Smith, 12 April 1759, The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols, ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. I, 303. Quoted in Bourke, “Pity and Fear”, p. 171. 74. Enquiry, pp. 112, 92. 75. Ibid., p. 53. 76. Vanessa L. Ryan, “The Physiological Sublime: Burke’s Critique of Reason”, Journal of the History of Ideas 62, 2 (2001): 265–79. 77. William F. Byrne, “Burke’s Higher Romanticism: Politics and the Sublime”, Humanitas 19, 1 (2006): 14–34. 78. Enquiry, pp. 134–5. 79. Ibid., p. 134. 80. Ibid., p. 120, n. 1. 81. Ibid., pp. 122, 134. 82. Aris Sarafianos, “The Contractility of Burke’s Sublime and Heterodoxies in Medicine and Art”, Journal of the History of Ideas 69, 1 (2008): 23–48. 83. Christopher Lawrence, “The Nervous System and Society in the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, ed. Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin (Beverly Hills, CA and London: SAGE Publications, 1979), pp. 25–6. 84. Ibid. 85. For a brief introduction to the notions of natural law and revolutionary “natural rights”, see Peter James Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1958), pp. 14–29. 86. Stanlis, Edmund Burke and the Natural Law, p. 55. 87. Burke, “Letter to M. Dupont on the French Revolution”, in Edmund Burke, Correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke; between the years 1744 and the period of his disease, in 1797, ed. Charles William (Earl Fitzwilliam) and Sir Richard Bourke, 4 vols (London, 1844) 3: 107–17, cited in ibid., p. 67. 88. Ibid. 89. Burke, “Letter to Charles-Jean-Francois Depont”, in Edmund Burke, Further Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Daniel E. Ritchie (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1992), p. 7.

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90. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1965), p. 263. 91. Burke, “A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly”, in Burke, Further Reflections, p. 69. See also Burke, Reflections, pp. 73, 20. 92. Dissertation, p. 146. 93. Pevsner, “The Other Chambers”, pp. 195–8. 94. John Brewer, “The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case-Study in EighteenthCentury Political Argument and Public Opinion”, The Historical Journal 16, 1 (1973): 6–8. 95. Crisp Molyneux to Peter Frankly, 5 Apr. 1771, Molyneux Letter Book, Typescript Norfolk R.O. Cited in Brewer, “The Misfortunes of the Lord Bute”, p. 20. 96. Chambers to His Excellency Senator C.F. Scheffer at Stockholm, 21 July 1773, in Sir William Chambers’ Letter Books, vol. II, BL, Add. Ms. 41134, ff. 30–2. 97. See Isaac Kramnick, “Skepticism in English Political Thought: From Temple to Burke”, Studies in Burke and His Time 12, 1 (1971): 1627–60. 98. Batchelor, “Concealing the Bounds”. See also n. 42. 99. This Chinese gardener-philosopher acquires an identity as Tet Che-qua in Explanatory Discourse, an annex to the second edition of the Dissertation. In Tet’s voice, Chambers criticised the English abuse of liberty in a similar tone as in his letter to Scheffer, Dissertation, pp. 140–1. 100. Temple, “Of Poetry”, in Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, pp. 200–1. 101. Temple, “Of Ancient and Modern Learning”, in ibid., p. 48. 102. Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King”, in Bolingbroke: Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 225. 103. Burke, “Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents” (1770), in Edmund Burke, The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Langford and William B. Todd, 8 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980 –), vol. 2, p. 253. 104. Jeff Spinner, “Constructing Communities: Edmund Burke on Revolution”, Polity 23, 3 (1991): 395–421. 105. Dissertation, pp. vii–viii. 106. Ibid., p. vii. 107. Ibid., p. 66. 108. Ibid., pp. 14–5.

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109. Burke, Reflections, p. 232. Cited in Robert Miles, “The 1790s: The Efflulgence of Gothic”, in The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold E. Hogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 47. 110. David Punter, The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fictions from 1765 to the Present Day (Essex: Pearson Education, 1996), pp. 23–4. 111. Ibid. See also Max Horkheimer and T.W. Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (London: Verso Editions, 1979), p. 16. 112. See David R. Coffin, The Italian Garden (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1972), esp. the chapters “Natura Artificiosa to Natura Artificialis” by Eugenio Battisti and “Ars Hortulorum: Sixteenth Century Garden Iconography and Literary Theory in Italy” by Elisabeth MacDougall. See also Margaretta J. Darnall and Mark S. Weil, “Il Sacro Bosco Di Bomarzo: Its 16th-Century Literary and Antiquarian Context”, Journal of Garden History 4 (1984): 1–81; Zakiya Hanafi, The Monster in the Machine: Magic, Medicine, and the Marvelous in the Time of the Scientific Revolution (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. 16–27. 113. See Wasserman, “Nature Moralized”. 114. Addison, Spectator 414 (25 June 1712). 115. Addison, Spectator 417 (28 June 1712). 116. Horace Walpole, Essay Upon Modern Gardening (Twinckenham: Strawberry Hill, 1785), p. 55. 117. Enquiry, p. 54. 118. Ibid., p. 58. 119. Ibid., p. 67. 120. Dissertation, p. 35. 121. Ibid., p. 49. 122. Ibid., p. 45. 123. Osvald Sirén considers that Chambers was concerned with the laying out of the water, as Chambers himself mentioned “The Wilderness and the Lake” in his Plans, see Sirén’s China and Gardens of Europe, p. 72. Ronald King suggests that the lake was first managed by John Dillman, but Chambers might have refined its shape and definitely added the buildings. See Ronald King, Royal Kew (London: Constable, 1985), p. 57. 124. King, Royal Kew, p. 63.

125. I agree with Avcioğlu’s stress on the religious nature of the oriental structures in the royal garden. My point augments her suggestion that they were concerned with Enlightenment values of religious tolerance, see her

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Turquerie, p. 169. For European missionaries’ notes of Chinese pagodas as for idol worship, see Du Halde, Description, pp. 288–92. They also remarked on the Chinese Confucian elites’ keeping their people “occupied with idolatry” as a means of governance. These remarks were studied by thinkers such as Johann Christian Lünig and Montesquieu. See Buc, The Dangers of Ritual, pp. 173–84. 126. This term is borrowed from Terry Eagleton, “Aesthetics and Politics in Edmund Burke”, History Workshop Journal 28, 1 (1989): 54, 57. 127. This point regarding clouds is made by Hubert Damisch in his classic analysis of the demonstration of perspective reportedly carried out by Filippo Brunelleschi: see his The Origin of Perspective (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1994), p. 94. Cited in Mark Dorrian, “Clouds of Architecture”, in Writing on the Image: Architecture, the City and the Politics of Representation (London and New York, NY: I.B. Tauris, 2015), p. 112. 128. Dissertation, pp. 133–4. 129. “Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening”, Monthly Review 47 (1772): 136–43. 130. Catherine Saliou, “Architecture and Society”, in A Companion to Ancient Aesthetics, ed. Pierre Destree and Penelope Murray (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), p. 134. 131. Wren, “Tract I”, reprinted in Lydia M. Soo, Wren’s “Tracts” on Architecture and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 153–7; Wittkower, “English Neo-Palladianism, the Landscape Garden, China and the Enlightenment”. 132. See E.L. Jones and M.E. Falkus, “Urban Improvement and the English Economy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, in The EighteenthCentury Town: A Reader in English Urban History 1688–1820, ed. Peter Borsay (London: Longman, 1990), pp. 116–59. 133. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (London: Pimlico, 2003), pp. 204–10. 134. John Gwynn, London and Westminster Improved (London, 1766). 135. Miles Ogborn, in Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (New York, NY and London: Guilford Press, 1998), discusses public magnificence in 18th-century London. Rosemary Sweet, in Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, C.1690–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), notes public magnificence as a field of interest for the Britons on the Grand Tour in Italy. See also Sweet’s The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997).

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136. Enquiry, p. 45. 137. Ibid., p. 46. 138. Ibid. 139. David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics, 1985), pp. 270–1. 140. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. Ronald L. Meek et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), LJ(B), p. 209, cited in Anthony Brewer, “Luxury and Economic Development: David Hume and Adam Smith”, Scottish Journal of Political Economy 45, 1 (1998): 84. 141. Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, pp. iv. 4, 17, cited in Brewer, “Luxury and Economic Development”, p. 90. 142. Chambers, Treatise, p. 56. 143. Chambers, Treatise, 1st ed. p. 1. 144. Chambers, Treatise, p. 57. 145. East Asia’s overall advantage in transport was noted at the time by Adam Smith: see Smith, Wealth of Nations, pp. 637–8. Cited in Pomeranz, The Great Divergence, p. 34. In Chapter 2 of the same volume, Pomeranz provides a comparison of 18th-century China and Europe in terms of market economy. For 18th-century British travellers favouring the transport of Italian city states, see Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour. 146. Hume, Essays, p. 264. 147. Brewer, “Luxury and Economic Development”, p. 86. 148. Chambers, Treatise, p. 91. 149. Du Halde, Description, p. iv. 150. See, for example, Navarrete, An Account of the Empire of China; Nieuhoff, Embassy. 151. Smith, Wealth of Nations, III, pp. iii. 15, 16, cited in Brewer, “Luxury and Economic Development”, p. 92. On Wedgwood’s ceramics changing English society and economy, see E.A. Wrigley, “A Simple Model of London’s Importance in Changing English Society and Economy 1650– 1750”, Past & Present 37 (1967): 44–70. For Chinese porcelain being a model for European ceramics manufactures in the 18th century, see Maxine Berg, “Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution”, in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). See also Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010), Chapter 8.

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152. Nieuhoff, Embassy, p. 8. 153. Du Halde, Description, p. iii. 154. Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1727), II, p. 238. Cited in Markley, The Far East and the English Imagination, p. 116. 155. Du Halde, Description, p. 285. 156. Chambers, Treatise, p. 56. 157. Dissertation, p. 48. 158. Ibid., pp. 49–57, 65–8. 159. Peter Borsay, “The English Urban Renaissance: The Development of Provincial Urban Culture”, in The Eighteenth-Century Town, ed. Peter Borsay (London: Longman, 1990), pp. 159–88. 160. Joseph Massie, Public Nusance Considered … (London, 1754), pp. 4–5, cited in Jones and Falkus, “Urban Improvement and the English Economy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, p. 130. 161. John Spranger, A Proposal or Plan for an Act of Parliament for the Better Paving, Cleansing and Lighting of the Streets, Lanes, Courts and Alleys, and Other Open Passages, and for the Removal of Nuisances, as Well within the Several Parishes of the City and Liberty of Westminster … (London, 1754), n.p., cited in Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity, p. 94. 162. Du Halde, Description, pp. 264–5. 163. Ibid., pp. 40, 44–5. 164. Ibid., pp. 41, 47. 165. Enquiry, p. 69. 166. Dissertation, p. 17. 167. Ibid., p. 49. 168. Ibid., p. 57. 169. Ibid., p. 55. 170. Ibid. 171. Ibid., pp. 49–50. 172. Attiret, A Particular Account, p. 9. 173. Dissertation, p. 50. 174. Enquiry, p. 68. 175. See Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics, pp. 204–9. 176. Du Halde, Description, p. iii. 177. Ibid., p. 81. 178. Cited in Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics, pp. 207–8. 179. Dissertation, p. 58. See also Du Halde, Description, p. 282.

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180. Dissertation, pp. 59–60. 181. Ibid. 182. David Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England: Transport and Society, 400–1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), p. 34. 183. Du Halde, Description, p. 288. 184. Harrison, The Bridges of Medieval England, p. 63. 185. Dissertation, p. 58. 186. Enquiry, p. 71. 187. Dissertation, p. 58. 188. Enquiry, p. 46. 189. Dissertation, p. 28. 190. Ibid., p. 61. 191. See, for example, Xu, The Chinese City in Space and Time, pp. 129–42. 192. Du Halde, Description, pp. 314, 286. 193. Le Comte, Memoirs, pp. 104, 108. See also Description, p. 137. 194. Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics, pp. 210–2. 195. Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in EighteenthCentury Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014), p. 192. 196. Dissertation, p. 86. 197. Gerard Turnbull, “Canals, Coal and Regional Growth during the Industrial Revolution”, The Economic History Review 40, 4 (1987): 537–60. See also Simon P. Ville, Transport and the Development of the European Economy, 1750–1918 (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 31. 198. B.F. Duckham, “Canals and River Navigations”, in Transport in the Industrial Revolution, ed. Derek H. Aldcroft, M.J. Freeman and Bill Albert (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), p. 101. Cited in Ville, Transport, pp. 31–2. 199. Ville, Transport, p. 43. 200. Smeaton designed an Archimedes screw engine to raise water from an 11-foot-deep well for the lake, ponds and flowerbeds in the royal garden, see Reports of John Smeaton, 3 vols (London, 1812), vol. I, p. 12. 201. Le Comte, Memoirs, pp. 104, 108. Cited in Needham et al., Civil Engineering and Nautics, p. 211. 202. Du Halde, Description, p. 38. 203. Ibid., p. 325. 204. Dissertation, p. 75. 205. Ibid., p. 83. 206. Du Halde, Description, p. 286.

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207. Dissertation, p. 61. 208. Colley, Britons, p. 206. 209. Sloboda, Chinoiserie, p. 184. 210. Daily Advertiser, 25 Nov. 1762. Cited in Joan Coutu, “William Chambers and Joseph Wilton”, in Sir William Chambers, ed. Harris and Snodin, p. 181. 211. Chambers, Treatise, p. 55. 212. Dissertation, p. 106. 213. For the importance of the Dissertation in the continent, see Sirén, China and Gardens of Europe, pp. 81–3. For details of these European landscape gardens, see John Dixon Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), chapters 5–6. 214. Chambers made designs for the gardens in about 1775. See Hunt, The Picturesque Garden in Europe, pp. 142–3. 215. Ludwig August Unzer: Ueber die Chinesischen Gärten [About the Chinese Gardens] (Lemgo, 1773), pp. 357, 42. Cited in Adolf Reichwein, China and Europe: Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century, trans. J.C. Powell (London: Kegan Paul and New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925), p. 122.

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Chapter 3

Layered Landscape Textual and Cartographical Representations of Hangzhou’s West Lake, 16th–18th Centuries ROLAND ALTENBURGER

Introduction THE West Lake (Xihu 西湖) at Hangzhou, Zhejiang province has ranked amongst the most highly praised landscapes of the Chinese empire for over a thousand years. It is located so close to the city of Hangzhou that it forms an integral part of the city’s landscape. Its outstanding place has, for one part, been due to natural landscape formations, but for another part it has been the result of a continuous process of accumulation of culturalhistorical sites and institutions. Its landscape centres on the lake that features several islands and is subdivided by dykes. On three sides, the lake is surrounded by mountains, so the entire landscape approximates the ideal combination of “mountains and water” (shanshui 山水). As a largely manmade landscape, West Lake has a chequered history of construction, decay and reconstruction that invites diachronic studies of its transformation over time.1 The West Lake landscape can also be analysed synchronically as a polyvalent and complexly layered ensemble. Along its shore and up in the hills around the lake there has accumulated a great number and variety of cultural-historical sites, such as monasteries, temples, caves, rocks, springs, tombs, shrines as well as sites reminiscent of the national past. As 115

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a diverse religious landscape it includes important Buddhist institutions, and to a lesser extent Daoist ones, as well as religious institutions of a more “secular” kind, such as shrines for the commemoration of national heroes and “martyrs”, most famously the Song general Yue Fei 岳飛 (1103–42), the symbol of national resistance against the Jurchens. Moreover, West Lake has long been considered a symbolic place of imperial history: when Hangzhou served as the capital of the Southern Song (1127–79), then named Lin’an 臨安. The lake was the favourite amusement ground and the preferred location for the living quarters of the rich and powerful. Ever since this period West Lake has also been stained by the notoriety of its alleged contribution to the fall of the Southern Song, due to the pleasure-craving entertainment culture that unfolded on its shores during that period. After the fall of the Southern Song, the remaining traces of the imperial palace became the site of a cult of loyalism and of mourning about the political failures of the past. This offers just a glimpse of the multilayered, complex and even contradictory nature of West Lake’s cultural-historical signification. Due to West Lake’s fame and its high concentration of sites and religious cults, since the Song dynasty, certain practices of sightseeing that may be viewed as predecessors to modern touristic practices, as well as regional traditions of seasonal Buddhist pilgrimage have begun to develop.2 In the late Ming period (1573–1644), in particular, when travelling and sightseeing became an important private practice of literati seeking to understand the cosmos, the empire’s geography, regional customs and the traces of its historical past, Hangzhou’s West Lake became a major destination for travelling scholars. A growing body of literary writings in a variety of genres focused on West Lake, its aesthetic appeal and its web of cultural-historical significations. One of the most influential myths about West Lake landscape was its allegedly “eternal”, never-changing character, which de-historicised what, in fact, was a landscape in continuous transformation. Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101), the Northern Song polymath, while serving as prefect of Hangzhou, had a long dyke with six bridges built and thus substantially contributed to the enhancement of the lake’s landscape. Henceforth, the name of this literary giant remained inseparably linked to West Lake. Several large-scale projects of reconstruction, in the early and particularly the late 16th century, were required to restore what was believed to be the landscape’s glamorous Southern Song appearance. These large-scale

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efforts to re-establish the place of West Lake among the empire’s primary landscapes rendered possible, during the late Ming, another flourishing period, when the lake was at the height of its touristic attraction, and a cult of “obsession” began to take shape. Yet the turmoil of dynastic change (1645) ruined the landscape once again. Following this, the patronage by the great Qing emperors of the Kangxi 康熙 (r. 1666–1722) and Qianlong 乾隆 (r. 1736–96) reigns then granted legitimacy to a new wave of tourism for the West Lake from the early 18th century and onwards. In large part, though, the construction and reconstruction of the West Lake landscape took place on paper, and across various genres of literary writing. The bulk of the literary production on West Lake easily surpasses that on any other place of late imperial China. In modern times, such writings have been catalogued and collected as well as compiled and systematically edited.3 The present article focuses on one particularly important and influential type of writing on West Lake: local gazetteers (fangzhi 方志), or comprehensive compilations of topographical and historical knowledge pertaining to this administrative region.4 In the 16th through 18th centuries, the period covered here, writing a gazetteer on a lake that was noted primarily as a sightseeing area was still considered an uncommon undertaking that required special justification. In the discussion that follows, two of the most influential gazetteers of West Lake, published in 1547 and 1734, will be investigated and contrasted. Since gazetteers generally evolved through the modifying and amending of previous versions,5 it is hardly surprising to find that all of these gazetteers shared close interrelations and were often in competition with one another. One of the distinctive traits of the gazetteer is its encyclopaedic approach that treats specific sites in the landscape within their various categories. As will be seen, though, the first gazetteer of West Lake, first published in 1547, differed sharply from later examples by adopting the sightseeing tour as its organising principle. Thus it emphasised the importance of sightseeing patterns to the spatial perception of West Lake as a landscape of memory. This pioneering text played an instrumental role in the promotion of late Ming sightseeing at Hangzhou, but also became seminal as the point of departure for virtually any subsequent writings about West Lake. However, it was ultimately challenged and gradually replaced by the first quasi-official gazetteer of West Lake, published in 1734, which adopted the standard encyclopaedic approach, which implied different modes of use.

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All the West Lake gazetteers surveyed in the present article also include pictorial representations, called tu 圖, conventionally rendered here as “maps”, of the entire landscape of the lake and its environs.6 In scholarly discussions, these maps are customarily divorced from their publication context when, in fact, they need to be contextualised within the books in which they originally provided the pictorial correspondence to textual representation of the West Lake’s landscape. As such, the treatment of the maps included in these gazetteers provides a meaningful addition to the present study. The interrelationship between text and map also implied that the image was not meant to speak for itself, but should be conceived of as inextricable from the text itself while, conversely, the text depended on the map to a far lesser extent. Indeed, both text and image were part of the same representational economy. There remained a continuum from map to landscape painting (both of which could be referred to as tu), and the visualisation of the landscape often seems to conform to aesthetic-cosmographic notions as much as topographic realities, since the symbolic value of representation was often considered as higher than any superficial mimetic similarity.7 However, it has become increasingly questionable for academic studies simply to contrast Chinese “traditional” maps with European “scientific” ones. As Laura Hostetler points out, “China had no monopoly on ‘traditional’ maps, nor did ‘scientific’ cartography develop uniquely in early modern Europe.”8 In addition to the discussion of maps in the gazetteers of West Lake, the final part of the article turns to representations of West Lake in Jesuit cartography and enquires into possible mutual influences between European and Chinese cartographies. Moreover, the survey of maps found in the gazetteers of West Lake will demonstrate that a multiplicity of cartographic representations coexisted in China, and that there were also various modes of landscape mapping that succeeded in conveying the “knowledge of place”.9

Actual and Virtual Touring in the Landscape: The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake Among the vast number of writings on West Lake throughout history, a truly pivotal role must be attributed to Tian Rucheng’s The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu youlan zhi 西湖遊覽志), first published in 1547.10 Tian

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Rucheng 田汝成 (zi Shuhe 叔禾, 1503–57) was a local Hangzhou person, who, after passing the Presented Scholar (jinshi 進士) examination in 1526, started a career as a governmental official that kept him away from his native city and its lake. After just over a decade of official service he resigned and returned to his hometown where he began a second career as an erudite scholar and became a prolific author across various genres. In the official biographical entry for Tian in the Dynastic History of the Ming (Ming shi 明史), The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake is the only work of his mentioned.11 As part of his career as a private scholar, Tian undertook extensive tours around West Lake, which he documented in great detail, and his copious notes, enriched with numerous excerpts from history and literature, were compiled and synthesised into a composite type of text that he termed a “sightseeing gazetteer” (youlan zhi 遊覽志). Notably, The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake was first published by Yan Kuan 嚴寬, who was Prefect of Hangzhou in 1547. Regional administrators were also involved in subsequent re-editions of the work: the second was published in 1584 (Wanli 萬曆 12) by Fan Mingqian 范鳴 謙, the Regional Inspector of Zhejiang province, and the third edition was published in 1597 (Wanli 25) by another prefect of Hangzhou, Ji Donglu 季東魯 (jinshi 1583). In addition, later editions were printed in 1619 and 1689. Including the edition incorporated in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu 四庫全書, 1773–84), a total of seven editions were printed by the end of the Qing. Virtually all editions introduced a certain number of textual changes, and one edition (1619) even included a considerable amount of recent content that was added in order to update Tian’s original work.12 The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake, in Tian Rucheng’s original version, comprises a total of 24 chapters (juan 卷). It starts with a general survey of the history and the geographical outlines of West Lake (j. 1) before directing its focus to the centre of the area, describing the sites located within the lake, on the main island, called the Solitary Mountain (Gushan 孤山), and along the Three Dykes (Santi 三堤) (j. 2). After these two introductory chapters, the representational structure of the bulk of the book follows a geographical logic as comes to describe, in exhaustive detail, the sequence of stations and sights as encountered while touring through the landscape along a defined route. For this purpose, the author structured the mountainous landscape surrounding the lake into several macro sectors.13 The main division is the one between the Southern Hills

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(Nanshan 南山, j. 3–7) and the Northern Hills (Beishan 北山, j. 8–11), followed by the region that (geologically) belongs to the Southern Hills, but is located within the city walls, that is, the Wu Hill (Wushan 吳山, j. 12). Thereafter, the book turns to places that are located in the “foothills” (fenmai 分脉) of the two mountainous areas: first, those of the Southern Hills inside the city walls (j. 13–18) and their surrounds (j. 19), followed by those of the Northern Hills within the city walls (j. 20–21) and their surrounds (j. 22–23). A final chapter includes some scenic sights from the wider region (j. 24). The book’s structure indicates that Tian adopted a highly systematic approach in his landscape description. His decision to cover the Southern Hills more extensively, and prior to the Northern Hills, mirrors the relative importance of the two regions of the West Lake’s landscape, especially during the Song dynasty, when a particularly high density of sites was concentrated south of the lake, whereas in Tian’s own time the focus of West Lake sightseeing was gradually shifting towards the northern side. Tian Rucheng’s Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake clearly set itself off against any previous local-historical representations of Hangzhou’s lake. Its guiding principle are the “sightseeing sites” (shengji 勝跡), which almost always refer to buildings, or at least relics. For each of the hundreds of cultural-historically relevant stations along the way, detailed information is provided on the circumstances that led to its construction, and in some cases, the chronology of its destruction and reconstruction. For all the major locations, Tian quoted excerpts from prose records (ji 記) and anecdotes, and occasionally also verses. Thus, Tian’s work is also noted as a literary source. Indeed, it is almost certain that he derived a considerable amount of the information he processed from previous geographical and historical sources, such as the extant early local gazetteers of Hangzhou from the Southern Song dynasty, which he nevertheless explicitly referred to only on rare occasions.14 Due to its eclectic blending of snippets from a wide variety of source types, the Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake may be characterised as a hybrid text that nevertheless achieves an overall impression of a high degree of coherence and unity, and allows for a pleasant, and even entertaining, reading experience. The perceived stringency of this book owes a lot to the notion of the sightseeing tour that underpins its structure. At numerous places in the text, it becomes quite evident to the reader that the sightseer’s route underlies this text not just as a structural idea but as an actual practice,

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either suggested to the reader as a kind of imaginary “mental touring”, similar to the European notion of “armchair travelling”, or as the physical movement through the landscape as recorded by the author himself. Take, for instance, the beginning of Chapter Three: “When one leaves Golden Flood Gate (Yongjinmen 涌金門) and turns south, then there is Twin Peaks Academy (Liangfeng shuyuan 兩峰書院).”15 This opening sentence is followed by two descriptive paragraphs, one on the Golden Flood Gate and one on the Twin Peaks Academy. The verbs of motion that have been selected—“leaves” (chu 出) and “turns” (zhe 折)—convey the idea of either actual or virtual movement in the space of the landscape. Thus the author guides the reader through a sequence of successive sightseeing locations, progressing from one station to the next by redirecting their pathway. The described order of places is as heterogeneous as the experience of the sightseer. Based on this crucial feature, Tian’s book could indeed have been used as a traveller’s guidebook, even though it spares the reader some practical details, such as places for drinking, food and rest, or means of transportation. Despite the fact that the volume constitutes a bulky 24 juan, at least selective fascicles could have been carried along on a tour to serve as an actual guidebook. In any case, the blending of concise and accurate information on the history of the successive sites, combined with anecdotes of eminent people and literary accounts relating to these sites, apparently met the gusto of contemporary literati readers. The author’s preface16 is itself revealing as it preventively counters two objections potentially raised by the readership: one, that its focus is on the landscape around the lake rather than on the city nearby; and two, that this work is a travel guidebook rather than a local gazetteer. Regarding the first issue, West Lake, located right outside Hangzhou’s western city wall, shared a symbiotic relationship with the city, not only in terms of water supply and other economic aspects, but also for leisure activities. Positioning the lake at the centre of public attention and treating the city as a supplement to the gazetteer of the lake was certainly a provocation, a polemical metonymy that—pars pro toto—purposely mistook the part for the whole. The second issue, concerning the generic conflation of a local gazetteer with a travel guidebook, a genre often considered “frivolous”, pervades critical responses to the work by later authors, including some who borrowed extensively from it. According to these accounts, Tian Rucheng’s particular audacity was that he did not attempt to conceal the touristic purposes of his account, but actually highlighted it in the title

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by using the term “sightseeing” (youlan 遊覽). In the mid-16th century, however, such aesthetically and historically minded landscape touring was not yet officially endorsed as a legitimate activity. Nevertheless, in the 18th century, Tian’s work was included in Siku quanshu, the officially acknowledged inventory of extant writings. Here the bibliographical description categorised it as a hybrid between local gazetteer and unofficial history.17 A typical feature of Tian Rucheng’s idiosyncratic style of topographical writing is its significant amount of narrative material, not just from historiographical sources, but anecdotes and legends derived from local lore and probably also oral tradition. However, while such stories appear only occasionally in The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake, the bulk of the narrative material was included in a separate volume. As Tian pointed out in his preface, in the course of editing The Sightseeing Gazetteer, there remained a large number of “leftover snippets” (caijian zhi yi 裁剪之遺)18—narrative items that had been deemed unsuitable for inclusion in that book. Tian compiled these materials, which were much more than “leftover snippets”, into a “supplement” (yu 餘) volume, which he published simultaneously by the title Supplement to the Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu youlan zhi yu 西湖遊覽志餘). This companion volume, comprising 26 juan, actually eclipsed the main work, at least in size. Notably, it also has an entirely different structure, so the genetic relationship between the two works, at first sight, is less than evident. While the main work is concerned with sites and buildings, the Supplement deals with people and stories. Its chapters are organised not by area or tour, but by topical category or type of historical personality.19 Therefore, this companion volume was also perceived as a topically categorised story collection and served as an important source to late-Ming storywriters, such as Feng Menglong 馮夢龍 (1574–1646), Ling Mengchu 凌濛初 (1580–1644) and Zhou Qingyuan 周 清原 (fl. late Ming). Thus it also played a crucial role in helping West Lake to become a significant backdrop for traditional Chinese narrative literature.20 In view of the widely diverging structures of the two volumes of this double monograph, one may wonder how the two are actually interlinked. As a matter of fact, there is an entire system of cross-references from the Sightseeing Gazetteer to the Supplement,21 mirroring the creative process in the course of which the author moved most of the less historically reliable narrative material over to the companion volume.

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Further adding to the complexity of the Sightseeing Gazetteer project, the main volume was accompanied by two maps offering panoramic views of West Lake and its environs, as viewed from an imaginary viewing point above the city. These homologous maps represent the landscape in two versions, at different points in time: one is entitled “Song-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Songchao Xihu tu” 宋朝西湖圖, Fig. 3.1), providing a reconstruction of the landscape as it had been back in the Southern Song dynasty; the other one is entitled “Present-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Jinchao Xihu tu” 今朝西湖圖, Fig. 3.2) and documents the landscape as Tian witnessed it in his own time, the mid-Ming.22 The format of the two panoramic maps included by Tian Rucheng—with their extreme aspect ratios of about 1:5.7—must have posed a notable challenge to publishers and printers.23

Pending hires

Fig. 3.1: “Song-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Songchao Xihu tu” 宋朝西湖圖) from Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (1547). From Que Weimin, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 235, Fig. 8-3.

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Fig. 3.2: “Present-dynasty Map of West Lake” (“Jinchao Xihu tu” 今朝西湖圖) from Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake (1547). From Que Weimin, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 237, Fig. 8-5.

If we compare the “Song-dynasty Map of West Lake” with the “Presentdynasty Map of West Lake”, we immediately discover that they offer rather different representations of the West Lake landscape. Most conspicuously, the Song-dynasty version includes far more place-name tags than the Mingdynasty version, conveying the idea that, back in the Song, the landscape had been far more densely covered with sites appropriate to sightseeing. The visual contrast between the two maps implies that the height of the sightseeing culture at West Lake had been during the Southern Song dynasty, a touristic boom to which the mid-Ming present looked rather pale in comparison. This preference for the past is also mirrored by the text of The Sightseeing Gazetteer in which we perceive a far greater interest in the Song past than the Ming present. This tendency is perpetuated by the Supplement volume that includes several chapters exclusively dedicated to anecdotes from Song times (chapters 1–3 and 20). Moreover, in most entries provided for individual tour sites, the description of the situation back in the Southern Song predominates, whereas the present state of a site

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is often negatively summarised by a note, such as “nowadays it lies waste” (jin fei 今廢). However, from this historical inclination for the Southern Song past we must not jump rashly to the conclusion that Tian’s work was a project of nostalgia. The emphasis on the Song, I would rather suggest, was first of all due to the relative wealth of source material that had been left over from the previous dynasty. If Tian Rucheng, at the time that he was writing The Sightseeing Gazetteer (probably in the early 1540s) had had the impression that the West Lake landscape was in a rather sorry state and that the intensity of sightseeing around the lake tailed off almost to the point of non-existence, he would not have been entirely wrong. Indeed, it is safe to say that the period during which Tian wrote his work was certainly no heyday in the sightseeing culture of West Lake. Tian’s work preceded the late-Ming frenzy for West Lake by about half a century. Moreover, as Liping Wang has shown in her historical outline of the construction and reconstruction of the West Lake landscape, in spite of the fact that Prefect Yang Mengying 楊孟瑛 (1459–1518) had undertaken a government-funded project to recover the lake area in 1508,24 the West Lake scenery regained some of its SouthernSong splendour only decades after Tian’s lifetime. This reinvigoration occurred during the 1580s and 1590s, due to large-scale construction work sponsored by the eunuch Sun Long 孫隆 (zi Dongying 東瀛, 1525– 94), who was the fabulously wealthy superintendent of the Imperial Silk Manufactories of Suzhou and Hangzhou.25 Due to the quick transformation of the lake’s landscape, Tian Rucheng’s Sightseeing Gazetteer was soon in need of revision, but its legacy was surprisingly enduring. Throughout the late Ming, when enthusiasm for West Lake reached new peaks, it continued to be the primary point of reference for any learned person seeking to explore the lake. Moreover, it became the inevitable starting point for all later descriptions of the environs of West Lake. In the late Ming there were several new publications that could have replaced it, but at a closer glance, all of these turn out to be “derivations” from Tian’s original work, drawing from it selectively and rearranging it.26 Tian Rucheng’s generically hybrid guidebook-cum-gazetteer, Sight­ seeing Gazetteer of West Lake, remained the standard work on West Lake for almost two centuries, even though it was already in need of revision during the late Ming, when West Lake became a contested site where cultured literati hoped to establish their cultural supremacy, seeking to distinguish themselves from the newly rich competitors of the emerging

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merchant class. They raised sightseeing at West Lake to a matter of good taste and developed ever more refined and unconventional ways of enjoying and appreciating the landscape.27 Given the late-Ming aesthetic discourse of West Lake, it is hardly surprising that, during this period, no one compiled a new gazetteer for the famed landscape, apart from the abridged and diluted versions of Tian Rucheng’s master text. As a crowd of contestants claimed West Lake for their own, the literati were anxious to defend their cultural capital and to hold on to their social status; as such, none among them sought to render “their” West Lake more accessible to less refined readers and sightseers.28 It was also during this period that the essentialising “Ten Views of West Lake” (Xihu shi jing 西湖十景) came to be established as a by-product of the discourse on refined cultural taste.29

An Inventory of the Landscape: The Gazetteer of West Lake The Qing conquest and the turmoil of dynastic change brought destruction to the West Lake landscape and marked a sharp decline in interested sightseers. Moreover, in the first decades of the Qing dynasty, aesthetic sightseeing was considered an inappropriate activity for literati-officials, since it was closely associated with the decadent lifestyle of the discredited late-Ming elite. However, after the consolidation of the Qing empire in 1683, the Qing emperors revitalised the culture of sightseeing in order to enhance their own acceptance by Chinese literati in the South. In the course of the Kangxi emperor’s highly significant southern tours (nanxun 南巡), literati sightseeing gradually gained the status of a legitimate cultivated activity. In 1699, the Kangxi emperor visited Hangzhou and its West Lake for the first time, followed by three more visits in the years 1703, 1705 and 1707. In a highly symbolical act, the emperor himself inscribed, in large characters later carved into stone, the names of the—for one part newly defined—“Ten Views”. The steles with the stone inscriptions were then placed into the landscape. Stele inscriptions belong to Chinese memorial culture: by placing steles that carried inscriptions from the imperial brush at the very core of the West Lake landscape, the Manchu emperor transformed the cultural memory of a Chinese past into powerful signifiers of the new Qing present.30 This signalled the rehabilitation of West Lake

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sightseeing,31 but more importantly, it indicated it was an act of imperial appropriation underpinning the consolidation of Qing statecraft. Following the Kangxi emperor, both the Yongzheng and the Qianlong emperors became patrons of West Lake. The Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723– 35), who did not travel much, nevertheless initiated the largest project of embellishing the lake since Sun Long’s reconstruction project that had rendered possible the wave of late-Ming West Lake enthusiasm. Between 1727 and 1734, a project was pursued to re-establish the lake’s Song-dynasty glamour. While in the late 16th century the construction of the landscape and its description in gazetteer form had remained separate projects, during the early 18th century the projects of restoring the landscape and compiling its gazetteer became closely interrelated. In the Ming these projects had remained essentially private ventures, though tolerated and often supported by the authorities, whereas in the Qing these activities were directed by a top administrator. In the Qing, the project’s key person was Li Wei 李衛 (zi Youjie 又玠, 1687–1738), who served the position of Governor of Zhejiang Province between 1727 and 1732. A personal confidant of the Yongzheng emperor, Li had made a steep career in the central administration, but ultimately failed to gain acknowledgement in literati circles who considered him “crude and arrogant”.32 Li showed great determination in undertaking the large-scale project of embellishing the West Lake landscape, combined with the scholarly project of compiling a quasi-official Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu zhi 西湖志), that was eventually published under his nominal general editorship in 1734.33 The two projects can also be viewed as elements of a personal image campaign aimed at raising his acceptance among the local literati elite. Through his personal patronage to the landscape of the lake and the credits for a comprehensive local gazetteer, Li Wei sought to gain the cultural prestige he was not able to claim based on his educational background.34 In many ways, this particular Gazetteer of West Lake was still based on Tian Rucheng’s master text, although its compilers were anxious to distance themselves from their predecessor. Li Wei, in his preface, even avoided the mention of Tian Rucheng’s name and assumed a condescending, even condemning tone when commenting on Tian’s work: Previously there was a gazetteer for the lake that featured the word “sightseeing” in its title. This work especially appealed to mountain recluses (shanren 山人) and travellers to seek out curious and

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famous sights, but it was improper for a state project as well as for the people’s livelihood.35

In a statement about their “Editorial principles” (“Fanli” 凡例), the editors nevertheless felt compelled to point out their reason for choosing an organising principle that was clearly different from Tian’s: Tian Rucheng’s previous gazetteer was only made for sightseeing. Therefore, apart from the “General description”, it does not distinguish any thematic categories (menlei 門類), but relates the sites according to the sequence in which they follow on the tour. Whenever there is a landscape formation, a dyke, a bridge or a temple, they are recorded mixed-up with other things. Although the approach adopted was original, it failed to conform with [the formal requirements of] the gazetteer genre. For the present [book], we have divided up the various categories [of sites], but in each category we still distinguish five tours: (1) Solitary Hill, (2) the Southern Hills, (3) the Northern Hills, (4) Wu Hill and (5) the Western Rivulet (Xixi 西溪). They are related following the sequence of the tour, in order to facilitate reading.36

The editors criticise Tian’s preceding work for its clear orientation towards sightseeing, which led him, consequently, to arrange the sequence of sites according to their occurrence, as in actual sightseeing. In the eyes of the editors, this resulted in a disorganised medley of types of place. For their new work the editors chose to stick to a primary categorisation as it was de rigueur for a proper gazetteer. Thus, in separate chapters, they treated: “Landscape formations” (“Shanshui” 山水, j. 5–6), “Dykes” (“Titang” 堤塘, j. 7), “Bridges” (“Qiaoliang” 橋梁, j. 8), “Gardens and pavilions” (“Yuanting” 園亭, j. 9), “Temples” (“Siguan” 寺觀, j. 10–13), “Shrines” (“Ciyu” 祠宇, j. 14–15), “Historic sites” (“Guji” 古蹟, j. 16–18) and so on. However, in a surprising concession to Tian’s concept, the editors claimed that, within the categories, they also held on to the principle of organising according to routes (lu 路), that is, the five sectors in which they divided up the West Lake landscape. While reading the chapters of the Gazetteer, however, the alleged proximity of the sites is imperceptible, since the individual entries for the sites fail to interrelate them spatially. The editors claim that they made this concession in order to facilitate “reading” (languan 覽觀), as a

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subtle modification of the predecessor’s declared purpose of “sightseeing” (youlan 遊覽). Both terms include the word lan 覽 which carries with it the double meaning of both “viewing” and “reading”. However, while Tian’s work had intentionally inscribed both modes of use—actual sightseeing as well as imaginary roaming—the editors of this Gazetteer in fact limited the use of their work to that of mere reference. The editors followed the encyclopaedic approach that was generally required of gazetteers. They placed in the first position a chapter on “Water conservancy” (“Shuili” 水利, j. 1–2), thus highlighting the economic benefits of the lake—for water supply, irrigation and agricultural production. This emphasis on economic aspects, however, is counterbalanced by the chapter on “Famous scenic spots” (“Mingsheng” 名勝, j. 3–4), emphasising the overriding aesthetic significance of the West Lake landscape. This was a rather courageous arrangement given the fact that throughout the late imperial era any construction work around the lake could be justified only by economic arguments, and not for explicit aesthetic reasons. An important achievement of the Gazetteer was its extensive section of “Belles lettres” (“Yiwen” 藝文, j. 31–42) that provided a comprehensive collection of writings on West Lake, prose as well as poetry, categorised according to literary form and presented in chronological order.37 Tian, in his Sightseeing Gazetteer, had quoted only excerpts from prose texts, hardly ever entire essays, and he quoted verse only occasionally, for instance, in the chapter on Solitary Hill that was closely related to the historical presence of several famous poets.38 The Gazetteer of 1734 also included a map, entitled “Complete Map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全圖, Fig. 3.3), which was placed at the beginning of the “Famous scenic spots” section.39 Corresponding to its placement, it serves the primary purpose of localising on one survey map all the “Ten Views” listed and described in that chapter. Apart from that, the map contains rather little topographical information and would hardly have been helpful on any sightseeing tour. If Tian’s maps offer no way to grasp the entire landscape at once, it unfolds, like a scroll, gradually before the strolling spectator’s eye. It invites rambles and is an object of fascination, whereas the “Complete Map” inhibits such free thinking. As many Qing gazetteers, the “Complete Map” adapts European techniques of convergent perspective40 so that all the “Ten Views” of West Lake, as redefined by Kangxi, are presented in a single, easy-to-survey layout, submitted to the implied imperial view.41 Moreover, while previous maps

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used to choose the city as their point of perspective, hence looking west, this overall map of West Lake has its viewing point on the Northern Hill’s side, looking southwards, further implying the imperial view.42 These shifts in the representation of the West Lake may not be separated from the Qing mapping enterprise as a whole. As Hostetler suggests, by adapting European techniques, the Qing successfully used mapping to construct a new identity not rooted narrowly in Confucian thought.43 In other words, the new shifts embodied the Manchus’ attempt to instil a broad sense of Qing nation against the original local identity of both Chinese literati and the general populace of the Qing empire.44

Fig. 3.3: “Complete Map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全圖) from Gazetteer of West Lake (1734). From Que Weimin, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 250, Fig. 10-7.

After the Yongzheng emperor’s early death in 1735, his confidant Li Wei quickly fell into disgrace under the newly enthroned Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–96). As a consequence, all of his achievements were discredited, including the Gazetteer of West Lake that featured him as the nominal editor-

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in-chief. The actual work of compiling and writing was done by a team of ten outstanding scholars from the Zhejiang province, with Fu Wanglu 傅 王露 (jinshi 1715) acting as the team leader, and working alongside such figures as Liang Shizheng 梁詩正 (1697–1763) and Shen Deqian 沈德潛 (1673–1769). These three authors later republished the work under their own names, thus seeking to recover their work for posterity and save it for the afterworld. Together they produced a revised and abridged “digest” edition of the work with the modified title Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu zhi zuan 西湖志纂), an edition which was published in 12 juan in 1751, and as a revised and enlarged version comprising 15 juan in 1762.

Mutual Chinese-European Influences in Making Maps of West Lake Between 1707 and 1715, at the order of the Kangxi emperor, Jesuit cartographers systematically collected cartographical data on each of the provinces, which came to be known as the Great Jesuit Survey and resulted, most importantly, in the Kangxi Atlas of China.45 Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s (1674–1743) massive compilation, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise [Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political, and Physical Description of the Empire of China and of Chinese Tartary], first published in 1735, represents the great summary of knowledge on China collected by Jesuit missionaries up to the early 18th century, and features maps of all provinces and the major cities in each province. The maps for Du Halde’s four-volume work were drawn by the royal geographer J.-B. Bourguignon d’Anville (1697–1782) and were based on maps provided by the Jesuit mission in Peking. The provenance of the city maps had remained in the dark for a long time until new light was shed upon them by Marcel Destombes’ (1905–83) discovery of the set of hand-drawn city maps that had served d’Anville as the master copies that had provided the blueprint for his engravings.46 Due to the overall distinctive style of these maps they had to be drawn by Chinese map-makers, even though they did not feature any Chinese script—the single exception being the map of Hangzhou with its West Lake. Destombes noted that the subtle colouring of these maps corresponded to Chinese conventions of map-making, whereas most (but not all) of these maps were oriented toward the north, as it was de rigueur

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in European map drawing.47 Moreover, the accuracy of these city maps clearly surpassed the level commonly found in Chinese maps at the time. Therefore, while these maps were the products of Chinese cartographers, they show evident signs of close collaboration with, or supervision by, Jesuit cartographers.48 Thus, it is evident that d’Anville’s engraved map “Villes de la Province de Tche-kiang: Hang-tcheou-fou, capitale” [Cities of Zhejiang Province: Hangzhou fu, Capital] (Fig. 3.4)49 was based on the corresponding map (marked in handwriting as “Hang-tcheou fou”, Fig. 3.5) drawn and painted by an anonymous Chinese map-maker. In the set of Chinese city maps, this item stands out for its inclusion of a number of place names in Chinese script,50 rendering the names of all the 16 city gates and of several sites in as well as around the West Lake, none of which d’Anville was able to incorporate in his map. The only writing in d’Anville’s adapted version is the transcribed name “Si-Hou” (for West Lake), placed in the

Fig. 3.4: “Villes de la Province de Tche-kiang: Hang-tcheou-fou, capitale” produced by d’Anville for Du Halde, Description … de la Chine (1735). From the Goettingen State and University Library, 2 H AS II, 5051 RARA.

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middle of the lake, which adds to the impression that the lake is the actual focus of the map. Since d’Anville, in preparing his copper engravings for Du Halde’s compilation, closely based his work upon (unacknowledged) Chinese sources, it is interesting to see how, in the process of adaption, he also incorporated some elements and traits of Chinese map-making. Both maps divide up the represented area in two halves, with the actual city of Hangzhou on the right (east) and West Lake on the left (west). The almost mirror-inverted shapes of the two halves suggest a complementary relation between the two. However, while the eastern half (i.e. the city) is relatively poor in detail, showing hardly any topographical features, except for the city wall and the watercourses, the western half (i.e. the lake) is richly textured. This obvious contrast is found on both maps but was somewhat attenuated on d’Anville’s engraved map. On the Chinese map, the hills surrounding the lake on three sides are drawn in a style that imitates

Fig. 3.5: “Hang-tcheou fou”, Chinese map, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie (VH 560 fol.), reproduced with permission.

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mimetic landscape painting, transposed by d’Anville into a more abstractly drawn belt of mountains, the shadowing of which further enforces the spatial effect. Thus, the representation of the lake suggests a side view, whereas the city appears much flatter, as if viewed from overhead. D’Anville also retained most of the buildings included on the Chinese map, equally highlighting the two pagodas: the Protecting Chu Pagoda (Baochuta 保俶 塔) in the north and the Thunder Peak Pagoda (Leifengta 雷峰塔) in the south of the lake. The dominant element in the lake’s landscape here are the dykes (i.e. the Bai and Su Dykes), shown as crossing the lake in a bow following the western shore, all the way from north to south. One of the most striking features of the Chinese map that served d’Anville as the model for his map of Hangzhou and West Lake, is its orientation toward the north.51 This element also would seem to betray the Jesuit involvement, and it signified a clear departure from the mapping tradition of West Lake. As mentioned further above in this article, in previous mappings of the lake, as included in the gazetteers of West Lake, the typical choice was the perspective from the city or, rather, from an imaginary viewing point above the city, thus giving the map its orientation towards the west. The exception to the rule was found in the “Complete Map of West Lake”, included in the 1734 Gazetteer of West Lake (Fig. 3.3), which was the first to choose an orientation toward the south, taking the Northern Hill as its viewing point, positioning the south accordingly at the top. It therefore comes as a surprise that in the revised and abridged Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu zhi zuan, 1751), on the equally renewed survey map entitled “Complete Map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全圖, Fig. 3.6), the viewing direction was reversed, adopting the general direction to the north. It is tempting to suspect that this change also occurred under the influence of Jesuit map-making. Some details of representation, such as the characteristic way in which the dykes divide the lake into uneven parts, would seem to exclude the possibility of any direct imitation of either the Chinese map from the imperial palace or d’Anville’s adaptation, whereas some pictorial elements, such as the two prominent pagodas (which by comparison were not prominent in the map of 1734), are indeed quite similar on both maps. Ultimately, there is no hard evidence in favour of any direct influence. As an alternative hypothesis, the success of Jesuit mapmaking at the Qing court may have altered the standards and expectations

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Fig. 3.6: “Complete Map of West Lake” (“Xihu quantu” 西湖全圖), from Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake (1751). From Que Weimin, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 251, Fig. 10-8.

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for maps, especially in publications that primarily addressed the imperial court. The Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake from 1751, even more blatantly than the 1734 Gazetteer of West Lake that it sought to replace, was clearly meant to appeal to the emperor himself, and was intended, at the same time, to the promotion of its editors. Its opening section pays homage to the Qianlong emperor’s personal visits to West Lake, and one deluxe edition of the work was produced especially for the emperor to read.52 As one tribute to this dominant orientation towards the book’s primary addressee, the survey map’s general orientation may have been reversed in order to conform to the new standards.53

Conclusions This article has discussed two contrasting approaches to the topographical gazetteer’s description of Hangzhou’s famous West Lake landscape, juxtaposing the tour-oriented Sightseeing Gazetteer (1547) by Tian Rucheng and the encyclopaedic Gazetteer (1734) under the nominal editorship by Li Wei. The two books, or projects, implied and supported widely different modes of landscape perception that also represented sharply divergent mentalities and epochs. Tian’s approach was that of a retired private scholar-official who devoted many years to reconstructing and chronicling the cultural history of “his” West Lake, the landscape he had grown up in. Tian invited his reader to assume the attitude of a sightseer, whether actual or virtual, and to follow him along the tours he devised, from one station to the next, reading his textual medley of topographical and historical information enriched by anecdotal pieces and literary snippets. The resulting volume was as artful as it was personal. To the readers and sightseers of West Lake it must have been so compelling that throughout decades to come, even during the late-Ming period when West Lake regained some of its past splendour, it became the inevitable point of reference and departure. For two centuries, Tian’s Sightseeing Gazetteer was revised and updated or abridged into handier formats, but it could not be ignored. Li Wei’s sharply contrasting project of an actual inventory of the West Lake landscape in the encyclopaedic gazetteer format, accounted for by an entire team of scholars, appears as the gesture of an out-of-town career official in search of acceptance among the local elite. It was, moreover, an

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act of appropriation on behalf of the Qing emperor to whom he dedicated this project. Unlike the polyphonic and individualised explorations of the landscape implied and facilitated by Tian’s sightseeing gazetteer, Li’s categorised gazetteer constitutes an authoritative and exhaustive take on the landscape, quite unrelated to the wandering sightseer’s perspective, but from a universal bird’s-eye view. This difference is equally expressed by the maps included in the respective gazetteers: while the long scrolls of the West Lake landscape during the Song and Ming dynasties, in Tian’s work, invite the beholder’s eye to wander and to follow the tours described in the text, the “Complete Map of West Lake”, in Li’s work—adapting European convergent perspective—expresses total authority over the landscape, thus also implying the grip of official and imperial power. These concepts are also mirrored by the Chinese map (likely produced under Jesuit supervision) and its French adaptation, also implying a remarkable story of mutual Chinese-European influences in map-making. As hypothesised in this article, such a foreign factor in landscape representation might also have been perpetuated in the map included in the 1751 revised edition of the quasi-official gazetteer.

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Notes 1.

For a survey of the history of its transformations in the late imperial period, see Liping Wang, “Paradise for Sale: Urban Space and Tourism in the Social Transformation of Hangzhou, 1589–1937”, PhD diss. (San Diego, CA: University of California, 1997), pp. 29–88.

2.

On the beginnings of West Lake “tourism” in the Southern Song, see Xiaolin Duan, “Scenic Beauty outside the City: Tourism around Hangzhou’s West Lake in the Southern Song (1127–1276)”, PhD diss. (Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 2014).

3.

The most recent attempt to document the full range of West Lake writings is represented by the compilation Xihu wenxian jicheng 西湖文献集成 [Grand Compendium of West Lake Documents], gen. ed. Wang Guoping 王国平, 30 vols (Hangzhou: Hangzhou chubanshe, 2004), henceforth XHWXJC; with a supplement, entitled Xihu wenxian jicheng xuji 西湖 文献集成续辑 [Grand Compendium of West Lake Documents: Sequel Compilation], gen. ed. Liu Ying 刘颍, 10 vols (Hangzhou: Hangzhou chubanshe, 2013).

4.

Timothy Brook, Geographical Sources in Ming-Qing History (Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1988), pp. 49–70.

5.

See Joseph R. Dennis, Writing, Publishing and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2015), 117–64.

6.

See Que Weimin 阙维民, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo 杭州城池 暨西湖历史图说 [Illustrated Handbook on the History of the City Wall and Moat of Hangzhou and West Lake] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2000). The lavishly illustrated second half of this book (pp. 113–279) provides a fairly comprehensive collection of extant maps of West Lake throughout history (with reproductions). For a contrastive discussion of four maps of West Lake, see also Roland Altenburger, “Raum und Zeit in kartographischen Darstellungen von Hangzhous WestseeLandschaft, 1498–1734” [Space and Time in Cartographic Representations of Hangzhou’s West Lake Landscape, 1498–1734], in Zeit, Raum und die Wirklichkeiten Chinas [Time, Space and the Realities of China], ed. Clemens von Haselberg and Stefan Kramer, Berliner China-Hefte/Chinese History and Society 48 (2016): 125–43.

7.

Que Weimin 阙维民, “Zhongguo gudai zhishu ditu huizhi zhunce chutan” 中国古代志书地图绘制准测初探 [Preliminary Discussion of the Principles

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of Drawing Maps in Old Chinese Gazetteers], in Que Weimin, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, pp. 283–6; Cordell D.K. Yee, “Chinese Cartography among the Arts: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Representation”, in The History of Cartography: Volume Two, Book Two: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 128–69. 8.

Laura Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 17.

9.

Yee, “Reinterpreting Traditional Chinese Geographical Maps”, in The History of Cartography: Volume Two, Book Two: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. ed. J.B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 63.

10. Tian Rucheng 田汝成, Xihu youlan zhi 西湖游览志 [The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1998), henceforth XHYLZ. 11. Zhang Tingyu 張廷玉, ed., Ming shi 明史 [Dynastic History of the Ming], 28 vols (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), j. 287, vol. 24, p. 7372. Also see L. Carrington Goodrich and Chao-Ying Fang, ed., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, 2 vols (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 1286–8. For a detailed study of Tian Rucheng’s life and work, see Zhan Mingyu 詹明瑜, “Tian Rucheng yanjiu” 田汝成研究 [A Study of Tian Rucheng], MA thesis (Shanghai: Shanghai shifan daxue, 2012). 12. On the various editions of this work, see Ma Meng-ching (Ma Mengjing) 馬孟晶, “Mingsheng zhi huo lüyou shu – Ming Xihu youlan zhi de chuban licheng yu Hangzhou lüyou wenhua” 名勝志或旅遊書 — 明西湖遊覽志的出 版歷程與杭州旅遊文化 [Gazetteers of Famous Sites or Tourist Guidebooks: The Printing History of the Ming-Period Xihu Youlanzhi and Tourism in Hangzhou], Xin shixue 新史學 (Taibei) 24, 4 (2013): 102–17; and Yin Xiaoning 尹晓宁, “Xihu youlan zhi banben wenti dingwu”《西湖游览志》版 本问题订误 [Correction of Mistakes Regarding the Question of the Editions of The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake], Zhejiang xuekan 浙江学刊, 3 (2010): 73–6. 13. In structuring the West Lake landscape, Tian possibly drew on precursors. For a survey of the systems of “partial routes” [fenlu 分路] employed in all the major descriptions of the West Lake landscape, see Que, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 81, Fig. 10-3. 14. Exceptions are XHYLZ, 10.118 (quotation from Lin’an zhi 臨安志 [Gazetteer of Lin’an]), 14.172 (quotation from Xianchun zhi 咸淳志 [Gazetteer of the

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Xianchun Era]), and 20.215 (quotation from Chunyou zhi 淳祐志 [Gazetteer of the Chunyou Era]). For a comprehensive study of local gazetteers of Hangzhou, see Christine Moll-Murata, Die chinesische Regionalbeschreibung. Entwicklung und Funktion einer Quellengattung, dargestellt am Beispiel der Präfekturbeschreibungen von Hangzhou [The Chinese Regional Gazetteer. Development and Function of a Source Type, Exemplified for Prefectural Gazetteers of Hangzhou] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2001). 15. XHYLZ, 3.26. 16. Tian Rucheng, “Xihu youlan zhi xu” 西湖遊覽志敘, in XHYLZ, pp. i–ii. 17. See the entry in the “General Catalogue” [zongmu tiyao 總目提要], quoted in Tian Rucheng 田汝成, Xihu youlan zhi 西湖遊覽志 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), p. i. 18. Tian, “Xihu youlan zhi xu”, in XHYLZ, p. i. 19. The categorisation of the companion volume does not follow any established system, except for the first category that is dedicated to “Emperors and kings”. There is an emphasis on biographies of local scholars (j. 7–13) and on local anecdotes (j. 21–5). 20. Cf. Liu Yongqiang, “West Lake Fiction of the Late Ming: Origin, Development, Background and Literary Characteristics”, trans. Roland Altenburger, Asiatische Studien/Études asiatiques 63, 1 (2009): 135–96. 21. See, for example, XHYLZ, 14.171. 22. Among the seven editions of the Sightseeing Gazetteer ever printed in late imperial times, only two appear to have included these two maps: the first edition (1547) and the quasi-official edition included in the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (1784). For reproductions, see Que, Hangzhou chengchi ji Xihu lishi tushuo, p. 235, Fig. 8-3; p. 237, Fig. 8-5; p. 239, Fig. 9-1; and p. 240, Fig. 9-2. 23. In the 1547 edition, the format problem was solved by inserting a lengthy sheet folded up several times. 24. For a correction of this date, see Luo Yimin 罗以民, “Yang Mengying junfu Hangzhou Xihu de shijian ji baguan yuanyin kao” 杨孟瑛浚复杭州西湖的 时间及罢官原因考 [The Time of Yang Mengying’s Dredging of Hangzhou’s West Lake and the Reasons for his Dismissal from Office], Zhejiang shehui kexue 浙江社会科学 6 (2007): 160–4. 25. See Wang, “Paradise for Sale”, pp. 35–41. 26. Among them were Xihu zhi lei chao 西湖志類鈔 [Gazetteer of West Lake: Topically Arranged Excerpts, 1579] by Yu Sichong 俞思沖 (jinshi 1595);

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and Xihu zhi zhai cui bu yi xi nang bian lan 西湖志摘翠補遺奚囊便覽 [Gazetteer of West Lake: Collected Excerpts to Stow in the Knapsack and for Convenient Reading Underway, preface 1604] by Gao Yingke 高應科. For discussion, see Ma, “Mingsheng zhi huo lüyou shu”, pp. 117–27. 27. See Wang, “Paradise for Sale”, pp. 42–59. 28. See Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Cultures and Social Status in Early Modern China (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004), pp. 17–20. 29. The “Ten Views” are not treated here in any detail. In the late Ming, they did not yet have the significance they later gained in the early to mid-Qing. Cf. Jorrit Britschgi, “The Function of the ‘Ten Views’ in the Conception of the West Lake Area”, in Zurich Studies in the History of Art: Georges Bloch Annual, vol. 13/14, ed. Wolfgang F. Kersten (Zurich: University of Zurich, 2009). 30.

Robert E. Harrist Jr, The Landscape of Words: Stone Inscriptions from Early and Medieval China (Seattle, WA and London: Washington University Press, 2008), pp. 285–6; Jonathan Hay, “The Kangxi Emperor’s Brush Traces: Calligraphy, Writing, and the Art of Imperial Authority”, in Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture, ed. Wu Hung and Katherine R. Tsiang (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005), pp. 323–4.

31. See Wang, “Paradise for Sale”, pp. 59–65. 32. Pei Huang, Autocracy at Work: A Study of the Yung-cheng Period, 1723–1735 (Bloomington, IN and London: Indiana University Press, 1974), pp. 234–5. 33. In the following, for the Xihu zhi text I refer to the consecutively repaginated reprint in XHWXJC, vols 4–6. 34. Wang, “Paradise for Sale”, pp. 65–74. 35. Li Wei 李卫, “Xihu zhi xu” 西湖志序 (Preface to Gazetteer of West Lake), in XHWXJC, 4:6; translation adapted from Wang, “Paradise for Sale”, p. 83. 36. Xihu zhi, “Fanli”, p. 3 (item 2); my translation. 37. For an appreciation of this feature, see: Zhang Yonghong 张永红, “Yongzheng Xihu zhi de wenxue shiliao jiazhi” 雍正《西湖志》的文学史料 价值 [The Literary-Historical Value of the Gazetteer of West Lake from the Yongzheng Era], Xueshu jie 学术界 3 (2005): 248–54. 38. XHYLZ, 2.8–20. 39. Xihu zhi, j. 3, in XHWXJC, 4: 134–5. 40. In Qing-dynasty gazetteers, one influence of representational practices imported from Europe manifests itself in the greater use of linear or

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convergent perspective in maps. Yee, “Chinese Cartography among the Arts”, p. 153. 41. In the late Ming, the “Ten Views” had been represented as individual views, but in the “Complete Map” of the 1734 gazetteer they were localised on a single “totalising” map. 42. Pamela Kyle Crossley, A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 39. 43. Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, pp. 35–7. 44. Also see James A. Millward, “‘Coming onto the Map’: ‘Western Regions’ Geography and Cartographic Nomenclature in the Making of Chinese Empire in Xinjiang”, Late Imperial China 20, 2 (1999): 61–4. 45. Cheryl Ann Semans, “Mapping the Unknown: Jesuit Cartography in China, 1583–1773”, PhD diss. (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1987), p. 176; Isabelle Landry-Deron, La preuve par la Chine: La Description de J.-B. Du Halde, jésuite, 1735 [Proof by China: The Description of J.-B Du Halde, Jesuit, 1735] (Paris: Éditions de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2002), p. 143; Yee, “Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization”, in The History of Cartography: Volume Two, Book Two: Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 180–5. 46. Marcel Destombes, “Les originaux chinois des plans de ville publiés par J.-B. Du Halde, s.j., en 1735” [Chinese Originals of City Plans Published by J.-B. Du Halde, s.j., in 1735], in Actes du colloque international de Sinologie: La Mission française de Pékin au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles [Proceedings of the International Symposium on Sinology: The French Mission of Beijing in the 17th and 18th Centuries], ed. Centre d’études et de recherches interdisciplinaires de Chantilly (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1976), pp. 85–97; also see Lucile Haguet, “Les cartes de la Description de la Chine de JeanBaptiste Du Halde: quelques remarques sur les sources et les originaux” [Maps of the Description of China by Jean-Baptiste Du Halde: Some Remarks on the Sources and the Originals], http://danville.hypotheses. org/1266 [accessed 3 Mar. 2017]. This set of Chinese maps is presently kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Estampes et de la photographie (VH 560 fol.). 47. Destombes, “Les originaux chinois des plans de ville”, p. 88. 48. Destombes (“Les originaux chinois des plans de ville”, pp. 89–90) suggested as the most likely scenario that P. Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759)

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had them copied secretly by Chinese personnel in the imperial palace between 1727 and 1730 and then sent to his correspondent in Paris, P. Francois Souciet (1673–1739). 49. J.-B. Du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise, 4 vols (Paris: P.-G. Le Mercier, 1735). There was also a “pirated” edition (that is, nonauthorised re-edition) of Du Halde’s Description (La Haye: Scheurleer, 1736). On the differences between the two editions, see Landry-Deron, La preuve par la Chine, pp. 37–47. In the original edition, the city map of Hangzhou and its West Lake is the top part of a collage of five city maps combined on one page, whereas the corresponding map in the re-edition (“Hang-tchou-fu, Capitale de la Province de Tche-kiang”, vol. 1, p. 192) was enlarged to fill one entire page, but due to the reformatting cut off most of the lake area. See Theodore N. Foss, “A Jesuit Encyclopedia for China: A Guide to Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description … de la Chine (1735)”, PhD diss. (Berkeley, CA: University of Chicago, 1979), p. 199. 50. Destombes, “Les originaux chinois des plans de ville”, pp. 88–9. 51. On the Chinese map’s upper margin “north” was noted in handwriting. 52. Reproduced as Gongben yulan Xihu zhi zuan 貢本御覽西湖志纂 [Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake: Tribute Edition for the Emperor to Read], 6 vols (Hangzhou: Hangzhou chubanshe, 2003). 53. For a sceptical assessment of the extent of Western (that is, Jesuit) influence onto Chinese cartography, see Yee, “Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization”, pp. 186–91.

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Chapter 4

Copperplates Controversy Matteo Ripa’s Thirty-six Views of Jehol and the Chinese Rites Controversy MICHELE FATICA AND YUE ZHUANG

DURING the first few years of his service at the court of the Qing dynasty, from 1712–14, the Italian missionary Matteo Ripa1 (馬國賢 Ma Guoxian, 1682–1746) was requested to engrave on copperplates 36 views of the Kangxi emperor’s (康熙 r. 1666–1722) Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat (Bishu shanzhuang 避暑山莊) in Jehol (or Rehe, today Chengde).2 These engravings of the 36 views are known as the copperplate engraved version of Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi 御製避暑山莊詩 (The Emperor’s Poems on the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat) (1714)3. In the West, they are often known simply as the Thirty-six Views of Jehol.4 The copperplate engravings were supposed to reproduce the emperor’s earlier commission of 36 views in paintings and woodcuts from Chinese artists—the woodcuts were published as illustrations in Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi in 1712.5 The copperplate engravings of the Views of Jehol were often considered as a cultural bridge between the landscape conventions of China and Europe.6 Through these engravings, European copperplate engraving technology was transferred to China, and Chinese landscape imagery was brought to Europe.7 These earlier considerations, however, did not engage sufficiently with the identity of the engraver as a papal missionary, who arrived at the Qing court with a mission central to the Chinese Rites and Term Controversy (abbreviated hereafter as “Rites Controversy”),8 and 144

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subsequently himself became entangled in the conflicts and complexities surrounding the controversy. This neglect of Ripa’s entanglement in the Rites Controversy, to some extent, was a result of the prevalance of two manipulated historical documents: the Storia della Fondazione della Congregazione e del Collegio de’ Cinesi sotto il titolo della Sagra Famiglia di G.C. scritta dallo stesso fondatore Matteo Ripa (History of the Foundation of the Congregation and the Chinese College under the Title of the Holy Family of Jesus Christ, written by the founder of both, Matteo Ripa), published in Naples in 18329 and its abbreviated English translation, the Memoirs of Father Ripa during Thirteen Years’ Residence at the Court of Peking in the Service of the Emperor of China (1844), by Fortunato Prandi.10 A hagiography, the Storia was an abridged and manipulated version of Ripa’s diaries, in which Ripa’s conflict with the Jesuits surrounding the Chinese Rites Controversy was censored by priest-editors, so as to avoid the Society of Jesus’s opposition to Ripa’s cannonisation which was beginning around that time.11 Prandi’s Memoirs omitted further details of the debates and conflicts surrounding the Rites Controversy, which may not have been interesting for the commercial publisher John Murray’s readers. In fact, the Rites Controversy received minimal treatment in Prandi’s abridged translation, and Ripa is often mistakenly cited by present-day scholars as being from the Society of Jesus, who in reality were the “enemies of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide”. The conflicts and complexities surrounding the Rites Controversy during Ripa’s 13 years in China were uncovered only a century and a half later by the Italian publication of the missionary’s unabridged diary, under the title Giornale (1705–1724), by Michele Fatica in the 1990s.12 By bringing the previously expurgated contents of Ripa’s diary into conversation with his copperplate landscape engravings, we show how Ripa’s burin revealed his inner thoughts on the clash about the Chinese Rites Controversy among the papacy, the Jesuits and their associated authorities, as well as the Qing court.

Rites Controversy and Matteo Ripa’s Giornale Born to a provincial middle-class family in Eboli in 1682, Ripa was ordained as a priest in Salerno by Archbishop Bonaventura Poerio on 28 March 1705. Later that year, on 30 November, he travelled to Rome, where

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he was called by Pope Clement XI (r. 1700–21) following the proposal of Anthony Torres (1637–1713), who was the superior of the Congregation of the Pious Workers, a friend of the pope and the spiritual director of Ripa.13 Clement XI was then collecting missionaries to send to China to represent the Propaganda Fide, the missionary wing of the papacy.14 The first Apostolic Legation to China (and East Indies) was sent in 1703, headed by Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon (1668–1710). Whilst the main aim of the Propaganda Fide Legation was to impose papal control over the Christian mission, particularly to counter the Jesuit dominance and Portuguese missionary patronage (Padroado),15 some immediate goals included securing an appeasement of the serious debate amongst the missionaries in China, in which the Chinese names for God as well as the rituals used to honour ancestors and Confucius were at the core. Observing the Jesuit Matteo Ricci’s (利瑪竇 Li Madou, 1552–1610) accommodation policy (adapting to the local customs, manners and language in order to better spread the Gospel), also called the “Ricci method”, most Jesuits in China permitted the performance of Chinese rites to ancestors and certain rites to Confucius, which they considered as civil rather than idolatrous. Some Jesuits also accepted the Chinese terms Tian 天 (Heaven) and Shangdi 上帝 (High Lord) for conveying the concept of the Christian God.16 These practices produced a negative reaction among many European Christians, who considered such accomodation to result in a diluted, if not erroneous, form of Christianity. Initially a dispute among Catholic missionaries over the religiosity of Confucianism and Chinese rites and terms (abbreviated hereafter as Rites), the Rites Controversy of the late 17th century became a juridical process of extraordinary complexity which involved the Holy See, the Kangxi emperor, members of the Qing court, and Chinese literati, as well as the missionaries and several European Catholic powers.17 Maillard de Tournon reached Beijing in December 1705 and was warmly received by the Kangxi emperor. However, at a later audience with the emperor in July 1706, Kangxi was irritated by de Tournon, when the papal legate’s position of disapproving the Chinese Rites became clear. Consequently, in December that year, Kangxi issued an order that all missionaires in China should be examined and receive piao 票 (a permit). In Feburary 1707, de Tournon in Nanjing promulgated the papal decree Cum Deus Optimus (issued in Rome on 20 November 1704). The decree forbade, for example, the use of Tian and Shangdi, but approved the use

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of Tianzhu 天主 (Lord of Heaven) and forbade Christians taking part in sacrifices to Confucius or to their ancestors.18 On 19 April 1707, the Kangxi emperor, when on imperial tour in Suzhou, issued an edict emphasising that missionaries in China should observe the “Ricci method”.19 To reward de Tournon, Clement XI promoted him as a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church on 1 August 1707, and sent a group of apostolic missionaries, in which Ripa was included, to deliver the cardinal’s hat to de Tournon. In January 1710, Ripa and his colleagues arrived in Portuguese Macau,20 where de Tournon, then expelled by the Kangxi emperor, was under house arrest by the Portuguese authorities.21 Earlier in 1493, Pope Alexander VI had entrusted to the Portuguese king the administration of local churches in the eastern region of the “newly discovered” world, known as Padroado. The King of Portugal thus had the privileges over the Holy See, such as appointing the bishops of Funchal, Goa and Macau. Papal decrees could not be published within the eastern region without the King of Portugal’s permission. From the 1680s, the papacy’s active positioning of itself on the Asian missionary stage had created grave tensions with the Portuguese Crown. Clement XI’s decree of 1704 directly breached Pedro II’s (r. 1668–1706) rights in the evangelisation in China. During June and July 1707, the bishop of Macau appealed to the pope, and banned the legate, de Tournon’s privileges in Macau.22 At the same time, using the legate and the Qing court’s clash over the Rites as an excuse, the Portuguese authority in Macau placed de Tournon under house arrest until his death three years later, on 8 June 1710. In December 1708, the governor of Macau forbade Christians from submitting to de Tournon’s orders.23 Missionaries in his legation and his followers were also imprisoned or persecuted by the Macau authorities under the accusation of causing tumult and speaking against the Chinese Rites.24 These violent conflicts surrounding the Rites Controversy peaked upon Ripa and his colleagues’ arrival in Macau. During the first friendly meeting in 1705 between the papal legate Maillard de Tournon and the Kangxi emperor, the legate, in order to gain the sympathy of the emperor, had promised to send from Europe a mathematician and a painter as gifts from the pope.25 According to Ripa’s Giornale, de Tournon had informed Clement XI about the possiblity of an unimpeded entry into China and the successful admission to court where they would be in the service of the emperor on the condition that they were skilled in the sciences or fine arts as yet unknown in the Middle

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Empire.26 From his youth, Ripa had had a talent for painting. In Rome, his painting skills were known to Abbot Mezzafalce, and probably to Clement XI too.27 This may have been the reason for Ripa being sent to China. In order to gain access to the court, Ripa, reluctantly following de Tournon’s advice, assumed his painter’s identity.28  After a few months’ stay (15 July–27 November 1710) in Canton, where he was required to learn basic Chinese and was tested on his painting skills, Ripa was accepted as a court artist by the Kangxi emperor.29 On 6 February 1711, Ripa, together with Teodorico Pedrini and Guillaume Bonjour (presented as a musician and mathematician respectively), reached Beijing and was admitted into the Forbidden City. In Prandi’s abridged English text, Ripa started oil painting at the court together with other Chinese oil painters, who were the pupils of “a certain Gerardino” (that is, Giovanni Gherardini 1655–1723?).30 Ripa had only painted portraits before and was unfamiliar with landscape painting, which was the emperor’s favourite form. Nevertheless, Ripa quickly grasped the skills of landscape painting. He also volunteered to experiment on copperplate engraving, on which he had only had one rough lesson when in Rome.31 After 11 months of trial and effort, Ripa was able to perfect his technique of engraving with a burin. The emperor then ordered Ripa to engrave the landscape views of Bishu shanzhuang.32 The results were satisfactory. The emperor was pleased and gave them as gifts to princes and Mongolian allies.33 Prandi’s abridged translation presented an overall outline of Ripa’s career as a painter and engraver at the Kangxi emperor’s court. However, what was missing were the details of the conflicts and tensions among Ripa, as a Propaganda Fide missionary, the Jesuits at the Qing court, the mandarins and the Kangxi emperor, all associated with the Rites Controversy. Upon his arrival in Beijing, Ripa immediately found himself a target of the Jesuits at the Qing court. Having observed the “Ricci method” for a hundred years, the Jesuits were ill-disposed to surrender their hardwon gains. They believed that prohibition of the Chinese performing the rituals to Confucius and the ancestors would cause the end of their mission and, above all, make their own position in China untenable.34 Following his irritation at the meeting with de Tournon disapproving the Chinese Rites in July 1706, the Kangxi emperor had sent two envoys, one in 1706 and a second in 1708, to the Holy See with messages for the pope, in which the emperor explained that the Chinese rituals were civil, but not idolatrous,

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ceremonies, aiming to establish good relations between China and Rome on the basis of a reciprocal understanding of their respective cultures.35 Whilst Kangxi was waiting for the return of his imperial envoys, the pope’s letter to de Tournon reached Macau in 1710, in which the pope maintained his condemnation of accommodation.36 In order to defend their own interests, the Jesuits at Kangxi’s court (many of whom were Portuguese), linked with the Portuguese authorities in Macau, sought whatever means possible to prevent the publishing of the papal Apostolic Constitution and later to have it suspended or revoked. The Jesuits at court then declared to the emperor that there was no news from the pope.37 Ripa, the Propaganda Fide missionary, was seen by the Jesuits as an enforcer of the papal ban and was therefore the target of Jesuit hostility. The Jesuits subsequently sought various means to discredit Ripa in front of the emperor, particularly regarding his engraving skills, which the emperor appreciated. Ripa, on the other hand, took it as his obligation to uphold the papal decisions against accommodation promulgated by the Jesuits. The Giornale preserves numerous details with regards to his disagreement with the Jesuits in practising the Chinese rites and their debates about the use of the terms such as Tian, Shangdi and Tianzhu. In order to avoid the possibility of irritating the emperor, which would have led to a disastrous imperial ban on the entire Christian mission in China, Ripa had not revealed the papal decisions condemning the Rites to the emperor, an omission for which he felt guilty.38 This bitter conflict consumed the whole of Ripa’s first years at the imperial court. Far from being irrelevant to Ripa’s artistic endeavours, the contents omitted from Prandi’s abridged Memoirs had a direct impact on Ripa’s design of the landscape engravings, because these conflicts and debates not only constituted his everyday experience, but were also central to his mission. This mission had been to spread the gospel, using Clement XI’s declared means (rites and the terms), to China, which, he thought, should not be undermined by the heresies of the Jesuits and the Chinese. As a matter of fact, Ripa’s narrative about making the landscape engravings in the Giornale throughout 1712–14 was so interwoven with the political conflicts surrounding the Rites that serious appreciation of the images is not feasible without referring to the Rites Controversy. Comparing Prandi’s abridged Memoirs and Ripa’s original diary, we are now able to reveal the previously suppressed and concealed tensions in the Giornale and, furthermore, to understand the extraordinary complexity of the

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apostolic missionary’s experience whilst making the landscape engravings of Jehol against the background of the multifaceted political struggle.

Thirty-six Views of Jehol According to the Giornale, on 1 August 1712, a date that was missing from the Memoirs, the emperor ordered Ripa to engrave the views of Bishu shanzhuang on copperplate.39 Just before Ripa received the command, the court engravers, Zhu Gui 朱圭 and Mei Yufeng 梅裕鳳 (both fl. 1696– 1713)—based on the court painter, Shen Yu’s 沈嵛 (1649–after 1728) paintings of the views of Bishu Shanzhuang—completed the carving of woodcuts, which were to be printed at Wuyingdian.40 Almost two years later, on 24 April 1714, a date also missing from the abridged Memoirs, Ripa, together with two of the Chinese students (one named Zhang Kui 張 奎)41 he had trained, probably using both the woodcut images and Shen’s paintings as models, completed the copperplate engravings.42 Among the 36 engravings, the Chineses art historian Xiaoye Mo has noted that about 12 may have been engraved by Ripa’s own hand.43 Ripa’s copperplate engravings, it has been pointed out, display visual differences from the Chinese woodcuts.44 In almost all the 12 images, the sky and the river, which are voids in the woodcut illustrations, are filled in by hatchings, and thus create a linear perspective and chiaroscuro-like effect.45 In some of these 12 images, new visual elements were added. For example, in View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨 霞) (Fig. 4.1), heavy clouds and sun appeared in the previously empty sky (Fig. 4.2). In View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring” (Fengquan Qingting 風泉清聽), several wind-damaged stumps, but with a living branch, were inserted here and there (Fig. 4.3, 4.4). With the large amount of shadows inserted in both the sky and the foreground, the whole scene seems to be set amidst a tempest. The element of a damaged strump bearing a living branch recurs in other engravings from Ripa’s hands, as seen in views 2 (Fig. 4.5), 4, 17, 22, 26 and 31.46 In the other 24 images, which were presumably by Ripa’s Chinese students, no hatchings were added to the sky and only a few to the river. There were no additional elements like stumps or disorted trees. The overall visual effect of the other 24 images remains loyal to the woodcuts.

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Fig. 4.1: Matteo Ripa (Italian, 1682–1746), after Shen Yu (Chinese, 1649–after 1728). View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨霞), © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, DC.

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Fig. 4.2: Zhu Gui and Mei Yufeng (both Chinese, fl. 1696–1713), after Shen Yu. View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨霞). From the Kangxi emperor and the Qianlong emperor, Yuzhi gonghe Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliujing shi 御 製恭和避暑山莊三十六景詩 [The Emperor’s Poems in Response to Poems on the Thirty-six Views of the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], ed. Kuixu 揆敘, Eertai 鄂爾泰, et al. Illustrations by Shen Yu 沈嵛, 2 vols. (Beijing: Wuyingdian, 1741). Facsimile reprint as Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliu jing shi 御制避暑山庄三十六景诗 [The Emperor’s Poems on the Thirty-six Views of the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], vol. 2 (Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe, 2008), n.p.

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Fig. 4.3: Matteo Ripa, after Shen Yu. View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring” (Fengquan Qingting 風泉清聽), © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, DC.

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Fig. 4.4: Zhu Gui, Mei Yufeng, after Shen Yu. View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring” (Fengquan Qingting 風泉 清聽). From Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliu jing shi [The Emperor’s Poems on the Thirtysix Views of the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], vol. 2, n.p.

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Fig. 4.5: Comparison of details of trees at the bottom left corners in the copperplate version of View 2, “A Lingzhi Path on an Embankment in the Clouds” (Zhijing Yundi 芝徑雲隄) (top) and the woodcut version (bottom). Note the broken tree trunk with a living branch in the copperplate version. Top: © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, DC. Bottom: Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliu jing shi [The Emperor’s Poems on the Thirty-six Views of the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], vol. 1, n.p.

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Conventionally, some of these visual differences have been explained as Ripa’s adaptions of the Chinese image into European visual conventions47 whereas some (imagery such as the recurring damaged tree trunk with a living branch) have not been noticed. Ripa’s Giornale reveals that Ripa indeed deliberately used a “European style” in his creation,48 a detail omitted in the Memoirs.49 However, attention should be focused on the underlying reasons for the deliberate use of the European style. Visual convention is embedded in, and formed in accordance with, certain cultural frameworks. Christianity had long used images as a teaching device among the illiterate, with the intention of elevating the mind and turning it towards spiritual concerns. During the Counter-Reformation, the Council of Trent further confirmed the central role of images for preaching Christian doctrines. The Decree of the 25th session of the Council of Trent, for example, states that: By means of paintings or other representations, the people [are] instructed, and confirmed in the habit of remembering … Great profit is derived from all sacred images, … because the miracles which God has performed are set before the eyes of the faithful; that so they may give God thanks for those things; may order their own lives and manners in imitation of the saints, and may be excited to adore and love God; and to cultivate piety.50

Cognisant of the propagandic potential of images, missionaries overseas used pictures, engravings and maps throughout as an important aid in evangelisation.51 The missionary artists and their associates at the Qing court such as Giovanni Gherardini and Giuseppe Castiglione (郎世寧 Lang Shining, 1688–1766), as has been noted, engaged with European iconography whilst working for the Qing court.52 A self-made amateur painter, Ripa’s skills might have been “a little inferior to” professional painters such as Gherardini, as some Chinese officials commented,53 although Ripa himself did not consider the Italian artist so highly.54 Yet his religious devotion and enthusiasm, which underpinned his practice of sacred art, would have been similar to contemporary Italian artists. As the Giornale reveals, during his years in China working as a painter, he was very cautious about the subject of which he was asked to copy and create. He was particularly sensitive towards their possible religious meanings. On 31 July 1710, while still waiting in Canton being tested his painting skills, he was asked by the local governor to copy an ancient Chinese

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painting showing Confucius bowing to Li Laojun (The Elderly Lord of Li, a theistic variation of the Daoist philosopher Laozi). He politely declined this task, saying that he could not do it because of his Christian faith.55 On another occasion in the imperial court (dated 7 December 1711), when he succeeded in engraving landscapes on the first few copperplates, the emperor asked him to carve some Chinese characters.56 Ripa was reluctant to do so because he was anxious that almost all Chinese characters contained some superstitous expressions. To find a way out of the difficult situation, he tried hard to carve two Chinese characters badly and two Latin letters as beautifully as he could.57 Evidence like this suggests that we should not separate his artistic creations like the Views of Jehol from his religious beliefs and sentiments, which were firmly aligned with the papacy condemning the idoltarous nature of the Chinese Rites. Below we shall concentrate on the distinctive visual incongruences between Ripa’s images and the Chinese woodcuts: (a) the emblematic language: the image of the sun and clouds in Ripa’s “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills”, and the image of broken trees with a living branch in a tempest, as in Ripa’s “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring”; and (b) Ripa’s treatment of sky and light in general within these images. Examining these hybrid Jehol landscapes in the context of the Chinese Rites Controversy, we argue, first, that Ripa’s iconography embodies the conflict that he experienced amidst the Rites Controversy, in particular with the Jesuits; and second, more speculatively, that Ripa’s creative adaption and emphasis on sky and light may be considered with reference to the issue of terms within the Rites Controversy, that is, whether Chinese terms like Tian and Shangdi are transferable to the Christan God. Read against a political and theological background, Ripa’s treatment articulates the land of Jehol as the domain of the Christian God, which he superimposed onto the Chinese Tian indicated in the woodcut version.

The Landscape of the Sun, Clouds and Broken Trees: Conflicts Over the Rites Unlike the empty sky in the woodcut image of “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills”, the sky in Ripa’s version was added with the sun in the upper left corner and the heavy clouds in the upper right corner. On

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the surface, this addition seems to be an astute visualisation of the words “Red Clouds of the Dawn” (Chenxia 晨霞) in the title of the view.58 It also reinforces the realistic effect of the European engraved landscape. Yet, for the 18th-century European educated onlookers, such as Clement XI and Cardinal Francesco Barberini in Rome, to whom Ripa had sent copies of the engravings from China,59 this addition would certainly have had religious connotations. The image of the sun is the familiar symbol of Christ. Identified with truth and justice, the sun is often used to praise the popes’ virtues. Michelangelo, for example, used the Sun-Christ image in The Last Judgment to represent Clement VII (r. 1523–34). The Italian artist Tommaso Conca (1734–1822) also used the sun god Apollo to refer to Pius VI (r. 1775–99). The heavy dark clouds, on the other hand, often refer to evil, ignorance or war. In Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593), an emblem book popular in 17th-century Europe, dark clouds symbolise confusion, an expression of the evil force that prevents the soul from pursuing light.60 In the context of Christianity’s expansion, both the sun and the clouds together suggest that the Christian mission is able to dispel the darkness of superstition and idol worship across foreign lands. For example, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christo pelos Padres da Campanhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa (The East Conquered for Jesus Christ by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus of the Province of Goa) (vol. 1), a Jesuit publication in 1710, used precisely this sun and clouds motif in its frontispiece (Fig. 4.6). Christ is depicted as sitting on an orb that represents the earth, and the two cherubs on each side of Christ are seen to be holding maps showing Japan and C. de B.E. (Cabo de Boa Esperança)61 respectively. Christ’s background is the sun, dismissing the clouds to the corners of the image. The allegory of the sun bringing enlightenment to the darkness of heathenism underpins Propaganda Fide’s vision for its own work in China. Upon his departure from Rome, Ripa was determined that his mission was to dispel the “darkness of heathenism” from China.62 Prandi’s Memoirs contains a number of details about Ripa’s apprehension against the Chinese rituals and customs—from the literati’s worship of Confucius to the kowtow ceremony performed in the Chinese New Year, and to paying respect to the elderly, all were considered by him as heathenism and superstitions.63 Yet from reading the Giornale, it can be ascertained that the dominant suppressive forces of the “heathen” practices that Ripa was

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Fig. 4.6: Frontispiece in Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christo pelos Padres da Campanhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa [The East Conquered for Jesus Christ by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus of the Province of Goa] (Lisbon, 1710). Cambridge University Library S100.b.71.1.

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most apprehensive about in his first years in China came, in fact, from the Jesuits at the Qing court. Ripa was strongly critical of the Jesuits at court who ignored the papal decree and persisted in performing the Chinese rites. For example, at the funeral mass of the Jesuit Filippo Claudio Grimaldi in November 1712, Ripa noted that the Jesuits had displayed plates with fruit.64 Indeed, such offerings are a common Chinese practice at funerals. Protesting their practices, Ripa refused to receive the wafers offered to him in the vestry of the Jesuits’ church.65 He also criticised the Jesuits for ceasing their celebrations of the mass and found their justifications unconvincing.66 Using a portable altar, Ripa held mass at both his residences in the imperial Garden of Joyful Spring (Changchunyuan 暢春園) in Beijing and in Bishu shanzhuang in Jehol, where he gave the sacraments to those Chinese Christians he had himself taught and baptised.67 Understandably, his conduct was deemed offensive and attracted bitter criticisim from the Jesuits. Sometimes, Ripa also disapproved of his own fellow missionaries of Propaganda Fide (such as Pedrini and Bonjour), whom he deemed too willing to compromise with rather than to challenge the Jesuits. Ripa therefore found himself “in a sea of confusion which weighed heavily on my heart, without having anybody to whom I could open my heart and be advised by, which was for me a torment so harsh I cannot describe”.68 In addition to the conflicts associated with the rites, there were also conflicts directly linked with Ripa’s painting and engraving practices. Absent from Prandi’s abridged Memoirs, Ripa’s Giornale documented the trickery performed against him by the Jesuits at court. At Kangxi’s request, Ripa himself elected to trial a copperplate etching using aqua fortis. In order to divert the emperor’s favour from Ripa, the French Jesuits showed the emperor some French and English engravings, finely executed with a burin, hoping that the emperor would give his commission to the French instead. Because etching is rough compared with engraving with the burin, and my etchings were even more rough because I still have little experience … Several excellent French and English engravings engraved with a burin were shown to the Kangxi emperor by the Jesuits admitted to the court and the emperor liked these very much. Therefore His Majesty ordered me to persevere in learning engraving with the burin.69

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Ripa had had only a rudimentary lesson of etching using aqua fortis.70 He had no experience at all of the very different technique of engraving with a burin, and knew not even how to hold it. Pressure came from both the Jesuits and their allies as well as the mandarin officials, as the original Giornale noted: Besides the annoyances already mentioned, I had to endure other interruptions, proceeding from the envious Jesuits and some mandarins, who, being displeased at my having gained the Emperor’s favour, endeavoured in various ways to bring me into disgrace. Amongst many other malevolent actions, seeing that my work was not initially very successful, they employed a lettercutter to engrave a plate with the burin: he transferred the outlines tolerably by following closely the design of the painter; but as he did not understand the harmony of light and shade, when the prints were drawn off his plate they presented a wretched appearance. The mandarin Ciao [Zhao Chang 趙昌], who was charged with looking after the Europeans, was so disappointed and incensed, that he tore the prints to pieces, and ordered the poor man to be bastinadoed.71

Whilst Ripa’s original manuscript underlines that these “malevolent actions” were organised by the Jesuits, this note on the Jesuits’ trickery is absent from Prandi’s abridged Memoirs, where some “envious persons” were mentioned only as mandarins.72 By omitting the conflicts with the Jesuits, Prandi’s popular story presents Ripa’s experience at the court as a simple Chinese-European antithesis.73 Finally after almost a year’s trial and effort, Ripa was able to produce very fine engravings. This is recorded, in a rather patchy manner, in Prandi’s Memoirs: “I continued to improve in the art of engraving; and when His Majesty saw some copies of the last print I had produced, he said they were ‘pan-pei’ [sic], which means a treasure.”74 This brief description, again, removed the content which showed the tension between Ripa and the Jesuits. In the original Giornale, Ripa went on to note that: This increase in His Majesty’s regard that I was enjoying daily because of the afore-mentioned engravings very much displeased the Jesuits in Peking, and they all immediately wanted to limit it, and so via some mandarins, eunuchs and painters who were

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friends of theirs, the Jesuits mentioned to His Majesty that the landscape images should be engraved on boards according to their local uses by his Chinese engravers. But their underhand attempts were to no avail, because for reasons we don’t know the great God had decided that the monarch was to stay strong in his earlier decision that I myself was to engrave it on blocks using European technology … When the Jesuits saw that they could not stop me from engraving the villa [Bishu shanzhuang], they at least wanted to diminish the esteem that His Majesty had formed of my own humble work, which he called a treasure, and they did so by gathering at the palace the most beautiful engravings and prints from France, and without shame they compared them to mine with me present, admiring the former and belittling my own, in front of painters, eunuchs and mandarins who would report to His Majesty.75

The conflicts between the Propaganda Fide missionaries and the Jesuits at the Qing court are detailed in Ripa’s Giornale dated from 1712–14 just when he was engaged in engraving the Views of Jehol. The pictorial tension between the sun and the clouds in View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills”, which as designed and engraved at that time, may therefore be read as reflecting these ongoing political tensions. The fact that the sun appears to drive away the clouds, as shown in the picture, accords with the sentiments that Ripa often showed in his diary, his firm belief that he had the blessing of God and the Virgin Mary to fulfil his apostolic mission, that was, to reassert the pope’s decree against the Jesuit accommodation, to convey the true Christian faith and to praise God’s glory. Indeed his experimentation with the engravings, as Marco Musillo rightly observes, is “like a spiritual revelation”.76 The single lesson on engraving with aqua fortis that Ripa had had in Rome at the recommendation of a friend, possibly Cardinal Francesco Barberini, was now considered by Ripa as having been “by providential foresight”.77 When Ripa later discovered how to hold the burin properly, he thanked the Virgin Mary for her protection.78 As he furthered his self-taught process, he felt the engraving experimentation was a success willed by God for overcoming the obstacles contrived by the Jesuits. As he continued to note:

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But when God wish something, it is to no avail that mankind labours against it, so these actions of theirs [Jesuits’] did not achieve any result … As I had managed to adapt my own rough skills to their [the Chinese] way of representing and drawing, there was nobody in China who was able to be my equal in that or even to imitate my results from far away. This meant that the ruler’s high opinion of me and my engraving ability remained unchanged, and the machinations of the Jesuits were useless and to no avail. His Majesty received the above mentioned prints from the Jesuits, but he said nothing—either good or bad—of them.79

Such confidence cultivated in his engraving experience was reflected by his own experience of administering the Catholic sacraments. Having successfully held mass at his residences, Ripa was pleased to see that some Chinese initially baptised by the Jesuits, under his guidance, “recognised their errors” that had been condemned in the papal decrees.80 Ripa thus pointed out that “what the Jesuits published all over the world that the Chinese will not accept the condemnation of the rites because it would then be impossible for them to practice the Catholic faith otherwise was absolutely false”. 81 He also happily noted that, in 1712, the Jesuits begrudgingly started celebrating mass. “All became possible and the issues which they claimed had previously prevented them were suddenly removed.”82 These small victories reinforced Ripa’s hope that Clement XI’s condemnation would eventually triumph over the Jesuits’ influence, which he perceived as a major obstacle of the Propaganda Fide’s evangelisation in China. The visual difference seen in Ripa’s engraving of View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Mountain Spring”, may also be understood in relation to the specific political environment surrounding the Chinese Rites Controversy. In the woodcut image, a humble courtyard house is situated in front of hills. A small stream winds its way across the front of the house, and a few trees are spread around the house. As is typical of the Southern School (nanzong 南宗) court style, the image conveys a tranquil atmosphere in accordance with the conception of the Kangxi emperor, as is demonstrated by his prose on this view: Between two mountains a clear spring flows, amidst a calming breeze. The sound of the spring dripping upon the rocks is just like

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the music of the qin (zither), resonating with the songs of the cranes and the pine trees. The spring tastes sweet and fragrant, delighting one’s spirit and nurturing longevity … 83

In Ripa’s version, the name of the view was translated into Italian as “Il rumor del vento e dell-acqua non è strepitoso” (The noise of the wind and water is not clamorous) without relating to Kangxi’s own expressive poem. Meanwhile, not only have the existing trees become crooked or distorted, but also several half-dead trees, with broken trunks, have been added to the scene. Filled in with hatchings, both the sky and the grass in the foreground are occupied with a large area of shade. With these treatments, Ripa’s image conveys a tempest-like scene, rather than the ambiance of tranquility of the emperor’s original conception. A stormy landscape was common within the 16th–18th century European visual language and literary tradition, where it was widely used to indicate religious turmoil, social unrest, war or battle.84 Thus Ripa need not have seen works of art such as Poussin’s Stormy Landscape with Pyramus and Thisbe (1651) in order to have formed his own conception. He simply interpreted the Chinese character feng 風 (breeze or wind) in the name of the view as a storm, signalling the political storm triggered by the Rites Controversy. The addition of the broken, yet living, trees on the same image (Fig. 4.3) may also conform to this reading. The early Fathers of the Christian church sometimes used the tree to symbolise Christ. While the dead tree was often an element in images of the crucifixion, the tree was also an appropriate emblem of resurrection and reincarnation for, though apparently dying after each fall, it blossomed forth again with renewed verdure in the ensuing spring.85 The juxtaposition of dead trees and living trees often forms a landscape setting in early modern missionary art.86 Ripa’s use of the image of the wind-damaged tree bearing a living branch amidst a storm may well be a symbol of Christianity’s mission as being troubled, but still hopeful, amidst the Rites Controversy. As mentioned above, Kangxi, irritated by Clement XI’s banning decree, decided that in order to stay in China, missionaries had to have permits (piao) and agree to observe Matteo Ricci’s rules. Although this policy led to some missionaries being expelled in some areas such as Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, the overall situation was not much affected by this policy. Until 1721, when the Kangxi emperor banned Christianity, the number of Chinese converts was still growing in areas such as Anlu and Wuxi.87

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Using his personal relation with Kangxi, Ripa also managed to persuade the emperor to allow his fellow Propaganda Fide missionary Giuseppe Cerù (who refused to obey the Ricci Methods and offended the emperor) to stay in Guangzhou.88 What constituted Ripa’s early experience of violent conflicts associated with the Rites Controversy (according to the Giornale, but excluded from Storia and Prandi’s abridged stories) was owing to the machinations of the Jesuits and the Portuguese authorities. Ripa witnessed de Tournon being placed under house arrest by the Macau authorities.89 Upon the legate’s death, Ripa dressed the body of the deceased and sketched a portrait for him, praising de Tournon as a true Christian.90 Ripa and his colleagues were aware that, as Pedrini’s Memorial (5 September 1715) reveals, the Jesuits in Beijing had plotted to imprison some members of de Tournon’s retinue, such as Lodovico Appiani, Antoine Guigue and Giovanni Borghesi, the last being de Tournon’s personal physician who later died violently in a Canton prison.91 Ripa, in his Giornale dated November 1712, also recorded that missionaries in Macau who followed de Tournon (such as Ignatius Cordero, Jean François Martin de la Baluère) as well as members in the Apostolic Legation (such as Sabino Mariani and Andrea Candela) that condemned the Rites were imprisoned and persecuted as the Portuguese tried to prevent them from publishing the pope’s decree.92 The images of the tree trunk, broken yet bearing new branches, may be seen as Ripa’s commemoration of those devout followers or martyrs of the pope sacrified amidst the political tumult of the Rites Controversy.

Tian or God: Conflicts Over the Terms Of the 12 engravings carved by Ripa, the sky is extended and rendered with a light and dark effect through the use of hatching. The area of water and land was also filled with hatchings in a manner that appears to be enlivened with light. This treatment contrasts strongly with that on the woodcuts and on the other 24 copperplate engravings where the sky and water remain largely blank. As discussed above, Ripa’s imposition of the “European style” on the representation of the sky in the Views of Bishu shanzhuang may not simply be a question of customs. The representation of the sky, for Ripa, naturally evoked the issue of the terms in the Rites Controversy as to whether the Chinese notion of Tian could convey the Christian concept of God.

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As shown in Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), the Jesuit missionary believed that in Tian or Shangdi the ancient Confucians had worshipped a God who, omniscient and omnipotent, rewarded virtue and punished evil.93 Following Ricci, most Jesuits in China used Tian (Heaven) or Shangdi (High God) or Tianzhu (Lord of Heaven) without distinction. Siding with the Jesuits, in 1675 the Kangxi emperor visited the South Church (Nantang 南堂) in Beijing, presenting the Jesuits with the inscription “Honour Heaven” (Jing Tian 敬天). With imperial permission, the emperor’s calligraphy was recopied on wooden tablets, which were hung on the doors or at the side of the altar of Catholic churches.94 But at the end of the 17th century, Franciscan and Dominican friars argued that the inscriptions were idolatrous because Tian did not signify God but, rather, the sky, and could easily be applied to any of the other deities. In the papal decree of 1704, the use of Tian and Shangdi was forbidden while Tianzhu was approved; similarly forbidden were tablets bearing the imperial characters “Honour Heaven”.95 To deliver these decisions was central to Ripa’s heart as an apostolic missionary. At the Qing court, he attended debates on both the rites and the terms, and collected evidence which he considered supportive of the papal decree. For example, Ripa noted that in a memorial to Kangxi on 23 December 1711 by Fan Shaozuo 樊紹祚, an official from the Board of Investigation appealing for the banning of Christianity: “We have the excellent Tian which cannot lie or be lied to, which in itself contains mankind, mountains and rivers, animals, trees and all things; there is no space for another religion, but this one.”96 On this Ripa commented: “they [the Chinese] believe it [Tian] to be a god and worship it”. In May 1713, in a theological debate among the Propaganda Fide priests and the Jesuits with their allied mandarins, Ripa noted Zhao Chang’s explanation of Kangxi’s view of Tian: [The Kangxi emperor] wanted the Scianti [Shangdi] and Heaven to be adored, not at all to make a religious act or to expect something back as reward, as neither the Scianti nor the Heaven had any such power to give us benefices, but His Majesty wanted these acts to be done as a simple political demonstration of gratitude towards the above mentioned Scianti and Heaven for the water and the other good influences that we receive daily.97

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This was received by Ripa as a declaration “that the Heaven and Shangdi are material things which are incapable of doing good or bad or to receive sacred prayers”. So he turned towards the Jesuits present at that time and, with a mocking look, told them, “so Tian and Shangdi are not gods”.98 For Ripa, Fan Shaozuo’s and Zhao Chang’s above explanations of Tian were strong supporting evidence for Propagande Fide’s argument, that Tian or Shangdi being either a god or a material thing were incompatible with the Christian God and, therefore, should be banned. While Fan and Zhao’s explanations may have sounded contradictory, they were perfectly accommodated under the concept of Tian or Tianli of neo-Confucianism, which was endorsed by the Kangxi emperor as well as by scholar-officials.99 As the master of neo-Confucian philosophy, Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) acknowledges, the word Tian from ancient times has its ambiguity. It sometimes refers to the “azure sky”, that is, to the firmament above or nature in general; sometimes it refers, religiously, to a ruler above, a godlikeabove; and sometimes it refers, philosophically, just to Tianli (Heavenly principle) or Li (Principle).100 The core of Zhu’s philosophy discusses Tian as Li. Tian or Li is not a personified deity and does not act as a moral judge of human affairs. As an immutable, immaterial principle, Li is paired with the material force, qi (yin and yang) and is in continuous, eternal movement. Li configures the yin and yang dialectic of qi to produce and nurture myriad things within the universe. For Zhu Xi, this continuous movement of Li is the source of Creation.101 The Jesuits were not satisfied with the mere identification of Heaven with a kind of anonymous principle, considering this interpretation to be “twisted”.102 So from Matteo Ricci, the Jesuits had avoided the use of the neo-Confucian terms Li or Tianli as an interpretation of Tian, insisted instead that Tian was just another term for Shangdi, the Christian God103 and that Tian is above the “Heavenly principle”.104 The Kangxi emperor, nevertheless, applied his neo-Confucian concept of Tian or Tianli to the understanding of the Christian God, referred to indifferently by the Jesuits either as Tian or Tianzhu. The emperor’s note to the pope, signed by Ripa and Pedrini, and sent to Rome on 9 December 1714 demonstrates this understanding: As for the characters Jing Tian, they do not mean worship the sky, but worship the Lord of Heaven. When we turn our eyes towards the sky, we cannot see the Lord of Heaven. Among the myriad things

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that the Lord of Heaven has created, the sky is the greatest thing, and when we see the sky, we feel in our hearts the need to worship the Lord of Heaven.105

Although the idea that Tian has created myriad things including the sky accorded with the Jesuit doctrines, one should note that Kangxi’s understanding was derived from Zhu Xi’s concept of Li, which he earnestly studied since childhood.106 As Zhu Xi’s maxim states, “there being this Li, there was then this heaven (in a materialistic sense, like sky) and earth. If this Li had not been present then there could not have been a heaven or an earth or people and creatures either”.107 Based on the idea of the circulation of Li as the source of Creation and nurturing, neo-Confucians see that Li has its embodiment in the flourishing of myriad things (mankind, mountain, rivers, animals, trees and all creatures),108 this being understood as a way in which the nature or potentialities which the creatures are given are able to develop without interference. In Zhu Xi’s commentary on two lines cited in the Shijing (Book of Poetry) in Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), “‘The hawk flies up to heaven; the fishes leap in the deep.’ This expresses how this Way is seen above and below”, he notes: “the circulation of the power of creation and nurturing is seen above and below; is this not the embodiment of Li?”109 The Song neo-Confucians have many examples of this kind: Zhou Dunyi 周敦頤 (1017–73) enjoys viewing the grass in front of his window110 and Cheng Yi 程頤 (1033–1107) appreciates watching fish swimming in a pond.111 For them, the grass, the fish or the hawk all demonstrate a flourishing development or growth which fulfills their potentialities. With the Song neo-Confucians’ interpretation, the moral-aesthetic dimension of the Chinese landscape tradition is reinforced. Landscape comes to be seen as a demonstration of the perfect or unimpeded movement of Li in the universe—Tianli liuxing (the circulation of Heavenly principles)— which brings forth the good nature of things.112 Viewing landscapes, accordingly, is an aid for the literati to know the Li and fulfil their own moral nature. Well versed in neo-Confucian philosophy, the Qing emperors aptly applied neo-Confucian ideas in their construction of imperial landscape gardens with the intention of creating and confirming their Confucian identity. The building of Bishu shanzhuang in Jehol is one example of

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confirming identity in this (although not exclusively) neo-Confucian tradition.113 As Kangxi wrtoe in the Preface to Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi: Gold Mountain sends forth [dragon] veins, warm rapids divide the springs, clouds and pools are clear and deep. [There are] rocky ponds and dense green vegetation, broad rivers and fertile grasslands, yet nothing harms the fields and cottages. The wind is clear, the summer bracing; it is an ideal place for people to be nourished. Arising from heaven and earth, it is the sort of place where people can commune with the virtuous source of Creation.114

For the emperor, the landscape estate at Jehol, with its humble style and its moral qualities of coordinating human efforts to assist rather than damage the natural environment in its construction, embodied the neoConfucian ideal of all living beings being nurtured and regulated by the source of Creation, namely, the Li. Evoking Zhu Xi and the Song neoConfucians’ landscape imagery of the flourishing growth of all creatures as the embodiment of Li, Kangxi poetised in the Preface: “Refined birds play on the green water and do not hide. Deer reflect the setting sun as they form herds. Hawks fly [up above], fish leap [down below], complying with their heaven-given natures.”115 The Preface, as well as the names of the 36 views and the poems, suggest that the emperor wished to dedicate his life to moral cultivation in his retirement years in the mountain retreat. Yet more implicitly, as readers would be clear, this actual source of creation in the land of Jehol is the Kangxi emperor himself. The Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat therefore may be seen as a pangeyric of the emperor’s Confucian virtue, which is the core of Confucian moral governance.116 The same strategy runs through the commissioning of the paintings and woodcuts of the 36 views from the Chinese court artists like Shen Yu. As Yue Zhuang has discussed elsewhere, Shen’s style follows the Southern School as promulgated by Dong Qichang 董其昌 (1555–1636), who was highly appreciated by the Qing emperors.117 A student of Zhu Xi, Dong used painting as a way of studying Li—the movement of the brush was a way of imitating or grasping the unimpeded, ideal cosmic processes in the universe regulated by Li.118 The large areas of blankness in Dong’s painting, or rather the intermixture of sky, river and mist may be understood as an illustration

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of the circulation of Li, the source of creation and nurturing. The trees, houses and mountains, painted with spotaneous brushstrokes, on the other hand, illustrate the flourish of myriad things nurtured by Li. By having Dong’s style adapted in the woodcuts, which were circulated in the empire, the Kangxi emperor would have reinforced the impression among the Chinese literati of himself as a Confucian scholar. Ripa certainly had not, and did not feel the need to, access the nuanced neo-Confucian underpinnings of Chinese landscape iconography.119 It was a truism for him that Chinese religions were all heathen and to identify the Chinese terms of Tian with God was heretical. The blankness of the sky, which mingled with land and water in the Chinese woodcut images, would appear to him as the confusion not only of space but also of Chinese superstitions. Using hatchings to accentuate light, therefore, was not only a way to render the image in a European style in the technical sense, but as a means to indicate God’s grace and to remove erroneous beliefs . Light is the medium of divinity in the Christian tradition. The soul “sees” God just as the eye receives light. Renaissance artists studied optics because they were concerned with how light affects one’s way of seeing as well as one’s comprehension of God.120 In the baroque style, the dynamic use of light was a vehicle for spiritual enlightenment. Ripa was relatively well versed in optics. He complained that Chinese artists did not understand the “power of painting” and “d[id] not enjoy the great amount of shadowing”.121 It may be assumed that, with the hatchings which distinguished the sky from the land and water, and the accent on the play of light and shadow, Ripa’s engravings were not only a technical demonstration of the “European style” to the Chinese artists. But also, they were produced in line with his papal mission, that was, to instruct and excite people to adore God properly. It may not be a coincidence that his copperplate view of “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills” (Fig. 4.1) displayed strong visual differences from the original. As Mo points out, the excellence of this image is in its capturing of the sunlight at dawn.122 The rising sun above the hills is shown to be spreading its rays across the land of Jehol. The water, dark and close by, and the light in the far distance, vividly reflects the sunlight. This beautiful landscape representation echoes the idea put forward by Italian cartographer Cristoforo Sorte (1510–95) in Osservazioni nella pittura (Observations in Painting) (1570), that landscape symbolises an achieved harmony between human life and the hidden order of creation.

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Landscape painting, Sorte claims, can capture the beauty and harmony of nature particularly by addressing itself to the periods of dawn and dusk and to the seasons. A long passage is devoted in Sorte’s Osservazioni to the “aurora”, the moment of the rising sun and the wonders of its light across the landscape.123 Although there is no direct evidence that Ripa actually read Sorte’s work, it appears that, for Sorte and Ripa alike, the sun at dawn and dusk performs its display of light in the most diffuse and mysterious way. The scenery of the Jehol landscape filled with the rays on dawn would conjure up a proper Christian vision of the ideal universe, something which Ripa had witnessed: one day he climbed up to the top of the Jehol mountains and was overwhelmed by the “most lofty, unaccountable, and stupendous spectacle created by God”.124 The articulation of light in the pictorial space of the copperplate engraving for him, clearly differentiates the vision of the Christian God from the Chinese Tian, while the chiaroscuro effect created by the hatchings may be seen as a visual manifestation of Rome dispelling the “darkness of heathenism” or the confusion surrounding the rites and terms of China.

Conclusion From the unabridged edition of Ripa’s Giornale (1705–1724), which revealed the previously concealed conflicts and complexities surrounding the Rites Controversy, Ripa’s copperplate landscape engravings were hardly an innocent cultural bridge through which the European technique of copperplate engraving was transferred to China. Nor was the “European style” in these engravings merely symptomatic of a technological adjustment. Rather, as Musillo puts it, “Ripa entered into the territory where China and Europe met and struggled—an almost common ground composed not merely of the knowledge of different techniques, but of cultural views that determined the depiction, use, and reception of space and perceived realities”.125 In the late 17th- and early 18th-century world, “the territory where China and Europe met and struggled” is nevertheless broader than cultural views; it is a territory which is revealed by the background of the Rites Controversy—a complex battle field between the Chinese and European powers in the interrelated realms of religion, diplomacy and politics. Ripa’s “translation” of the

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engravings, together with his Giornale, illustrate and are constrained by this multifaceted battle of the early modern period—with the Propaganda Fide missionaries versus the Jesuits at the Qing court leading the fray—a battle in which Ripa was painfully entangled. Ripa’s images and the text provide a case of landscape representation as a medium for his own experiences amidst the conflicts of the early modern global powers—the expansionist papacy, the Society of Jesus and their associated Catholic kings of Western Europe all defending their own interests, as well as the mighty Qing empire eager to affirm its legitimacy.

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Notes The authors would like to thank Peter C. Allsop for his reading and comments on an earlier draft of this article. 1.

For a detailed introduction on Ripa, see Michele Fatica, “Introduction” to Matteo Ripa, Giornale (1705–1724), ed. Michele Fatica, 3 vols. (Napoli Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1991–), vol. 1, pp. xxv–clxx. For his activities in China, see Ming Wan 万明, “Yidali Ma Guoxian chuanjiaoshi lunlue” 意大利马国贤传教士论略 [On Italian Missionary Matteo Ripa], Chuantong wenhua yu xiandaihua 传统文化与现代化 2 (1999): 83–95; Qi Han 韩琦, “Cong zhongxi wenxian kan Ma Guoxian zai Gongting de Huodong” 从中西文献看马国贤在宫廷的活动 [Matteo Ripa’s Activities at the Court, Based on the Documents in Both China and the West], in La Missione Cattolica in Cina Tra I Secoli XVIII–XIX. Matteo Ripa E Il Collegio Dei Cinesi [The Catholic Mission in China between the 18th–19th Centuries. Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College], ed. Michele Fatica and Francesco D’Arelli (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), pp. 71–82. On Matteo Ripa’s engraving of the “Kangxi Atlas”, see Xiaocong Li 李孝聪, “Ma Guoxian yu Tongban Kangxi ‘Huangyu quanlan tu’ de yinshua jianlun zaoqi zhongwen ditu zai ouzhou de chuanbu yu yingxiang” 马国贤与铜版康熙《皇舆全览 图》的印刷兼论早期中文地图在欧洲的传布与影响 [Matteo Ripa and the Complete Map of the Empire in the Emperor Kangxi Era: Dissemination and Influence of the Chinese Maps in Europe since the 16th Century], in La Missione Cattolica in Cina Tra I Secoli XVIII–XIX. Matteo Ripa E Il Collegio Dei Cinesi [The Catholic Mission in China between the 18th–19th Centuries. Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College], ed. Michele Fatica and Francesco D’Arelli (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), pp. 123–34. For Ripa as a founder of the Chinese College, see Michele Fatica, Carlo Vi, La Compagnia Di Ostenda E Il Progetto Di Fondazione a Napoli Di Un Collegio Dei Cinesi [Charles VI, the Fellowship of Ostend and the Project for the Foundation of a Chinese College in Naples] (Napoli: Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici, 1997).

2.

For the construction of Bishu shanzhuang and the naming of the 36 views, see Richard Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden: Kangxi’s Thirty-Six Views of Bishu Shanzhuang and Their Journey to the West” 一 座清代御苑的传播: 康熙避暑山庄三十六景及其在西方的传播历程, trans. Wang Jintao 王劲韬, Fengjing yuanlin 风景园林 6 (2009): 92–103; see

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also Philippe Forêt, “The Intended Perception of the Imperial Gardens of Chengde in 1780”, Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly 19, 3–4 (1999): 343–63 and Mapping Chengde: The Qing Landscape Enterprise (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000), Chapter 4. Studies on these copperplate engravings include Xiaoye Mo 莫小也, 17–18 Shiji chuanjiaoshi yu xihua dongjian 17–18 世纪传教士 与西画东渐 [Missionaries and Western Paintings’ Journeys to the East in the 17th and 18th Centuries] (Hangzhou: Zhongguo meishu xueyuan chubanshe, 2001), pp. 200–8; Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”; Yue Zhuang, “Hatchings in the Void: Ritual and Order in Bishu Shanzhuang Shi and Views of Jehol”, in Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges between China and the West, ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Ning Ding (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 2015), pp. 142–57; “Liyi zhi zheng: Ma Guoxian Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliu jing tongbanhua yu Kangxi Yuzhi bishu shanzhuangshi mukehua de shijue chayi” 礼仪之争: 马国贤   《避暑山庄三十六景》铜版画与康熙《御制避暑山庄诗》木刻画的视觉差异 [Rites Controversy: On the Visual Incongruences between Thirty-six Views of Jehol and Kangxi’s Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi], Jianzhushi 建筑史 32 (2013): 108–17. As this article was finalised in early 2016, we regret that we were unable to engage in-depth with the most recent, comprehensive study of both the woodcut and copperplate versions, that is, Thirty-six Views: The Kangxi Emperor’s Mountain Estate in Poetry and Prints (Poems by the Kangxi Emperor with illustrations by Shen Yu and Matteo Ripa); trans. Richard E. Strassberg, intro. Richard E. Strassberg and Stephen H. Whiteman (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2016). 3.

Kangxi emperor 康熙, Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi 御製避暑山莊詩 [The Emperor’s Poems on the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], Illustrations by Matteo Ripa (Beijing: Wuyingdian, 1714). See Zhongguo dili lishi dang’an guan 中国第一历史档案馆, ed., Kangxi chao manwen zhupi zouzhe quanyi 康熙朝满文朱批奏折全译 [Complete Translation of Manchu Memorials to the Kangxi Emperor] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996), p. 864.

4.

Copies of these copperplate engravings circulated overseas, often under the name of the Thirty-six Views of Jehol, have been collected and are now stored in various places such as the British Museum, the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, among others.

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5.

175

Kangxi emperor 康熙, Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi 御製避暑山莊詩 [The Emperor’s Poems on the Thirty-six Views of the Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat], ed. Kuixu 揆敘 et al. Illustrations by Shen Yu 沈嵛, 2 vols. (Beijing: Wuyingdian, 1712).

6.

See, for example, Mo, 17–18 shiji chuanjiaoshi yu xihua dongjian, pp. 206–8; Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”, p. 98.

7.

Ripa might have presented a copy of these copperplate engravings to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington in 1724 in London, although solid evidence is still lacking: see Basil Gray, “Lord Burlington and Father Ripa’s Chinese Engravings”, The British Museum Quarterly 22, 1/2 (1960): 40–3; Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”; and David Jacques, “On the Supposed Chineseness of the English Landscape Garden”, Garden History 18, 2 (1990): 180–91. Twenty images of these engravings were reproduced and published in The Emperor of China’s Palace at Pekin, and His Principal Gardens .... (London: Thomas Bowles, 1753).

8.

For a brief account of the Chinese Rites Controversy, see Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 680–8. See also D.E. Mungello, ed., The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994).

9.

Storia Della Fondazione Della Congregazione E Del Collegio De’ Cinesi Sotto Il Titolo Della Sagra Famiglia Di G.C. Scritta Dallo Stesso Fondatore Matteo Ripa [History of the Foundation of the Congregation and the Chinese College under the Title of the Holy Family of Jesus Christ. written by the founder of both, Matteo Ripa] (Naples: Manfredi, 1832).

10. Matteo Ripa, Memoirs of Father Ripa During Thirteen Years’ Residence at the Court of Peking in the Service of the Emperor of China, abr. and trans. Fortunato Prandi (Beijing: Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chubanshe, 2008 [Orig. Publ. London: John Murray, 1844]). Prandi’s abridged English translation was further translated, sometimes abridged and published in other languages, for example, Christophe Comenale, Matteo Ripa, un Peintre– graveur–missionnaire à la Cour de Chine [Matteo Ripa, a Painter, Missionary, and Engraver in the Court of China] (Taiwan: Ouyu chubanshe, 1983). Its Chinese translation includes: Xiaoming Liu 刘晓明, Qinggong shisan nian [...]: Ma Guoxian shenfu huiyilu 清宫十三年[…]马国贤神父回忆录 [Thirteen Years at the Qing Court […] Memoirs of Father Ma Guoxian], Zijincheng 50, 1–6 (1989); Zijincheng 51, 1–2, 4–6 (1990). Tiangang Li 李天纲, Ma Guoxian huiyilu: Jingting shisan nian 马国贤回忆录: 京廷十三年 [Memoirs of

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Ma Guoxian: Thirteen Years at the Court of Peking] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2004). These resources have been commonly used by English and Chinese-speaking scholars. 11. Michele Fatica and Vittorio Carpentiero, “Per Una Storia Del Processo Di Canonizzazione Di Matteo Ripa: Problemi Di Filologia E Di Agiografia” [For a History of Matteo Ripa’s Canonization Process: Philology of Problems and Hagiography], in La Conoscenza Dell’asia E Dell’africa in Italia Nei Secoli XVIII E XIX [Knowledge of Asia and Africa in Italy in the 18th and 19th Centuries], ed. Ugo Marazzi Aldo Gallotta (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1989), pp. 73–110. 12. Matteo Ripa, Giornale (1705–24), ed. Michele Fatica, 3 vols. (Napoli Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1991–). The Giornale was written in the last threeand-a-half years of Ripa’s life—from 26 Mar. 1742 to the end of 1745, based on the notes he had written earlier when he was in China. 13. See Michele Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20) with New Documents for the History of the Kangxi Era”, in Acta Pekinensia: Western Historical Sources for the Kangxi Reign (Macau: Macau Ricci Institute, 2014), p. 390. 14. Founded in 1622 by Gregory XV, the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, hence Propaganda Fide) was the Department (Congregation) of the Holy See responsible for organising all the missionary activity of the Church. 15. The Padroado was the right granted by the Holy See to the Portuguese king of administration of the local churches, dated from the mid-15th century. 16. Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, p. 682. 17. See Eugenio Menegon, “A Clash of Court Cultures: Papal Envoys in Early 18th-Century Beijing”, in Europe-China: Intercultural Encounters, 16th–18th Centuries, ed. Luís Filipe Barreto (Lisboa: Centro Científico e cultural de Macau, 2012); Nicolas Standaert, “Liyi zhi zheng zhong de Zhongguo shengyin” 礼仪之争中的中国声音 [Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: The Mondialisation of a Local Problem, 1701–1704], in Fudan xuebao 复旦 学报 58, 1 (Mar. 2016): 95–103. 18. Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, p. 683. 19. Yuan Chen 陳垣, ed., Kangxi Yu Luoma Shijie Guanxi 康熙與羅馬使節關系 文書影印本 [Collection of Facsimile Documents Concerning the Kangxi Emperor and the Embassies of Rome] (Beiping: Gugong bowuyuan, 1932), Document 4, n.p.

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20. Other members in the legation were Guillaume Bonjour (also known as Bonjour-Favre, Favre or Fabri) (山遥瞻 Shan Yaozhan, 1669?–1714), Giuseppe Cerù (庞克修 Pang Kexiu, 1671–1750), Gennaro Amodei (任掌晨 Ren Zhangchen, 1681–1715) and Domenico Perroni (潘如 Pan Ru, 1674–1729). See Antonio Sisto Rosso, Apostolic Legations to China of the 18th Century (South Pasadena, CA: P.D. and I. Perkins, 1948), p. 183. Teodorico Pedrini (德理格 De Lige, 1670–1746) joined the legation from Manila. 21. Alfred Milon, La Congrégation De La Mission En Chine [The Congregation of the Mission in China], vol. 3 (Paris: La Procure de la Congrégation de la Mission, 1911–12), Tome I, pp. 121, 120, 149. Maillard de Tournon held a ceremony at his residence receiving the Cardinal’s hat on the 17th day of the first month of the 49th year of Kangxi’s reign (1710). See Guang Luo 羅光, Jiaoting Yu Zhongguo Shijie Shi 教廷與中國使節史 [History of the Church and the Embassies of China] (Taipei: Taiwan zhuanji wenxue chubanshe, 1983), p. 127. 22. See António Vasconcelos de Saldanha, De Kangxi para o Papa, pela via de Portugal [From Kangxi to Popa, via Portugal] (Lisboa and Macau: Instituto Português do Oriente, 2002), vol. 2: Documents 47, 50, 53, cited in Qi Han 韓琦, “Yingzhou Shengque guanshan chong: 1709 Nian Jiaohuang xin zhiliu Aomen shimo” 瀛洲聖闕關山重: 1709年教皇信滯留澳門始末 [The Pope’s Letter of 1709 which was Detained in Macau], Wenhua zazhi 59 (Summer 2006): 133–46. 23. Saldanha, De Kangxi para o Papa, pela via de Portugal, vol. 2: Document 66. 24. Letter by Jean François Martin de la Baluère, 15 Dec. 1712. Missions étrangères de Paris, Archives. vol. 430. fol. 709–16, cited in Han, “1709 Nian Jiaohuang xin zhiliu Aomen shimo”. 25. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 1, p. 204. As Ripa writes in the Giornale: “In those days [of my staying in Rome] had come to Rome a letter from Peking, written by the patriarch of Antioch [i.e. Maillard de Tournon], with which, referring to the Pope about the honours and kindness offered to him by the Emperor, asked to send to China some missionaries skilled in sciences or fine arts for the service of Kangxi.” 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., pp. 202–3. 29. Ibid., pp. 212–3.

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30. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 58. Giovanni Gherardini (1655–1723?), a lay Jesuit artist, was at the Qing court from 1699–1704. See Ripa, Giornale, vol. 1, p. 224, and Elisabetta Corsi, “Late Baroque Painting in China Prior to the Arrival of Matteo Ripa: Giovanni Gherardini and the Perspective Painting Called Xianfa”, in La Missione Cattolica in Cina tra i secoli XVIII-XIX: Matteo Ripa e il collegio dei cinesi: atti del colloquio internazionale, Napoli, 11–12 febbraio 1997 [The Catholic Mission in China between the 18th and 19th Centuries: Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College: Proceedings of the International Colloquium], ed. Michele Fatica and Francisco D’Arelli (Napoli: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1999), pp. 103–22. 31. Prandi, Memoirs, pp. 71, 78; Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 38. 32. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 79; Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 82–3. 33. Prandi, Memoirs, pp. 71, 78–9, 89–90; Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 83–4. 34. See Peter C. Allsop’s forthcoming work on Teodorico Pedrini. See also Peter C. Allsop and Joyce Lindorff, “Teodorico Pedrini: The Music and Letters of an 18th-Century Missionary in China”, Vincentian Heritage Journal 27, 2 (2007): 43–59. 35. Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20)”, pp. 396–7. 36. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 80–1. See also Pedrini’s memorial (dated 5 Sept. 1715), included in Ripa, Giornale, vol. 3. The Kangxi emperor had no knowledge of the pope’s communication until Nov. 1716, when the apostolic constitution Ex illa die (19 Mar. 1715), which reiterated the 1704 decree in more strict terms, was delivered to Beijing. Cited in Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20)”, p. 411. 37. Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20)”, pp. 410–3. 38. In Apr. 1712, when Zhao Chang 趙昌 (1657–1723, an official of Internal Affairs) asked what Ripa and his colleagues’ views were of the Rites, Ripa said he agreed with the pope. However, the Jesuits had not told the emperor that the pope had rejected the rites. An ally of the Jesuits, Zhao Chang did not want the Jesuits to be in trouble for hiding the pope’s answer from the emperor. So he changed Ripa and his colleagues’ answer to blame de Tournon, then dead, for disliking the emperor’s view. Ripa and Pedrini agreed to ask the emperor to remain in his service until the answer from the pope (which the emperor was still waiting for) came along. Ripa felt guilty for the deceit. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 66. 39. Initially the order was to engrave 40 plates, and then reduced to 36. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 82–3.

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40. The woodcuts were completed in the sixth month of the 52nd year of Kangxi (1712). See Kangxi chao manwen zhupi zouzhe quanyi, p. 889. 41. Han, “Cong zhongxi wenxian kan Ma Guoxian zai gongting de huodong”, p. 74. 42. “On 24 April 1714 I finished to engrave the 36 views of the imperial resort in Jehol in Tartary, and in this day presented some printed albums containing the engravings to His Majesty, who was much delighted and ordered to print a great number, of which he needed to give the albums to children, grandchildren and other gentlemen” Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 136. 43. Mo, 17–18 shiji chuanjiaoshi yu xihua dongjian, pp. 202–3. The 12 views attributed to Ripa are View 2, “A Lingzhi Path on an Embankment in the Clouds” (Zhijing Yundi 芝徑雲隄); View 3, “Un-summerly Clear and Cool” (Wushu Qingliang 無暑清凉); View 4, “Mountain Lodge in Southern Breeze” (Yanxun Shanguan 延薰山馆); View 11, “Red Clouds of Dawn Over the Western Hills” (Xiling Chenxia 西嶺晨霞); View 16, “Listening to the Clear Sounds of the Breeze and Spring (Fengquan Qingting 風泉清 聽); View 17, “Untrammelled Thoughts by the Hao and Pu Rivers” (Haopu Jian Xiang 濠濮間想); View 22, “Orioles Warbling in the Tall Trees” (Yingzhuan Qiaomu 鶯啭喬木); View 26, “Cloud Sails and Moon Boats” (Yunfan Yuefang 雲帆月舫); View 28, “The Gracefulness of Clouds and Water” (Yunrong Shuitai 雲容水態); View 31, “Viewing the Fish from a Waterside Rock” (Shiji Guanyu 石矶觀魚); View 33, “A Pair of Lakes like Flanking Mirrors” (Shuanghu Jiajing 雙湖夾鏡); and View 34, “A Dragonlike Rainbow Sipping from the Scroll-like River” (Changhong Yinlian長虹 飲練). Some of the translations are borrowed from Richard Strassberg’s translations in Thirty-six Views, p. xv. 44. Ibid. See also Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”, p. 98. 45. The sky in Ripa’s View 33 remains blank, being the only exception. On the linear perspective effect of Ripa’s engravings, see Zhuang, “Hatchings in the Void”. 46. In the engravings from Ripa’s hand, it may be observed that some trees differ from the woodcuts in that they are bare, crooked or distorted, with their trunks crossed, as seen in views 2, 4, 31, 34. While these elements were characteristic of the baroque style, here it may be signalling the missionary’s perception of the heathenism of foreign lands. See, for example, the engraving entitled “Father Joseph Anchieta, Provincial of the Society of Jesus in Brazil, Apart from the Many Remarkable Things He Did

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Daily, Played with Tigers and other Cruel, Wild Animals”, from Cornelius Hazart, Ecclesiastical History of the Whole World (Antwerp, 1667), cited in John W. O’Malley S.J. and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, ed., The Jesuits and the Arts 1540–1773 (Philadelphia, PA: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2005), p. 250. 47. Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”. 48. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 29. 49. Prandi, Memoirs, pp. 71–2. 50. Cited in Andrea Lepage, “Art and the Counter-Reformation”, in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation, ed. Alexandra Bamji, Geert H. Janssen and Mary Laven (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), p. 379. 51. See, for example, Arnold H. Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1942), p. 56, cited in Dorothy Berinstein, “Hunts, Processions, and Telescopes: A Painting of an Imperial Hunt by Lang Shining (Giuseppe Castiglione)”, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 35 (Spring 1999) Intercultural China, p. 179. 52. Corsi, “Late Baroque Painting in China”; Berinstein, “Hunts, Processions, and Telescopes”. 53. Copia del diario del Sig. D. Matteo Ripa Chierico Missionario della Congregazione di Propaganda mandato a Cantone a Gennaro Amodei Missionario della detta Sacra Congregazione, APF, MS, 3 Mar. 1711, f. 26r, cited in Corsi, “Late Baroque Painting in China”, p. 116. 54. Copia del diario del Sig. D. Matteo Ripa…, f. 27r, cited in ibid., p. 117. 55. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 1, p. 223. 56. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 54. 57. Ibid. 58. Xia 霞, in Kangxi Dictionary (Kangxi Zidian 康熙字典) (1716), means “the qi (material force) of red clouds”. Ripa translated this name as “monte occidental sul quake la mattina e’ un bel vedere le nubbi” [the western mountain on which in the morning there is a good view of clouds]. All the Chinese names were romanised and translated, mostly into Italian. His translation, mostly sound literal or strange and exotic, skipped the classical allusions inherent in Kangxi’s poetic names. See Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden”, p. 99. 59. Ripa produced about 30 sets of the engravings for himself and began to send some back to correspondences in Europe as early as 1714. His “Letter to Father Alesandro Bussi in Rome, Aug. 26, 1714” (New York Public

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Library) indicates that he was including two sets of the engravings, one of which was intended for the pope, together with examples of the Chinese originals, cited in Strassberg, “Transmitting a Qing Imperial Garden,” p. 98, n. 12. Michele Fatica noted that in the Vatican Apostolic Library there is an album containing 36 engravings in 36 loose sheets on Chinese paper, which are bound by means of Chinese floreata yellow silk (yellow silk and yellow color are permitted only for the Emperor). The sheets are without original numbers and captions, but were recently numbered in pencil by a western hand. There is a note on the front page in western handwriting (but apparently not in Ripa’s own handwriting): Il Sig./Don Matteo Ripa missionario a Gehol/in Tartaria/mandò questo libro a S. Em.za il S. Cardinale Francesco/Barberini/e lo ricevette di Novembre/1720 [Mr Don Matteo Ripa. missionary at Jehol in Tartary, sent this book to His Eminence Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who received it in November 1720]. 60. Martin Warnke, Political Landscape: The Art History of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), p. 49. 61. Francisco de Sousa, Oriente Conquistado a Jesu Christo pelos Padres da Campanhia de Jesus da Provincia de Goa [The East Conquered for Jesus Christ by the Fathers of the Society of Jesus of the Province of Goa] (Lisbon, 1710). Thanks to Shaoxin Dong for his translation. 62. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 5. 63. Ibid., pp. 38, 60, 88. 64. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 91–2. 65. Ibid., pp. 80–1. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., p. 38. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid., pp. 40–1, “on 3 July 1711”. 72. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 77. 73. The intra-European conflict at the Qing court is an often neglected factor in the study of cultural and artistic exchanges. Examples include one author’s own earlier work: Zhuang, “Liyi zhi zheng”. 74. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 88. 75. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 82–3. 76. Marco Musillo, The Shining Inheritance: Italian Painters at the Qing Court, 1699–1812 (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Resarch Institute, 2016), pp. 35–6.

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77. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 78. Cardinal Francesco Barberini supported Ripa financially when he lived in poverty in Rome. The gift of Views of Jehol from Ripa to the cardinal, now in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, probably expressed Ripa’s gratitude for the cardinal’s support. See n. 59. 78. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 43. 79. Ibid., p. 83. 80. Ibid., p. 81. 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid. 83. Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang sanshiliu jing shi, j.1, n.p. Authors’ translation. 84. For example, Sheila McTighe, Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape Allegories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 18–50 discusses at length the historical significance of Poussin’s storm landscapes. See also Warnke, Political Landscape, p. 142. 85. Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Cabbalistic and Rosiorucian Symbolical Philosophy, 19th ed. (Los Angeles, CA: Philos. Research Soc., 1973), p. 95. 86. See, for example, Anonymous, Saint Ignatius Writes the Spiritual Exercises at Manresa. Copper engraving, c. 1595. Rome, Archivio della Pontificia Università Gregoriana and Fracis Xavier Writes to Ignatius from India, no. 59, Vita beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesu fundatoris, Rome, 1609, cited in O’Malley and Bailey, ed., The Jesuits and the Arts 1540–1773, pp. 216, 16. 87. See Yang Huiling 杨慧玲, “Yesuhuishi zhongguo shujian ji: shiqi shiji mo zhi shiba shiji zhongqi zhongguo jidujiao shi yaojiu de zhengui ziliao” 耶稣 会士中国书简集—十七世纪末至十八世纪中期中国基督教史研究的珍贵资 料 [The Chinese Letters from the Jesuits: Precious Materials for History of Christianity in China, Late 17th–mid 18th Century], Shijie zongjiao yanjiu 4 (2003): 147–50. 88. Kangxi manwen zhupi zouzhe quanyi, pp. 823–4, cited in Han, “Cong zhongxi wenxian kan Ma Guoxian zai zhongguo de houdong”, pp. 77–8, fn. 33–4. 89. Milon, La Congrégation de la Mission en Chine, Tome I, pp. 121, 120, 149, cited in Han, “1709 nian Jiaohuang xin zhiliu Aomen shimo”. 90. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 1, pp. 207–10. 91. Pedrini’s memorial referred to this briefly, “for instance Lodovico Appiani, Antoine Guigue, and Giovanni Borghesi, who suffered such hardship in Canton that Borghesi died in prison, while the others two have been jailed for five years”. See Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20)”, p. 410. Lodovico Appiani, the interpreter for de Tournon, had been

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imprisoned in the French Jesuits’ residence in Beijing for three years, from 1707–10. He was then transported to Canton where he continued to be imprisoned for 16 years, and only set free after the intervention of Benedict XIII. See Letter by Della Chiesa, 30 Sept. 1708, Anastasius van den Wyngaert and Georges Mensaert, Sinica Franciscana, vol. 5: Relationes et epistolas Illmi. D. Fr. Bernardini Della Chiesa O.F.M. (Rome: Apud Collegium S. Antonii, 1954), pp. 543, 525, no. 36. For the fate of Borghesi, see Menegon, “A Clash of Court Cultures”, p. 159. 92. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 90, 99. See also Letter by Jean François Martin de la Baluère, 15 Dec. 1712, Missions étrangères de Paris, Archives, vol. 430, fol. 709–16, cited in Han, “1709 Nian Jiaohuang xin zhiliu Aomen shimo”. 93. Pasquale M. D’Elia S. J. ed. Fonti Ricciane vol. 1, pp. 108–9; Ricci, T’ien–chu shih–i [True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven] (Peking, 1603, rpt. Taipei, 1965). Cited in John D. Witek, “Understanding the Chinese: A Comparison of Matteo Ricci and the French Jesuit Mathematicians Sent by Louis XIV”, in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B.C. Oh (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1988), p. 68. Confucius is recorded in Analects 3.13 as having said: “Who sins against Tian does not have any higher spirit to pray”. The Jesuits read this to mean that Tian is a personal God. See Thierry Meynard, S.J., The Jesuit Reading of Confucius: The First Complete Translation of the Lunyu (1687) Published in the West (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 36. The term Shangdi (with personhood) appeared in ancient Confucian classics in the Xia (2183–1752 BC) and Shang (1751–1112 BC) dynasties. In the Zhou dynasty (1111–249 BC), the term Tian was gradually replacing the term Shangdi. The personhood of Tian was a disputed issue. After Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 (179–104 BC) in the Han Dynasty, Tian was again replaced by Tianli (Heavenly Principle). Through the development of neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming dynasties, the term Tianli was again replaced by Li (Principle) and xing (human nature). The modern scholar Wing-tsit Chan (1901–94) has studied this issue as degeneration from theism to humanism in Chinese thinking. Cited in Paulos Huang, Confronting Confucian Understandings of the Christian Doctrine of Salvation: A Systematic Theological Analysis of the Basic Problems in the Confucian-Christian Dialogue (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 82, Appendix IV. 94. Claudia von Collani, “Jing Tian: The Kangxi Emperor’s Gift to Ferdinand Verbiest in the Rites Controversy”, in Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688): Jesuit

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Missionary, Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat, ed. John W. Witek (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 1994), pp. 453–70. 95. Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, p. 683. 96. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 241. 97. Ibid., pp. 118–9. 98. Ibid., p. 81. 99. The court of the Kangxi emperor canonized as orthodoxy the neoConfucianism promulgated by Zhu Xi and his masters, the Cheng brothers (Cheng Yi 程頤, 1033–1107 and Cheng Hao 程顥, 1032–1085). The court was often dominated by those Confucianists who followed the teachings of Zhu Xi and the Cheng brothers. See Thomas A. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian Tradition in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 60–3. 100. For a discussion of the concepts of Tian and Tianli in Zhu’s thoughts, see Julia Ching, The Religious Thought of Chu Hsi (Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 2000), pp. 54–60. 101. This idea is expressed in various phrases such as Tianli liuxing (circulation of the Heavenly principle), huayu liuxing (circulation of the power of creation and nurturing) and qihua liuxing (circulation of the material force and the power of creation). See Zhu Xi, Zhongyong Zhangju 中庸章句, in Sishu jizhu 四書集註 [Collected Commentaries on the Four Books] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1986), chapters 30, 12, 32. See also Zhu Xi, Zhuzi Yulei, juan 63, pp. 1534–7. 102. Meynard, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius, p. 36. 103. Tianzhu shiyi, pp. j.1, 21; see also the Jesuits’s memorial presented to Kangxi on 30 Nov. 1700, in Rosso, Apostolic Legations, pp. 138–43. 104. Meynard, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius, p. 36. 105. Apart from the point regarding Jing Tian the emperor, in the same message, explained Chinese ancestor worship, calling to mind the bond that everywhere links the living to the ancestors, the basis of Chinese culture called xiao 孝 (filiality). The text of this letter is reproduced in Chen, Kangxi Yu Luoma Shijie Guanxi wenshu yingyinben, Document 6, n.p. See also Fatica, “Matteo Ripa’s Journal, Part III (1716–20)”. 106. See Wilson, Genealogy of the Way, p. 62. See also Kai-wing Chow, The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 165–6. 107. Zhu Xi, Zhuzi Yulei, pp. j.1, a.2. 108. Ibid., juan 63, p. 1534.

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109. Ibid., p. 1537. 110. “Lianxi xue’an”, in Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲 et al. Songyuan xue’an 宋元學案 [Learning Guide of the Song and Yuan Dynasties] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), p. 520. 111. “Yishu”, in Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Er Cheng quanshu 二程全書 [Completed Works of the Cheng Brothers] (Taipei: Zhonghua, rpt.), 15.17b. 112. Vale rie Malenfer Ortiz, Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape: The Power of Illusion in Chinese Painting (Leiden: Brill, 1999), pp. 150–6. 113. For the role of neo-Confucianism in the conceptions of Qing imperial gardens, see Yue Zhuang 庄岳 and Qiheng Wang 王其亨, Zhongguo gudian yuanlin chuangzuo de jieshixue chuantong 中国古典园林创作的解 释学传统 [The Hermeneutical Tradition of Chinese Gardens] (Tianjin: Tianjin University Press, 2015), Chapter 4. See also Forêt, “The Intended Perception of the Imperial Gardens of Chengde in 1780”. 114. Kangxi emperor, “Preface to Bishu shanzhuang shi”, in Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi, n.p. The English translation is adapted from James A. Millward et al., eds., New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 167. 115. Ibid., p. 168. 116. The core of Confucian political thought, as articulated in Daxue (“The Great Learning”, a chapter in the Book of Rites and was selected by Zhu Xi to form one of the “Four Books”), is that the ruler should, through selfcultivation, become a moral exemplar whom his family and the whole country will follow. Political activities are therefore an extension of moral activities. For the English translation of Daxue, see Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 85–94, especially pp. 86–7. See also Chun-chieh Huang 黃俊傑, “Zhongguo gudai sixiangshi zhong de ‘shenti zhengzhi lun’: Tezhi yu hanyi” 中國古代思想史中的 ‘身體政治論’: 特質與涵義 [The ‘Body Politic’ in the History of Ancient Chinese Thought: Characteristics and Meanings], in Dongya ruxueshi de xin shiye 東亞儒學史的新視野 [New Perspectives in the History of Confucianism in East Asia] (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2006), pp. 352–4. 117. Zhuang, “Hatchings in the Void”; Ortiz, Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape, pp. 170–8. 118. Ortiz, Dreaming the Southern Song Landscape, pp. 170–6. 119. His opinion on the French Jesuit Joachim Bouvet’s work on the Yijing (Book of Changes) is a telling example. As Ripa noted in the Giornale, Bouvet

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aimed to find parallels between the Book of Changes and the Bible, hoping in this way to convert the emperor. Ripa, this time agreeing with other Jesuits who believed that if only two terms (Tian and Shangdi) were already causing so many quarrels, what would happen if one had to try to produce an explanation of a whole book. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, pp. 61–2. 120. Samuel Y. Edgerton, The Mirror, the Window, and the Telescope: How Renaissance Linear Perspective Changed Our Vision of the Universe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), p. 21; see also Martin Kemp, Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). 121. Ripa, Giornale, vol. 2, p. 83. 122. Mo, 17–18 Shiji chuanjiaoshi yu xihua dongjian, pp. 202–3. 123. Denis E. Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 265. 124. Prandi, Memoirs, p. 77. 125. Musillo, The Shining Inheritance, p. 33.

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Chapter 5

The “True Wonder” in Emperor Qianlong’s Garden Labyrinths HUI ZOU

THE modern Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’s fictional work “The Garden of Forking Paths” puts forward the mental image of Chinese gardens as a labyrinth. In his story, Borges weaves accurate historical threads into fictional cultural encounters that he thought to be revelatory of truth. His narrative implies the similarity of meandering paths between Chinese and English gardens and implements this labyrinthine structure as multiple plots of his intricate scenario.1 For Borges, similarities between Chinese and English gardens are much more significant than their differences, especially in terms of the concept of the labyrinth as the foundation of human life. In his story, he allowed the concept of the Chinese garden labyrinth to meld with that of the Western garden, thus setting up bewildering paths moving into obscured terrain where unexpected cultural encounters took place. Each encounter guided the audience’s mind through complex scenarios towards a kind of “sudden enlightenment”. Historically, the Qing emperor Qianlong 乾隆 (r. 1736–95) was known for his fascination with the concept of labyrinth across the East and West, as represented in a series of constructions in his palaces and gardens: the rockery labyrinth (Lion Grove [Shizilin 獅子林] in Changchunyuan at Yuanmingyuan), the baroque labyrinth (Formation of Yellow Flowers [Huanghuazhen 黃花陣] in the Western garden at Yuanmingyuan) and the labyrinthine residence in the Qianlong Garden of the Forbidden City. To understand the interplay between the Chinese and European labyrinths, which embodied “true wonder” (zhenqu 真趣) in the emperor’s mind, this 187

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article first traces the connections between the concept of labyrinth in Chinese and European philosophies. Juxtaposing Tao Yuanming’s 陶渊眀 (365–427) Daoist paradise “Peach Blossom Spring” (Taohuayuan 桃花源) and Plato’s simile of the human body being like a fish trap (a labyrinth system of conduits), I suggest that they share the same phenomenon of light in labyrinthine darkness, which embodied the Daoist Dao and Plato’s Chora respectively. The development of the philosophical labyrinth will be explored in both Chinese and European traditions, in particular in the example of Lion Grove (Shizilin 狮子林) in Suzhou, the model of Qianlong’s Lion Grove in Yuanmingyuan. Referring to Qianlong’s poems and prose as well as the spatial qualities of his various forms of labyrinth construction, I demonstrate how the Qianlong emperor’s desire to discover the origin of Tao’s paradise through garden representation and replication was intertwined with his interest in the perspectival views introduced by European Jesuits in his imperial gardens.

A Philosophical Link between Chinese and Greek Labyrinths The idea of the Chinese garden as a labyrinth can be traced back to an ancient fable entitled “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” (Taohuayuan ji 桃花源記) of the East Jin dynasty (c. fourth century) written by Tao Yuanming, a scholar and Daoist recluse.2 Tao’s story introduces a fisherman whose boat travels along a meandering stream flanked by dense woods of peach blossoms and finally reaches a paradise of brightness at the origin of the stream. On the journey back home, he marks each turn of the stream in order to return to the paradise of the future. However, when he does return, all the marks that he left disappeared and the paradise seems like a dream. As the protagonist in Tao’s fable, the fisherman not only symbolises an eremitism embraced by Chinese scholars, but recalls a traditional fishing practice where fishermen set up fishing nets as a labyrinth (the so-called mihun zhen 迷魂陣, literally “a formation that puzzles the soul”) in order to maximise their catch. The Chinese tradition of fishing has parallels with the Greek tradition of fishing, which is referred to in Plato’s Timaeus, a book on Greek cosmology. In Section 42, Plato compares the “irrigation system” of the human body with the fish trap in which fish can easily swim but

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become confused and are unable to find their way out. Like the fish trap, the internal system of the human body is composed of pockets (such as the lung and belly) and funnels (which he calls “windpipes”). The pockets contain “fire” and the funnels flow like “air”. Like the double funnel system of the fish trap, each funnel of the human body, according to Plato, has a double exit, which is further subdivided so as to formulate a “network of air and fire”.3 Plato further compares the body’s system of conduits to “the water channels in a garden”, commenting that “currents in the veins flow through the body as if through an aqueduct”. It is “like the water from a spring into conduits and making the currents in the veins flow through the body as if through an aqueduct”.4 Besides the simile of fishing shared by Tao Yuanming and Plato’s labyrinths, Tao’s bright paradise and Plato’s fire within the body share the same phenomenon of light in darkness. In Tao’s text, after the fisherman’s boat meanders through the peach woods and reaches the origin of the stream, he faces a narrow, dark cave wherein a dim light seems to emerge from the other end.5 As a Daoist recluse, Tao’s labyrinth light is related to the Daoist philosopher Laozi’s concept of Dao, which is the “void”, “the mother of all things”, “the dim light latent in remote darkness” (weiming 微眀).6 Comparably, in sections 16–20 of Timaeus, Plato advances the concept of Chora and presents it as the mystic third aspect of the universe, beyond the typical dualism of the intellectual and the visible aspects. Plato metaphorises this obscure, unnamable and formless third existence to the “receptacle”, “nurse” and “mother” of becoming prior to naming it Chora (space).7 More interestingly, echoing the fisherman’s dream-like paradise in Tao Yuanming’s labyrinth, Plato describes the presence of Chora as “a kind of dream”, “a moving shadow of something else, [which] needs to come into existence in something else if it is to claim some degree of reality”.8 Indicating both Dao and Chora, this “something else” in reality can be embodied by the light in a labyrinth. Observed through a phenomenological lens, Chora appears as fire but “never as itself, never without holding itself as such in concealment”.9 This interpretation reinforces the connection between Chora, labyrinth and light in darkness. Indeed, the similar connection exists among Dao, labyrinth and light in Tao Yuanming’s fiction. The ancient philosophical conundrum of the “something else”, embodied by the labyrinth, is retrieved in this article in which I attempt a hermeneutic interpretation of the “true wonder” in Qianlong’s garden labyrinths, in which the Chinese

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ecstasy of eremitism and the delight of Western baroque perspective illusion are knitted together into his so-called “spectacular view” of the universe in gardens. Tao’s labyrinth became a paradigm for Chinese gardens and was frequently alluded to in Chinese literature, especially in garden records (yuanji 園記). Although Plato metaphorised the labyrinthine network of conduits in the human body into the water channels of a garden, little is known about Greek gardens with the exception of the few historical records of ancient sacred groves. Within such gardens, and in each sacred grove, there was typically a grove space for shade and a statue dedicated to a divinity. Pausanias’s travelogue (second century) through Hellenic Greece recorded a sanctuary of Aphrodite, which included a sacred grove and a statue of Aphrodite the goddess whose face, hands and feet were made of stone and the rest carved out of wood.10 Such a life-like statue was linked by Pausanias to the daidala, a wooden deity for a sanctuary or a festival of reconciliation of a community.11 Recent hermeneutic research has revealed the historical link between the daidala, which were “constructions made of well-adjusted pieces, capable of inducing wonder and providing existential safety for a community”, the Roman artefacts of thaumata (the same as the Greek wonder) and architectural products like the theatre whose “seductive quality binds the spectator through a distance”.12 In early Greek literature, the origin of daidala was related to the masterful craft of Daedalus, the first architect in Western tradition, who was said to have created the first labyrinth in Western history. Although it needs further exploration regarding how the geometrical pattern of Daedalus’s labyrinth, shown in ancient Roman mosaics, was applied to gardens prior to the labyrinths or mazes of the Renaissance and baroque gardens, for Renaissance humanists, there does exist a philosophical link among Chora, labyrinth, daidala, theatre and garden. This philosophical link is best embodied by the seductive power of architecture as representation (the poetic mimesis in Aristotle’s sense), which is “always new and striking and yet uncannily familiar”13 and is thus comparable with the Chinese tradition of labyrinth. In the poem that accompanies the “Record of The Peach Blossom Spring”, Tao Yuanming chanted: The intriguing path disappears at five hundred [steps] away, All of the sudden, the divine world opens to light.

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The divine and human worlds belong to different origins, The divine appears through meandering but conceals back in remote darkness. I ask those intellectual travellers, How could we go beyond our dusty and bustling world?14

The philosophical lines of Greek and Chinese labyrinths did not architecturally converge until a chance emerged in the imperial garden of Yuanmingyuan 圓明園 (literally, Garden of Round Brightness, or metaphorically, Garden of Perfect Brightness) where the European Jesuits built a “Western garden” (Xiyanglou 西洋樓) for the Qianlong emperor during the Qing dynasty. Qianlong was involved in creating multiple labyrinthine gardens in the Yuanmingyuan and the Forbidden City that he could enjoy in his future retirement. The original Yuanmingyuan was founded by the Yongzheng 雍正 emperor (r. 1723–35) in 1709. During the second half of the 18th century, Qianlong created Changchunyuan 長春園 (the Garden of Eternal Spring) and the Western garden as part of his expansion of the Yuanmingyuan. The Western garden began with a baroque labyrinth (Fig. 5.1) and ended at an open-air theatre whose stage consisted of illusory perspectival painting panels. Bordering the Western garden, Lion Grove (Shizilin 獅子林) was a garden within a garden located on the northern border of the Garden of Eternal Spring. It was a replica of the Lion Grove in Suzhou (Fig. 5.2) which was well known for its rockery labyrinth. The Chinese rockery labyrinth and the Western geometrical labyrinth were thus presented shoulder to shoulder within the Yuanmingyuan. Qianlong’s administrative activities were divided into two locations in the capital: the Forbidden City and the Yuanmingyuan. The former was his palace residence (gongju 宫居) and the latter his garden residence (yuanju 園居). When Qianlong constructed the garden residence in the north-western suburb, he was building his palace residence, the so-called Qianlong Garden, in the north-eastern corner of the Forbidden City (Fig. 5.3). The garden contained multiple courtyards with rockery labyrinths ending in a secret interior theatre whose wall and ceiling frescos were composed so as to create an illusory perspective (trompe l’oeil). Qianlong’s garden constructions for his retirement residence demonstrate his intertwined view of the labyrinth between China and Europe.

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Fig. 5.1: The restored baroque labyrinth in the Yuanmingyuan, Beijing. Photograph by author, 2007.

Fig. 5.2: The rockery labyrinth in the Lion Grove, Suzhou. Photograph by author, 2008.

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Fig. 5.3: The Qianlong Garden in the Forbidden City, Beijing. Photograph by author, 2001.

Rockery Labyrinths Like his grandfather Kangxi 康熙 (r. 1662–1722), Qianlong visited the Jiangnan area six times. Each time he visited Suzhou, he would tour the Lion Grove. The garden was originally established in dedication to Monk Weize 維則 (active around 1340–70s) as part of a Buddhist temple during the Yuan dynasty (early 14th century). In 1373, Weize invited the painter Ni Zan 倪瓒 (1301–74) to create a scroll painting of the Lion Grove. During the early Qing dynasty, the eccentric rocks in the garden were developed into a labyrinthine hill, which was extremely popular among scholars. Qianlong owned Ni’s scroll painting with which he toured the Lion Grove in Suzhou and built two Lion Grove replicas: one was in the Yuanmingyuan and the other in Bishu shanzhuang (Mountain Retreat for Escaping the Summer Heat) in Chengde. Qianlong wrote poetry and committed paintings to both Lion Groves that thoughtfully compared them. According to early garden records of the Lion Grove in Suzhou, there were 10,000 bamboo plants and many eccentric rocks, which appeared to look like lions. The name “grove” thus literally indicates the dense bamboo grove and, metaphorically, the large number of lion-like rocks.15 Poetry of

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the Yuan dynasty regarding the Lion Grove emphasised the juxtaposition between the monk Weize’s tranquil heart and the rugged appearance of the rocks. One poem states: On the hill, ghosts and immortals meet, Growling, wind and thunder rush by. The monk just finished the meal by himself, He sat on crossed feet and made the pad warm.16

The comparison between clouds and rocks is confirmed by another Yuan poem, which described the bluish-green rocks as “roots of clouds” (yungen 云根).17 The monk, Weize, explained that the grove was named “lion” as a way to counteract the bustling and noisy world so as to procure tranquillity of meditation. Seeking the soundless and formless from the lion was to be vigilant against internal restlessness.18 In his poem accompanying the painting, Ni Zan declares that it was in the middle of the Lion Grove that the ancient Buddhist heart, which had neither beginning nor end, could be seen to dwell.19 In 1757, when Qianlong’s Western garden in the Yuanmingyuan was almost complete, he toured Jiangnan for the second time. This was also the first time he had visited the Lion Grove in Suzhou. His poem on this Lion Grove states: I have known the Lion Grove for a long time, It is said Master Ni created it. I originally suspected it was hidden in a remote valley, Later realized it was located in a bustling city …. The artificial hill looks like a real mountain, Immortals and mortals are only a few feet apart.20

The “artificial hill” (jiashan 假山) indicates the hill of eccentric rocks, and by strolling about the hill, a mortal could approach immortality. During his second visit to the Lion Grove in 1762, Qianlong described that

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a few bends and a few curves among the rocks distanced the heart from the dusty world.21 On his third visit to the Lion Grove in 1765, he penned the title board “True Wonder” (Zhenqu 真趣) for the garden. This time, he brought with him Ni’s painting for the purpose of touring the garden. He stated in a poem that the beauty of the original view of the garden could be seen only in these eccentric rocks, and that the ancient impression had to be sought from this stone grove.22 After Qianlong’s third visit to the Lion Grove in Suzhou, he began to construct his own Lion Grove within the Yuanmingyuan. On his fourth visit to the Lion Grove in Suzhou in 1780, Qianlong began to compare his Lion Grove replica with the original Lion Grove through his poetry, and came to the conclusion that his groves were just not as good as that ancient grove.23 In his final visit to Suzhou’s Lion Grove in 1784, Qianlong still lamented that his replicas were unable to capture the real impression of the mountains and ancient trees as depicted in Ni’s scroll.24 When Qianlong introduced the “true wonder” of the Lion Grove into the Yuanmingyuan to resonate with the “spectacular view” (qiguan 奇觀) of the Western garden,25 many Qing scholars’ poems on the Lion Grove in Suzhou emphasised a sense of playful perplexity in strolling within the rockery labyrinth and they began to call this labyrinth “a wonder in the world”.26 One poem states: At the first glance, [the hill] appears absolutely spacious and soaring, After a while, I realize it can be climbable. Small and big valleys are differentiated, The curved path changes every a few feet. Deep caves revolve into the ground, The flying bridge sticks out by the eaves. Looking ahead, I see birds landing into the nest, Turning back, I walk on the cliff road of monkeys. Peaks and hills seem to be near my sleeves, Pine and cinnamon tree fragrances blow away frost. The rocks are still covered with the moss of Yuan, They are now taken for entertainment.27

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Finding the way out of the labyrinth thus became a form of entertainment and the mind was intrigued by the deceitful path and layout of the rocks, which visitors called “a tricky formation” (jiaokuai ju 狡狯局)28 or “the perplexing and remote path” (miyou jing 秘幽徑).29 But still for Qing scholars, the playfulness of the labyrinth was the very embodiment of the humorous Daoist cosmological idea that “the Old Man in the Kettle (Hugong 壺公) occasionally plays a game (youxi 遊戲); in his sleeve, there is the entire world”.30 In a Daoist legend, the so-called “Old Man in the Kettle” was said to sleep in his tiny medicine kettle, which in fact contained a celestial paradise.31 Thus, finding the way out of the labyrinth was akin to approaching the immortal world. The Daoist cosmological humour of shuttling freely between the micro (human) and macro (cosmic) worlds is also demonstrated in Qianlong’s poem, already cited above. Here he writes that “The artificial hill looks like a real mountain, Immortals and mortals are only a few feet apart.”32 In another poem on the Lion Grove in Suzhou, Qianlong humorously calls both Ni and Huang the painting masters of history, because, as he notes in the poem, “Since Ni Zan’s Lion Grove Garden is now owned by Mr. Huang, I, out of my humour, called Mr. Huang a master painter too.”33 His humour on the identity of the master painter in fact implied his longing for the truth of the Lion Grove. Such Daoist humour was well developed in the cultivation of individuality and wisdom among scholars during the age of Tao Yuanming.34 Through the poetry of the Lion Grove in Suzhou, we can discern the gradual shift of the symbolic meaning embodied in the rockery labyrinth, from the Buddhist idea of nirvana in the Yuan dynasty to the Daoist idea of paradise during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Indeed, the latter especially became increasingly tangled with the secular concept of play or game. Caught in the physical and semantic shift of the labyrinth, Qianlong attempted to preserve the Buddhist origin by cherishing Ni Zan’s painting of the original Lion Gove, while at the same time being drawn to the cosmological origin of the Daoist paradise, which matched his fantasy for spectacular views and true wonders. From the Yuan dynasty through the Qing dynasty, the labyrinth of the Lion Grove evolved from its initial structure as eccentric rocks on a soil hill to the existing rockery and labyrinthine hill. In addition to the physical changes of the rockery labyrinth, another key building which can help our understanding of the semantic shift of the labyrinth is the so-called “Room for Reclining on Clouds” (Woyunshi 臥雲室), which is located on the top of the rockery labyrinth in the Lion Grove in Suzhou.

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In his own poem on this place, Monk Weize chanted: The cold room for reclining on clouds wakes up my monster of sleep, Lingering bell toll hastens the break of night. Having one dream here is like spending another mortal life, The eastern sunrise foretells the birth of afterlife.35

Since the rocks symbolise clouds, the Room for Reclining on Clouds becomes a place for receiving the light of nirvana. Among the poetry of the Lion Grove during the Qing dynasty, the Room for Reclining on Clouds was rarely mentioned. Indeed, the building might already have disappeared, and so the rockery labyrinth became the centre of visitors’ fantasies. Many Qing poems related the rockery labyrinth to Tao Yuanming’s meandering paradise. One poem described the perplexing movement of the rockery labyrinth as the “Wuyi meandering” (Wuyi qu 武夷曲) since the term “Wuyi” (or “Wuling” 武陵) was the name for the exact location of Tao’s paradise.36 Within such a context, Qianlong’s attention to the Lion Grove was focused on the rockery labyrinth within which, as his poem stated, “A few turns here and a few twists there, my heart was distanced from the mortal world” (jiwan jiqu yuan chenxin 几彎几曲遠塵心).37 Residing in the rockery labyrinth, his heart was linked to both Daoist eremitism and the Buddhist state of enlightenment through meditation, Zen. As mentioned above, the Lion Grove in the Yuanmingyuan imitated the Lion Grove in Suzhou. The replica was near the seven-arch floodgate and acted as the watercourse exit of the Garden of Eternal Spring. Furthermore, the entrance of this Lion Grove was a small water gate through which Qianlong usually took a boat in order to enter and exit the garden. In a poem, he stated that paddling through the tasteful water gate was as pleasurable as entering “Wuling”,38 alluding to Tao Yuanming’s paradise. According to Tao’s record, the winding stream flanked by peach blossoms led to the entrance of paradise and was seductive yet baffling,39 like a confusing journey prior to abrupt enlightenment. This historical allusion highlights the overall labyrinthine image of the Lion Grove and supports a hypothesis that the Lion Grove might be intentionally located in the northeastern corner of the Garden of Eternal Spring in order to correspond to another labyrinth, the Western garden. As for the experience of the rockery labyrinth, Qianlong’s poem states:

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Each move turns into a new wonderful view full of rich changes, My spirit and emotion completely unfolds under my feet. What could the skillful rockery craftsmen not catch? It is the absolute elegance of Pedant Ni’s original painting.40

Qianlong believed the real idea of the Lion Grove lay in Ni’s painting rather than in physical replication, and the experience of this idea emerged through the integration of view and emotion in the rockery labyrinth.

Perspectival Labyrinths There were 40 named scenes, the so-called “Forty Scenes” (Sishijing 四 十景), in Qianlong’s original Yuanmingyuan. According to Qianlong’s garden record, while his body was meandering through these poetical scenes, his mind was enlightened for full brightness, what is termed Yuanming 圆明. The zigzag route of the 40 scenes was intended to allow metaphysical brightness to diffuse within the garden enclosure. The 40th scene was entitled the Deep and Remote Dwelling (Dongtian shenchu 洞 天深處), which was the former place of the princes’ studying studio and later became the court painting studio, called Hall of Fulfilled Wishes (Ruyiguan 如意館), where Qianlong frequently communicated with the Jesuit painters on the Western art techniques of linear perspective and chiaroscuro.41 In his poem, Qianlong described this scene as a remote and mystic place: “Follow the stream to the east, The path meanders like an ant dune. The humble buildings with small rooms, The mysterious depth is suitable here.”42 The “ant dune” is a typical metaphor of a labyrinthine environment in Chinese poetry. Once Qianlong strolled beyond the north-eastern corner of the Yuanmingyuan, the winding path suddenly changed into the straight path of the Western garden. The chief designer of the Western garden was Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining 郎世寧, 1688–1766), a master Jesuit painter from Italy. Qianlong’s decision to ask the best Western painter in the court to design the garden forecast his later decision to create the Lion Grove garden according to Ni Zan’s painting scroll. Castiglione played a significant role in introducing the Western painting technique of linear perspective, or the so-called line-method (xianfa 線法), to China, and applied this technique in creating the perspectival views of the

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garden. These perspectival garden views were well documented in the 20 copperplates drawn by Castiglione’s Manchu collaborator, Yilantai 伊蘭泰, during the 1780s.43 The garden was designed to reflect this sequence of perspectival paintings. The entire Western garden was laid out on a long and narrow rectangular property bordering the northern boundary of the Garden of Eternal Spring. At the western entrance of the garden, a baroque labyrinth was set up (Fig. 5.1). The labyrinth was called the Formation of Yellow Flowers (Huanghuazhen 黃花陣). The term “formation” hints at the formation of troops in a war and was thus named because of the square form layout of the labyrinth. The emperor apparently accepted the geometrical labyrinth and specifically called it a “flower garden”. This can be proven by the title of the fifth copperplate “The Frontal Face of the Flower Garden”.44 The most obvious reason for the emperor’s labelling of this exotic labyrinth as a “garden” was on account of its zigzag movement. In Chinese gardens, a winding path was believed to lead into the remote depths of the mind. According to the Tang landscape prose writer Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819), meandering in nature brings about feelings of delight in remote depth (aoru 奥如).45 For the French Jesuit painter Jean-Denis Attiret (Wang Zhicheng 王致誠, 1702–68), the “hundred turns and windings” in the Yuanmingyuan formed “a beautiful disorder”.46 It can be surmised that the geometrical labyrinth recalled to Chinese eyes the experience of the body as it moved through Chinese gardens. The labyrinth was also described as Lanterns of Yellow Flowers. It is said that on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the moon was in its fullest phase and its light the most perfect of the year, the emperor would watch from the central pavilion as the court ladies carried lanterns of yellow flowers and meandered through the labyrinth.47 The highest point of the Western garden was the Hill of Line-Method (Xianfashan 線法山), located at the middle of the East-West garden axis. The hill was also described as the Terrace for Circulating a Horse because Qianlong liked to walk his horse here while appreciating the winter scenes. The circulating path on the hill was designed as a labyrinth, a feat which was achieved with great difficulty since the hill was full of pine trees. This geometrical labyrinth hill recalled both a similar setting in Renaissance gardens like the artificial Mount Parnassus in the Villa Medici in Rome48 and echoed the artificial hill, that is, the rockery labyrinth, in the Lion Grove garden nearby.

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One type of mystical view in the Western garden was the mechanical fountains or so-called water-method (shuifa 水法); these fountains were created by the Jesuits who worked as clockmakers in the court. The hidden mechanisms of both clocks and fountains evoked the emperors’ curiosity and were described in Emperor Yongzheng’s poem as being controlled by a heavenly force.49 In a poem on the fountains at the Harmony, Wonder and Delight (Xieqiqu 諧奇趣) pavilion, Qianlong’s son, the Jiaqing 嘉庆 Emperor (r. 1796–1820) stated: Waves have one thousand layers, Pearls and beads are measured in ten thousand hu. The underground vein meanders into the distance, Full water can be traced back to a distant origin. Vastly and mightily all water returns into gullies, At the beginning it flows little by little. In watching the waves, wonder and delight meet, The ultimate reason is thus concealed.50

He was trying to understand the hidden mechanism of the water channel and attempted to trace the “vein” back to the origin of the watercourse. By describing the hidden water source as the concealed “ultimate reason” (zhili 至理), he established a connection between fountains and the cosmos. This helps us better understand why Qianlong intentionally called the Western fountains “spectacular views” (qiguan).51 Climbing over the Hill of Line-Method and facing towards the east, one encountered the final gateway through which a view of distant mountains and water emerged. The water took the form of a rectangular lake called Square River (Fanghe 方河). East of the lake, at the eastern end of the entire Western garden, there was an open-air theatre called Walls of LineMethod (Xianfaqiang 线法墙), whose stage set featured perspective murals on multiple walls, arranged for the illusory perspectival view. The theatre could only be appreciated by standing on the western bank of the lake or on a boat moving straight towards the eastern bank. The theory of linemethod for a stage design had been explicated in Nian Xiyao’s 年希尧 book Shixue 視學 (Studies of Perspective), which, imitating the Jesuit scholars Andrea Pozzo and Jean Dubreuil’s illusory perspective, emphasises the

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position of “frontal view”.52 This illusory and theatrical perspective view presented a remote dwelling for the emperor’s mind.

Labyrinthine Residence in the Forbidden City After finishing his garden residence for retirement in the Yuanmingyuan, Qianlong immediately began building his palace residence, the so-called Qianlong Garden, in the north-eastern corner of the Forbidden City. This tiny garden occupies the western portion of the Palace of Tranquility and Longevity (Ningshougong 寧壽宫). Laid out on a narrow property along a south-north axis, the garden consists of five courtyards, three of which contain artificial hills of rocks. In the first courtyard, the main building, Open Hall of Ancient Brilliance (Guhuaxuan 古華軒) (Fig. 5.3), is located on the northern border along the central axis. The rockery hills fill up the western, southern and eastern portions of the courtyard. People can walk through the caves and climb the hilltops created by the rockery. A small building enclosed by the artificial hill in the south-eastern corner is called the Studio of Restraining (Yizhai 抑 齋), which recalls an early building of the same name, located in the twelfth scene—entitled the Fairy Lodge of Eternal Spring (Changchun xianguan 長 春仙館)—in the Forty Scenes of Yuanmingyuan. The Fairy Lodge of Eternal Spring was Qianlong’s garden residence when he was a prince. According to his poem on that scene, the deep and remote buildings were connected by meandering verandas. Following the model at the Fairy Lodge of Eternal Spring, all his later reading rooms in other places were entitled Studio of Restraining, which was originally intended to “restrain temper and enhance internal peace” (yiran 抑然).53 In the western portion of the courtyard was found the Pavilion of Ritual Appreciation (Xishangting 禊 赏亭), and on the ground of the pavilion was a meandering water channel chiselled into a monolithic piece of unbroken stone. A wine cup could be drifted down the winding watercourse in order to fulfil a poetical ritual called qushui liushang 曲水流觞 (flowing a wine cup on a winding stream), which was vividly recorded by the calligrapher Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (East Jin Dynasty, fourth century), a peer of Tao Yuanming. According to Wang’s record, the water of a nearby river was diverted into his garden to create a winding channel for drifting the wine cup. Although there was no music, the scholars sipped the wine and chanted poetic phrases to each other.

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Wang described such a joy as the “remote emotion” (youqing 幽情).54 The entire courtyard acted as an open-air theatre where Qianlong would sit in the open hall and appreciate the beauty of the surrounding rockery hills, enjoying his desired “remote solitude” (youdu 幽独) after retirement.55 The second courtyard was a peaceful transitive space, which exhibited several pieces of the unique Lake Tai rocks. In contrast, the third courtyard was completely filled with artificial hills, which recall the rockery labyrinths in the Lion Groves. At the top of the northern hill is the Pavilion of Mounting Elegance (Songxiuting 聳秀亭), similar to the Pavilion of Occupying Peaks (Zhanfengting 占峰亭) in the Lion Grove of the Yuanmingyuan. On both the northern and western borders of the courtyard, there were multi-storeyed buildings from which Qianlong could overlook the panoramic view of the rockery hills. One couplet hung in the northern building, the Tower of Appreciating Bluish-Green Landscapes (Cuishanglou 翠賞楼), states: “I am so busy with receiving views from all sides; once at this height I begin to relax.”56 This spectacular panoramic view created the possibility of release, and offered the emperor the opportunity to consider his life achievement. The northern half of the fourth courtyard is occupied by a multistoreyed building called the Tower of Matching the Wish (Fuwangge 符望阁) and the southern half is occupied by artificial hills that “rise up and encircle into each other”. The tower is the highest building within the Qianlong Garden. The two inscription boards hung over the southern door of the tower state: “delightful encounter” (xinyu 欣遇) and “obtaining wholeness” (dequan 得全). The couplet hung in the northern room of the top floor states that: “Clear breeze and bright moonlight are included infinitely; Close views and distant vistas are perceived completely.”57 Qianlong’s poem about this tower states that: “Aging life leads to retirement from diligence, Happy life is no more involved with the bustling world.”58 All of these poetic evocations circumscribe a released universality where view and mind are indissociable. The Tower of Matching the Wish acts as an interior labyrinth, its divided spaces being intricately interlaced yet full of changes that cause disorientation. It is said the visitor has to keep on changing their vantage point in order to appreciate the interior views. Here, some real doors intentionally appear like framed mirrors and some fake doors were in fact closets, creating an illusion and thus making a real path difficult to discern. Modern scholars like to call this building a “perplexing multistoreyed

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building” (milou 迷樓).59 The concept of “perplexing multistoreyed building” can be traced back to the legend of Milou in Yangzhou built for Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty 隋煬帝 (sixth century).60 The fifth courtyard is at the northern end of the Qianlong Garden, and there is a side yard to the west, which is partially occupied by an artificial hill. Opposite the Tower of Matching the Wish is the so-called Studio for Retirement from Diligent Service (Juanqinzhai 倦勤齋). This building consists of nine bays arranged along the east-west axis. The eastern five bays face the main courtyard and contain spaces for rest. The western four bays are hidden behind the side yard in the most remote corner. It is in this secret four-bay room that a theatre is enclosed. The theatre stage, built like a garden pavilion, is located on the western side opposite the double-floor audience area in the east. The interior walls and ceiling are fully covered with frescos of the garden and landscape views composed from an illusory perspective (trompe l’oeil). Research suggests that the leading painter of these frescos could be Castiglione’s Chinese student, Wang Youxue 王幼 學.61 The northern fresco creates a view of an imperial garden of retreat in a seemingly mountainous area. It possibly hints at the Bishu shanzhuang in Chengde, north of Beijing where Qianlong built his second Lion Grove garden. In the fresco there are cranes, pine trees and magpies. The cranes act as the Daoist messengers towards the immortal world; the pine trees represent longevity; and magpies indicate the arrival of spring, hinting at the Fairy Lodge of Eternal Spring in the Yuanmingyuan. The western fresco behind the theatre stage creates an illusory image like the distant West Mountain where the Yuanmingyuan is located. The ceiling fresco vividly depicts a vine trellis with hanging purple blossoms, which causes the illusion that the interior theatre seems to be in the open air and recalls the illusory open-air stage in the Western garden of the Yuanmingyuan.62

Conclusion Compared with his father Yongzheng, Qianlong wrote more poems and prose works regarding gardens than philosophy as he had an extreme interest in the representation of gardens. His rich poetry on the Lion Groves provides a good reference point for interpreting his view of the labyrinth of the Western garden. In turn, the perspectival views of the Western garden act as an aid to understanding his view of the labyrinths

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in the Lion Groves and Qianlong Garden. The complementary relationship between literature and representation unveils the entangled configuration of the labyrinth in his mind, which epitomised the cultural exchange between the Qing imperial court and European Jesuits. Qianlong’s garden constructions in the Yuanmingyuan and Forbidden City best embody his view of the labyrinth, which interweaves baroque illusory perspective and Chinese rockery art. In the Yuanmingyuan, he co-presented the rockery labyrinth with the perspectival labyrinth and enjoyed moving between the two. In the Forbidden City, he integrated both labyrinth types into a “delightful encounter” for “obtaining wholeness”. In the first Chinese garden treatise, Yuan ye 園冶 (The Craft of Gardens) (1631), the theatrical and labyrinthine experience of the artificial hill of rockery was humorously described in terms of “catching a partial view of a leopard through a tube, or walking on a path like kids’ hide and seek game”. In a labyrinth-like game, the “artificial” could easily be taken for the “real”.63 Qianlong’s view of the labyrinth brought to light his struggle with the issues of truth and illusion. Between the Lion Grove in Suzhou and his Lion Grove in the Yuanmingyuan, he was forced to determine which was the more real. Between the Western illusory perspectival view of garden and the meandering mountains and waters (shanshui 山水) in nature, he wondered if both were connected to the depth of the cosmos. In Qianlong’s garden labyrinths, truth presented itself as seductive representation of sensual reality, which he called “the true wonder”. Echoing the Greek daidala and the folies in 18th-century French gardens, Qianlong’s “spectacular views” (qiguan) for the first time in history integrated the philosophical lines of Chinese and Western labyrinths into a “harmony of wonder and delight”. From the delight of the self (ziran 自然) within the rockery labyrinths to the wonder of the other (chaoran 超然) in perspectival labyrinths, and the ultimate harmony of differences in (the Garden of) Perfect Brightness (yuanming), his pursuit for Buddhist enlightenment and Daoist cosmology through garden labyrinths captured the Jesuit play between illusion and reality in searching metaphysical light. His theatrical meanderings guided him to sudden enlightenment, a releasement (shiran 释然) into Perfect Brightness, comparable to Martin Heidegger’s philosophical concept of Gelassenheit, in which “we exult in waiting” and “wonder”.64

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Notes 1.

Hui Zou, “A Narrative Structure of Cross-Cultural Architecture”, in Architecture Studies 建筑研究 2, ed. Mark Cousin and Chen Wei (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 2012).

2.

Tao Yuanming 陶渊眀, “Taohuayuan ji” 桃花源记 [Record of the Peach Blossom Spring], in Tao Yuanming ji jianzhu 陶渊明集笺注 [The Annotated Writings of Tao Yuanming], ed. and anno. Yuan Xingpei 袁行霈 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2011).

3.

Plato, Section 42 (a) “The Fish-Trap”, Timaeus, in Timaeus and Critias, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Books, 1977), pp. 107–8.

4.

Ibid., pp. 106, 108.

5.

Tao, “Taohuayuan ji”, p. 479.

6. Laozi 老子, chapters 1, 11, 36, 52, Laozi 老子, in Baihua Laozi 白话老子 [Laozi in Plain Language], anno. and trans. Zhou Shengchun 周生春 (Xi’an: Sanqin shudian, 1994). 7. Plato, Timaeus, sections 16, 18, 20. 8.

Ibid., Section 20, pp. 71–72.

9.

John Sallis, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), p. 112.

10. Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1: Central Greece, trans. Peter Levi (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 283. 11. Ibid., pp. 314–5. 12. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Built upon Love: Architectural Longing after Ethics and Aesthetics (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006), pp. 7–8. 13. Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Chora: The Space of Architectural Representation”, in Chora 1: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, ed. Alberto PérezGómez and Stephen Parcell (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), p. 15. 14. Tao, “Taohuayuan ji”, p. 480. 15. Ouyang Xuan 欧阳玄, “Shizilin Pu-ti-zheng-zong-si ji” 狮子林菩提正宗寺 记 [Record of the Original-Enlightenment Temple in the Lion Grove], in Shizilin jisheng ji 狮子林纪胜集 [Anthology of the Poetry and Records of the Lion Grove], ed. Shi Daoxun 释道恂 and Xu Lifang 徐立方(1857; rpt. Yangzhou: Guanglin shushe, 2007), vol. 1, juanshang, pp. 1–3. 16. Zhang Zhu 张翥, “Shiti Shizilin jian Tianru heshang” 诗题狮子林简天如和尚 [Poem on the Lion Grove for Monk Weize (alias Tianru)], in ibid., p. 8.

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17. Chen Qian 陈谦, “Daijian Woyun fangzhang” 代简卧云方丈 [Poem for Monk Woyun], in ibid., p. 19. 18. Zhu Derun 朱德润, “Shizilin tu xu” 狮子林图序 [Foreword for the Painting of Lion Grove], in ibid., juanxia, pp. 1–2. 19. Ni Zan 倪瓒, “[Untitled poem]”, in ibid., p. 17. 20. Qianlong 乾隆, “Yuzhi you Shizilin shi [1]” 御制游狮子林诗 [1] [Imperial Poem of Touring the Lion Grove (1)], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanshou, p. 1. 21. Qianlong, “Yuzhi you Shizilin shi [2]” 御制游狮子林诗[2] [Imperial Poem of Touring the Lion Grove (2)], in ibid., p. 2. 22. Qianlong, “Yuzhi Shizilin die jiuzuo yun” 御制狮子林叠旧作韵 [Imperial Poem of the Lion Grove in the Rhyme of an Old Piece], in ibid., p. 3. 23. Qianlong, “Yuzhi Shizilin zaidie jiuzuo yun” 御制狮子林再叠旧作韵 [Imperial Poem of the Lion Grove in the Rhyme of an Old Piece Again], in ibid., p. 3. 24. Qianlong, “Yuzhi Shizilin sandie jiuzuo yun” 御制狮子林三叠旧作韵 [Imperial Poem of the Lion Grove in the Rhyme of an Old Piece for the Third Time], in ibid., p. 4. 25. Qianlong’s concept of “spectacular view” (qiguan 奇观) about the Western garden in the Yuanmingyuan first appeared in his poem entitled “Ti Zelantang” 题泽兰堂 [Poetising the Hall of Lustrous Orchids] on a spot scene which bordered the Western garden, in the Garden of Eternal Spring. This is the only published poem in which Qianlong commented on the Western garden of the Yuanmingyuan. See the poem in Zhang Enyin 张恩 荫, Yuanmingyuan bianqianshi tanwei 圆明园变迁史探微 [A History of the Vicissitudes of Yuanmingyuan] (Beijing: Beijing tiyu xueyuan chubanshe, 1993), p. 223. 26. Xiao Yun 萧云, “You Shilin si” 游狮林寺 [Touring the Temple of Lion Grove], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanzhong, p. 18. 27. Zhao Zhixin 赵执信, “Shizilin zeng zhuren Zhang Yusan” 狮子林赠主人张吁 三 [Poem of the Lion Grove Presented to the Host Zhang Yusan], in ibid., p. 5. 28. Xu Xiongfei 徐熊飞, “Shizilin” 狮子林 [Lion Grove], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanxia, p. 13. 29. Guo Qing 郭青, “You Shizilin” 游狮子林 [Touring the Lion Grove], in ibid., p. 13. 30. Zhu Lanpo 朱兰坡, “Guan Shizilin jiashan” 观狮子林假山 [Viewing the Rockery Hill of the Lion Grove], in ibid., p. 18. Also see Kiyohiko Munakata, “Mysterious Heavens and Chinese Classical Gardens”, RES: Anthropology

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and Aesthetics 15 (Spring 1988): 64–7 where the symbolism of rockery of the Daoist paradise (cave-heavens) is discussed. 31. Fan Ye 范晔, ed., “Fangshu liezhuan diqishi’er xia: Fei Changfang” 方术列 传第七十二下: 费长房 [Chapter 72, Part 2, Biographies of Alchemists: Fei Changfang], Houhanshu 后汉书 [Book of the Later Han Dynasty] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2012). 32. Qianlong, “Yuzhi you Shizilin shi [1]”. 33. Qianlong, “Yuzhi you Shizilin jijing zayong sanshou” 御制游狮子林即景杂 咏三首 [Three Imperial Poems Improvised in Touring the Lion Grove], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanshou, p. 2. 34. Liu Yiqing 刘义庆, “Paidiao di’ershiwu” 排调第二十五 [Chapter 25, Tease and Mock], Shishuo xinyu 世说新语 [New Account of the Tales of the World], anno. and trans. Shen Haibo 沈海波 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2009). 35. Shi Weize 释维则, “Shizilin jijing shisishou” 狮子林即景十四首 [Fourteen Poems Improvised in Lion Grove], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 1, juanshang, p. 21. 36. Pan Lei 潘耒, “Renwu shangyi Shizilin xiuxi fenyun de chong zi” 壬午上已 狮子林修禊分韵得崇字 [Poem Beginning with the Assigned Character of Chong at a Poetical Ritual of the Shangsi Festival in the Lion Grove in the Year of Renwu], in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanzhong, p. 6. 37. Qianlong, “Yuzhi you Shizilin shi [2]” [Imperial Poem of Touring the Lion Grove (2)] in Shizilin jisheng ji, vol. 2, juanshou, p. 2. 38. Qianlong, “Shuimen” 水门 [Water Gate], in “Qing wuchao yuzhiji zhong de Yuanmingyuan shi” 清五朝御制集中的圆明园诗 [Poems on Yuanmingyuan in the Works of Five Emperors of the Qing Dynasty], ed. Zhu Jiajin 朱家 溍 and Li Yanqin李艳琴, in Yuanmingyuan xueshu lunwenji 圆明园学术论文 集 [Anthology of Essays on Yuanmingyuan], ed. Zhongguo Yuanmingyuan xuehui 中国圆明园学会, vol. 4 (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1985), p. 44. 39. Tao Yuanming, “Taohuayuan ji” 桃花源记 [Record of the Peach Blossom

Spring], in Guwen guanzhi 古文觀止 [Perfected Admiration of Ancient Literature], anno. Li Binhai 李炳海 et al. (Changchun: Jilin wenshi chubanshe, 2004), vol.1, pp. 276–7. 40. Qianlong, “Qianlong sanshiqinian yuzhi Shizilin bajing shi” 乾隆三十七年 御制狮子林八景诗 [Eight Imperial Poems of the Lion Grove in the ThirtySeventh Year of the Qianlong Reign], in Rixia jiuwen kao 日下旧闻考 [Ancient Things Heard from the Throne], ed. Yu Minzhong 于敏中 et al., vol. 3 (Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 2001), p. 1388.

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41. Hui Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2011), p. 88. 42. Qianlong, “Qianlong jiunian yuzhi Dongtian shenchu shi” 乾隆九年御制洞 天深处诗 [Imperial Poem on the Scene of Deep and Remote Dwelling in the Ninth Year of the Qianlong Reign], in Rixia jiuwen kao, vol. 3, p. 1378. 43. Yilantai 伊兰泰, “Twenty Copperplates of the Western Garden of the Yuanmingyuan”, 1786. A reprint in original size is in Palais, pavillons et jardins construits par Giuseppe Castiglione [Palaces, Pavilions and Gardens Built by Giuseppe Castiglione] (Paris: Jardin de Flore, 1977). 44. Ibid., pl. 5. 45. Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元, “Yongzhou Longxingsi dongqiu ji” 永州龙兴寺东丘 记 [Record of the East Mound at Longxing Temple in Yongzhou], in Zhichi shanlin: yuanlin yishu wencui 咫尺山林: 园林艺术文萃 [Symbolic Nature: Essential Essays on the Art of Gardens], ed. and anno. Sun Xiaoli 孙小力 (Shanghai: Dongfang chubanshe, 1999), p. 26. 46. Jean-Denis Attiret, “A Particular Account of the Emperor of China’s Gardens near Pekin: In a Letter from F. Attiret to His Friend at Paris”, trans. Joseph Spence (London: R. Dodsley, 1752), pp. 37–8. 47. Maurice Adam, Yuen Ming Yuen: L’Oeuvre Architecturale des Anciens Jésuites au XVIIIe Siècle [The Architectural Work of the Ancient Jesuits in the 18th Century] (Pei-p’ing: Imprimerie des Lazaristes, 1936), p. 28. 48. Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing, p. 132. 49. Yongzheng 雍正, “Yong zimingzhong” 咏自鸣钟 [Chanting on Chiming Clocks], in Yongzheng shiwen zhujie 雍正诗文注解 [The Annotated Poetry and Prose Works of Emperor Yongzheng], ed. and anno. Wei Jianxun 魏鉴 勋 (Shenyang: Liaoning guji chubanshe, 1996), p. 2. 50. Jiaqing 嘉庆, “Xieqiqu” 谐奇趣 [Harmony, Wonder and Delight], in Zhang Enyin, Yuanmingyuan bianqianshi tanwei [A History of the Vicissitudes of Yuanmingyuan] (Beijing: Beijing tiyu xueyuan chubanshe, 1993), p. 228. 51. Qianlong, “Ti Zelantang” [Poetising the Hall of Lustrous Orchids], in ibid., p. 223. 52. Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing, pp. 83–84, 96–99. 53. Qianlong, “Qianlong jiunian yuzhi Changchun xianguan shi” 乾隆九年御 制长春仙馆诗 [Imperial Poem of the Fairy Lodge of Eternal Spring in the Ninth Year of the Qianlong Reign], in Rixia jiuwen kao, pp. 1345–6. 54. Wang Xizhi 王羲之, “Lanting ji xu” 蘭亭集序 [Preface for the Anthology of Poems at Orchid Pavilion], in Guwen guanzhi, vol.1, pp. 272–3.

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55. Qianlong, “Qianlong sishiqinian yuzhi Yangxingdian shi” 乾隆四十七年御制 养性殿诗 [Imperial Poem on the Hall of Mental Cultivation in the FortySeventh Year of the Qianlong Reign], in Rixia jiuwen kao, vol. 1, p. 242. 56. Qianlong quoted in ibid., p. 249. 57. Qianlong quoted in ibid., pp. 250–1. 58. Qianlong, “Qianlong sishiyinian yuzhi Fuwangge shi” 乾隆四十一年御制符望 阁诗 [Imperial Poem on the Tower of Matching the Wish in the Forty-First Year of the Qianlong Reign], in ibid., p. 250. 59. Chen Congzhou 陈从周, ed., Zhongguo yuanlin jianshang cidian 中国园林鉴 赏辞典 [Dictionary of Chinese Garden Appreciation] (Shanghai: Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2001), p. 213. 60. Han Wo 韩偓, Milou ji 迷楼记 [Record of a Perplexing Multistoried Building], collated by Wu Guan 吴琯 (Hong Kong: Yiwen yinshuguan yinxing, year unknown). 61. Nie Chongzheng 聂崇正, “Ji Gugong Juanqinzhai tianding hua, quanjing hua” 记故宫倦勤斋天顶画, 全景画 [Ceiling Paintings and Panoramas in Juanqinzhai in the Forbidden City], Gugong bowuyuan yuankan 故宫博物院 院刊 [Palace Museum Journal], 3 (1995): 22. 62. Elsewhere, I have analysed in detail the interaction and comparison between the illusory perspectives in Qianlong’s gardens and European Baroque architecture. See Hui Zou, “The Jesuit Theatre of Memory in China”, Montreal Architectural Review 2 (Dec. 2015). 63. Ji Cheng 计成, Ch. 8 “Duo shan” 掇山 [Gathering Rockery Hills], Yuan ye 园冶 [The Craft of Gardens], in Yuan ye zhushi 园冶注释 [Annotations on the Craft of Gardens], anno. Chen Zhi 陈植 (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1999), p. 206. 64. Martin Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking”, Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1966), pp. 82, 90.

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Chapter 6

“Retreats or Attacks?” Scholars, Poets and the Politics of Landscape Gardening in China and the West STEPHEN BANN

FOR many years I have been interested in one of the distinctive parallels between the garden culture of China and that of certain countries in the West, specifically Britain. Over 30 years ago, I made the rather negative statement: “In the West, there is nothing strictly comparable to the Chinese poet-scholar’s garden” which “epitomised both a mode of retreat from the pressures of the official world and a poetic appropriation of the universe”.1 By that stage, I already had in my possession a Chinese scroll that my university friend Endymion Wilkinson had brought back for me from China in the 1960s, and was able to note the presence of a small figure, probably representing the painter, who supplied an enigmatic human presence in the magnificent landscape scene.2 Nevertheless, from the late 1960s onwards, I was also aware of the progressive development of a great garden of the contemporary period, the garden of Stonypath, later called Little Sparta, which Ian Hamilton Finlay developed over 40 years between his arrival at the small lowland farmstead in 1966 and his death in 2006. When I wrote the first full description of the garden to date, for the second issue of John Dixon Hunt’s new garden history journal, I quoted the phrase from his “Unconnected Sentences on Gardening” that I allude to in my title for this article: “Certain Gardens are described as retreats when they are really attacks”.3 No one who has followed the history of Finlay’s garden could doubt that this notion of the garden as an “attack” had a 210

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real as well as a symbolic meaning. When he replaces the conventional pineapples of architectural ornament with hand grenades, this is not an empty gesture, but a telling sign of the place that his gardening works had come to occupy in the cultural politics of the past quarter century. But as I watched Finlay’s garden take shape, I was also learning more about the aesthetics, and the politics, of the Chinese garden. In the early 1980s, the most that I knew was from my experience of the “Chinese Garden Court” installed in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.4 By 1986, I had seen at first hand several of the most important Chinese gardens—in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai and Suzhou—where the “Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician” left a particularly strong impression. More recently, I have had the opportunity to look more deeply into the work of scholars publishing in the West who have vastly expanded awareness of the Chinese tradition while suggesting how certain Western gardens, and garden traditions, can be related in some significant ways to those of China. I should mention, first of all, a study that brilliantly deconstructs the concept and practice of Chinese gardening under the Ming dynasty in such a way as to reveal underlying aspects that illuminate the Western and, especially, British tradition. Craig Clunas’s Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty develops the ideas of Michel de Certeau on urban space to illuminate the narrative structure of gardens like that of the “Unsuccessful Politician”. He writes: Spaces imply operations, which in turn require subjects to carry them out. Hence the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician cannot be recorded unless it is in some sense visitable […] It is narration, stories, which “carry out a labour that constantly transforms the places into spaces or spaces into places”. Here, the narrative of the visit, formally derived from a record of journeys through the landscape, and by the Ming associated with accounts of journeys through life, “life-stories”, performs the task of turning a list of pavilions and rocks—a list of places—into the space of the garden.5

I shall consider the implications of this principle in relation to the poet William Shenstone’s 18th-century English garden later in this article, with particular reference to Robert Dodsley’s “Description of the Leasowes”, which constructs the narrative of a potential visitor. But first of all I want to mention two other Chinese specialists whose work I have greatly

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appreciated, and whose findings relate to my own project. Alison Hardie has written most suggestively on the career of the 17th-century Chinese politician and gardener Ruan Dacheng. For instance, she has illuminated the political and allegorical context of his “Dove Ridge Thatched Hall”, possibly a building set up in honour of his ancestor Ruan Ji. And she has commented on the function of the “Assembly Garden”, where this gardener and retired politician could meet like-minded friends, possibly convening groups of them in the “Drinking to Antiquity Studio”.6 Such an emphasis on the communal vocation of the garden space, which implies connections both with the ancestors and with the “likeminded” guests of the present is, in my opinion, carried to a new stage in a fascinating study by the Chinese scholar, Xin Wu. She has broken new ground in looking at the case of a garden created by a “like-minded” group over a long time span. Her study is particularly important in relation to the theme of this article in so far as it deals with a garden, or expanding landscape, that was actually created by an academic community over a number of centuries. Over this period, it was the custom for scholars of the Yuelu Academy to compose poems, specifically “paired quatrains”, as a form of commentary on particular landscape features in the vicinity of their buildings. As Xin Wu rightly observes: “such naming transforms an ordinary place into a meaningful view”.7 I am going to take Xin Wu’s investigation as a model, in my first example, in order to draw attention to the fact that such communal gardens, built up by academic and/or religious communities over many centuries, have also been a continuing feature of Western—and let me say, specifically, English—culture. In effect, it is only in England that such communities have had a continuous existence from the medieval period to the present day. Of course, the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in the early 16th century curtailed the development of the great religious houses that had dotted the English landscape in the Middle Ages. But many monasteries were immediately incorporated into cathedral closes, as at Canterbury, and in such places the interpenetration between garden spaces and buildings— that dates back to the earlier period—has continued up to the present day. Moreover, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, many of which predated the Reformation, have continued to preserve garden spaces that are integrally linked to the life of their scholarly communities, and have evolved in parallel with the development of landscaping styles over the centuries. They are perhaps rarely seen as having very great interest, when

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compared with the roll call of great gardens created by individual designers for aristocratic patrons: Rousham, Stowe, Chatsworth and so on. I shall use the opportunity of this volume to look at one example of how academic tradition and political discourse became entwined in the history of the garden of an Oxford College. New College, Oxford is not “new” in anything but the rather eccentric English sense, having been originally founded by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England in the late 14th century. William of Wykeham pioneered a development in English education whose effects are still with us today, for good or ill. He created Winchester College, situated not far from the cathedral of his diocese, for the education of young boys destined to serve church and state, and New College, at the University of Oxford, to enable them to take their studies further to the level of a master’s degree, or fellowship, before they were dispersed to the innumerable religious foundations and parishes throughout the country. I myself was educated as a boy at Winchester, but avoided going to New College, and proceeded to the Cambridge college connected to Winchester and New through an amicabilis concordia: King’s College. This had been founded in the 15th century by King Henry VI, who was not a success at governing the country, but took a leaf out of Wykeham’s book by himself creating two colleges that were connected in the same way: Eton and King’s, Cambridge. These survived his demise, and are still flourishing. Such colleges, not unlike the Yuelu Academy, set great store by the tradition of the ancestors: in the case of New College, these were the successive benefactors who can be seen assembled on the site in George Vertue’s print of c. 1729.8 For our purposes, however, the richest visual source is the large print that appears in the series Oxonia depicta, engraved by the architectural draughtsman William Williams (Fig. 6.1 and Fig. 6.2) and published initially in 1733. This print, which shows the ground plan of the collegiate buildings, also reveals the existence of the carefully designed garden that existed within the precincts of the College. New College had the privilege of nestling within the city walls of Oxford and, by the 19th century, this walled enclosure had been rearranged in the style of a picturesque English garden, predominantly laid out in extensive lawns and trees. In the early 18th century, however, there was an elaborate parterre incorporating a substantial mound, both of which can be clearly seen in this detailed print which adopts a bird’s eye viewpoint. It is in looking more closely at the function of the parterre and the mound that we can

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Fig. 6.1: William Williams, engraving of Collegium Novum (New College, Oxford), from Oxonia depicta (1733): ground plan of the college and bird’s-eye view of garden. Author’s collection.

discern not just the influence of general trends in garden design, imported from Holland, France and Italy, but also the social and political message embedded in the narrative content of the garden display. Oxford was a fortified town, with city walls, from the Middle Ages onwards, in common with most English cities. But it was particularly in the period of the English Civil War of the 1640s, conducted between the Stuart King Charles I and the so-called “Roundhead” party that dominated the Parliament, that Oxford acquired an unprecedented importance as the headquarters of the court and the Royalist army, when the king and his followers had been driven out of London. Many of the Oxford academic dignitaries were strong supporters of the king, and New College in particular continued its royalist adherence to the House of Stuart well into the subsequent century, when the Stuart dynasty had been forced into exile, and yet made two unsuccessful attempts—in 1715 and 1745—to unseat

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Fig. 6.2: William Williams, Collegium Novum, detail of parterre with arms of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and King Charles I. Author’s collection.

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the new Hanoverian sovereigns. This loyalty is contained, in emblematic form, in the design of the parterres at New College, as shown in the print. But first of all, it is interesting to consider the function of the “mound” that is clearly visible in the centre of the garden, and still evident today, though it has lost its special function. It has sometimes been identified as a “Parnassus”, this being a traditional element in the Italian garden, and represents the Greek mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses, Mount Parnassus. As can still be seen in the vista that can be observed from the summit of the overgrown “Parnassus” in the garden of the Villa Medici at Rome, the raised mount establishes a high viewing point, which reveals the design of the parterre of the garden. This is precisely what would have been the intended purpose of the New College “Parnassus”. Indeed, the significant point is that the New College parterres (as can be seen in the early 18th-century print) are not just geometrical in design, but emblematic. They speak unquestionably of values, moral and political, embodied and embedded (one must assume) in the college community. On one side of the parterre, the coat of arms of the founder, William of Wykeham, is displayed, and incorporates the special motto “Manners Makyth Man”, that was his legacy to the members of the college. Possibly originating as a translation of the Latin proverb “Mores Faciunt Hominem”, this is no conventional heraldic motto, but a specific enjoinder to the generations of young scholars who were to be educated both at Winchester and at Oxford. The message implied is that it is the way of life, the pattern of behaviour, that creates human personality—not an inappropriate legacy for an educator, and one that has survived in the form of various material features up to the present day. The other side of the parterre carries a different message. It displays the armorial bearings of King Charles I, the Stuart King who had been beheaded after his trial for treason by the Parliament in 1649, and whose descendants were still, at least up to 1745, disputing the throne of England with their Hanoverian cousins. From the top of the “Parnassus” mound, then, the fellows of the college had a privileged view of the emblems epitomising the two ideological constructs that provided their community with its current identity: the moral lesson imparted by William of Wykeham, and the political message associated with the Stuart cause. I would not want to claim that this function is directly analogous to the poetic work of the scholars of the Yuelu Academy. Clearly the content of the respective messages is very different in their case. But I want to maintain

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the idea of a community constructing views that also impart values—this being a perspective that is sometimes absent from the analysis of Western garden history, and can be refreshed by the Chinese example. I should now move on to a rather different kind of analysis, though it is no less concerned with a specific 18th-century example and its relevance in the light of Chinese precedents. Let me note, first of all, however, that my original view of the contacts between Chinese and European garden designers in the 18th century was expressed in a sentiment that I discovered in a study of Chinese gardens, written by a Chinese scholar, that I read in the 1980s. Yang Hongxun’s work on Chinese classical gardens, published in 1982, contained the following judgement on the so-called “Anglo-Chinese” style: Broadly speaking, the Chinese-style gardens and Anglo-Chinese gardens that appeared in Europe merely incorporated certain features culled from superficial impressions of Chinese gardens. The motif of these works was simply a natural landscape; the builders treated terrain, bodies of water, vegetation, and paths so that their contours curved about in a relatively free and easy manner, and they added to the scenery such embellishments as Chinese-style halls, pavilions, bridges, pagodas, and boats. […] they failed to assimilate the laws and principles of classical garden construction in all their entirety and profundity.9

I would still agree with the implication that the concept of the jardin anglo-chinois embodies an endemic confusion. Rather like the present French use of the concept “Anglo-Saxon”, to signify both British and American influences operating in the contemporary world, it testifies perhaps to a certain degree of paranoia about what is perceived as foreign, rather than an exact and appropriate discrimination between the two terms and their separate identities. This volume has adopted a more promising approach in putting forward the title Entangled Landscapes, which I take to be a reference to the methodology of recent anthropological work on the reciprocal relations between Western and Non-Western cultures.10 I will myself avoid the normal references that are invoked for the evidence of the debt owed by English 18th-century gardeners to China, in the knowledge that they are carefully considered in the other articles in this volume. In effect, I shall demonstrate that the stated references to China in the writings of my subject, William Shenstone, are virtually all quite irrelevant to the

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issue of his garden designs. Yet I shall also marshal evidence to suggest that the especially influential English 18th-century style that he pioneered has a genuine affinity with Chinese practice—if not on the banal level of incorporating Chinese-style halls, pavilions and pagodas. What interests me here is the modest, and (to use the English term) “provincial”, effort of a scholar, in some ways comparable to those of Ruan Dacheng: a man of letters who lived in isolation from political life but was nonetheless preoccupied with creating what Maynard Mack called (in respect of the garden of the poet Alexander Pope) “a place to stand”.11 William Shenstone was born in 1714, at his family’s modest estate of The Leasowes, near Halesowen in the English Midlands. In 1732, he proceeded from a local school to Oxford, where he was attached not to New College but to Pembroke College (also the college of the celebrated lexicographer Dr Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, who eventually compiled Shenstone’s biography for his Lives of the Poets). Shenstone was never wealthy, but on inheriting the family property he elected to spend virtually all his time and resources in creating a garden around the main house, which remained very simple, by no means a great country house but what the French called a ferme ornée (literally, “decorated farm”). He died quite young, in 1763, but by that time he had achieved a certain reputation as a poet, and a much greater measure of fame for the achievement of his garden.

Fig. 6.3: A. Ollivault, Book plate of Pierre-Clément, Marquis de Laussac, c. 1790: from William Shenstone, Works, vol. II (London: J. Dodsley, 1777). Author’s collection.

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Fig. 6.4: Frontispiece and title page of William Shenstone, Works, vol. II, (London: J. Dodsley, 1777): with Apollo presenting a laurel wreath to the poet Shenstone, and Shenstone’s emblem of the kingfisher, with motto. Author’s collection.

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Fig. 6.5: Map of William Shenstone’s garden, The Leasowes, to accompany Robert Dodsley’s “A Description of the Leasowes”, in Shenstone, Works, vol. II (London: J. Dodsley, 1777). Author’s collection.

This indeed gained a Europe-wide reputation. My own 18th-century edition of his complete Works (the fifth edition dating from 1777) has come down to me by way of the library of a French aristocrat, and still bears the library plate of the Château de Laussac, situated near Pau in the Pyrenees. This elaborate plate, devised by Parisian engraver A. Ollivault, carries some unmistakable signs of its original owner’s progressive thinking, since a lion is shown there, mounting guard over the work of the philosopher JeanJacques Rousseau (Fig. 6.3).12 At some stage, however (no doubt as a result of a crisis of conscience provoked by the anti-aristocratic fervour of the French Revolution), the armorial bearings and coronet of the family have been carefully blacked out. It comes then as no surprise that the Marquis Pierre-Clément de Laussac (1756–1835), who would have owned these volumes, was appointed the

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last prefect of Louisiana under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, shortly before this remaining vestige of the French colonies in North America was sold to the new American republic. Laussac had not emigrated during the Revolution, and though he was initially imprisoned, he was able to re-enter public life after the Terror. The works of Shenstone must have suited the advanced ideas of this scion of a noble French family, at a time when English culture had become fashionable among the liberal elite. In Shenstone’s case, the attraction would have been principally in respect of the fame that the poet’s garden had acquired, since the publisher Robert Dodsley’s “Description of the Leasowes” was a prominent feature of this edition of Shenstone’s Works. Shenstone had chosen his own motto—not like “Manners Makyth Man” derived from a medieval forebear, but adopted from the Latin poet Virgil, who indeed serves as Shenstone’s model both in his poetry and in his conception of a garden landscape. Flumina amem silvasque inglorius [Let me inglorious love the streams and woods] is the line from Virgil’s Georgics II that he appends to his chosen image of the kingfisher: the small bird that darts along riverbanks, almost unnoticed except by dint of the flash of blue reflected from its wings (Fig. 6.4).13 The message must surely be that we are not (like the fellows of New College) observing the garden from a standpoint on the top of a Parnassian mound, but experiencing it from the ground level. We are adopting vicariously the role of the bird that moves swiftly, and almost unperceived, through the natural environment. Indeed, one is struck by the resonance of this theme with the particular terms in which Craig Clunas sums up Wen Zhengming’s “Record of the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician”: “there is the effect of constantly swooping in from a vantage-point to move through the space, then rising again to enjoy a gaze that sees all simultaneously”.14 Yet of course neither Shenstone nor Dodsley had any knowledge of that Chinese document, nor indeed of the mass of accumulated material on Chinese gardens that had arrived in Europe by the end of the 18th century. Shenstone would indeed have been aware of William Temple’s Garden of Epicurus (1685), described by Yang Hongxun as “the first formal introduction of China’s garden-building art to European garden designers”.15 Yet he died before the publication of William Chambers’ Dissertation on Oriental Gardening in 1772. It is interesting to note in this connection that his occasional comments, explicit and implicit, on the importation of foreign elements into the English garden are, in general,

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hostile. What could be plainer than the message of his elegy dedicated to Lord Temple, the master of Stowe: While others lost to friendship, lost to love, Waste their best minutes on a foreign strand, Be mine, with British nymph or swain to rove, And court the genius of my native land.

…. Th’exotic folly knows its native clime; An awkward stranger if we waft it o’er. Why then these toils, this costly waste of time, To spread soft poison on our happy shore?16

This is, in effect, a poem in which Shenstone “declin[es] an invitation to foreign countries”, and helps to explain his refusal to travel even within Europe, with a view to seeing the gardens of France and Italy. China, of course, is quite out of the question. When Shenstone refers to China in his correspondence, it is not as a source for the study of gardens, but as an example of the furthest possible geographical location from which any message might conceivably be received. Witness a letter to an unknown correspondent of 17 June 1741: If a friend in China were to send you a pinch of snuff wrapped up in a sheet of writing-paper, I conceive the snuff would improve in value as it travelled, and gratify your curiosity extremely by the time it reached your fingers’ ends.17

This is indeed a fascinating comment on the special attraction of the exotic, which he conceives to be enhanced precisely by the distance that the original object has travelled, rather than by its intrinsic value. But it involves no judgement on Chinese gardens. Some sense of what Chinese visual culture signified to Shenstone and to his faithful disciple, Dodsley, may however be found in the text of the latter’s “Description of the Leasowes”. Dodsley is describing a part of the

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garden where the visitor discovers “a calm tranquil scene of water, gliding through sloping ground”.18 He then comments: “Farther on, we lose all sight of water, and only hear the noise, without having the appearance; a kind of effect which the Chinese are fond of producing in what they call their scenes of enchantment”. It is not absolutely clear to me what is meant here by “scenes of enchantment”. But the reference, involving as it does the evocative power of sound, must presumably be to theatrical effects, such as the music accompanying Chinese shadow plays, rather than to any experience gained in a garden. Another passage in the “Description” is no less enigmatic, though it does involve a direct allusion to Chinese “scenery” as a congenial metonymy for one of Shenstone’s particular landscaping devices. The visitor is introduced to a “natural terrace” that reveals “by far the most magnificent scene here […] the noble concave in the front, and the rich valley towards the right”.19 Dodsley adds the interesting comment: [I]f a boon companion could enlarge his idea of a punch-bowl, ornamented within with all the romantic scenery the Chinese ever yet devised, it would, perhaps, afford him the highest idea of human happiness. He would certainly wish to swim in it. Suffice it to say, that the horizon, or brim, is as finely varied as the cavity.

Here the allusion must then be to Chinese porcelain, and the depiction of “romantic scenery” on the interior of a “punch-bowl” (that is, on a container promising convivial refreshment) involves no allusion to a Chinese garden as such. At the same time, the association of an intense enjoyment of landscape, incorporating pleasurable physical sensations, with such a type of Chinese artefact, is perhaps a significant one. On the other hand, it should be noted that Dodsley’s ultimate quotation in the “Description” (which takes the form of an entire poem by Shenstone addressing his garden deity, the “semi-reducta Venus”) associates China only with a “meretricious” taste entirely unsuited to the British landscape: And far be driven the sumptuous glare Of gold from British groves: And far the meretricious air Of China’s vain alcoves.

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’Tis bashful beauty ever twines The most coercive chain ’Tis she, that sovereign rule declines, Who best deserves to reign. 20

It will be clear from these passages that what Shenstone associates with China, in particular, is the luxury imported item. The recessed “alcove” (a word in fact derived from the Arabic) is presumably to be understood as housing a spectacular decorated ceramic item hence also an earlier reference to the banishment of “gold”. Such items might excite the viewer’s imagination or indeed rouse their appetite—as in the case of the previously mentioned “punchbowl”. But the sensation is not to be compared with the genuinely natural appeal of the native “British groves”. In effect, there is a definite political message, even a subversive one, that is condensed within the very figure of the “Venus semi-reducta”: she who refrains from being a goddess in the open air. As Shenstone puts it, “[S]he, that sovereign reign declines” is the one “[w]ho best deserves to reign”. This judgement involves a striking contrast between the visual system of a great French garden like Louis XIV’s Versailles, and indeed the many European gardens created in imitation of it, where the statues do indeed stand in the open air, and a commanding gaze directed from the centre of the palace façade dominates the entire prospect. Maybe the Marquis de Laussac, who had purchased Shenstone’s volumes for his library, appreciated the point that the English garden designer’s delegation of the gaze to a less dominant position setting was more in tune with the philosophy of Rousseau. It is known that the Marquis de Girardin, whose garden at Ermenonville provided the last refuge for the philosopher, was an admirer of Shenstone. Indeed, when he visited England to observe its great agricultural estates, he appears to have spurned the magnificence of Stowe, and singled out The Leasowes as a garden of which he particularly approved.21 The undoubted influence of Shenstone on Girardin, himself probably the most influential French garden designer and theorist of the second half of the 18th century, appears thus to elude altogether the question of Chinese gardening and its ramifications in Europe. Yet, even if such references conspire to imply that Shenstone’s appeal was specifically opposed to what he believed to be the character of Chinese taste, there

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remains a significant connection between Dodsley’s “Description of the Leasowes” and the Chinese garden guides of the previous century to which Craig Clunas makes reference. There are, of course, many differences, which may be partly due (as Clunas suggests) to what the historian Michel Cartier identifies as the difficulty of “thinking space” in early modern China.22 The descriptive strategy of Wen Zhengming, when he writes his “Record of the Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician”, is demonstrably occupied more with itemising the various features of a garden than with providing any sort of map that could be followed by the visitor. By contrast, Dodsley’s map, with its sequentially numbered sites, is the first thing we come across when we turn to his “Description” in Shenstone’s Works (Fig. 6.5). Nonetheless, the interest in narrativising the experience of landscape is, to a certain degree, evident in both, and it provides a basis for close comparison. In another of his texts dealing with landscape, Wen offers the following description as “A record of Dwelling in the Mountains at Jade Maiden Pool”: [Shi Gongfu] cleared the soil and put out rocks, stopped channels and guided the flows, split and opened, cut and mowed, fully bringing forth the splendour of the whole mountain. The secluded cliffs and inaccessible ravines, numinous pools and remote valleys are all prime examples, yet this pool in truth stands at the head of them.23

Compare this indication how nature’s beauty has to be coaxed forth, not violated, with the opening passage of Dodsley’s “Description”: [The Leasowes] is now considered as amongst the principal of those delightful scenes, which persons of taste, in the present age, are desirous to see. Far from violating its natural beauties, Mr Shenstone’s only study was to give them their full effect. And although the form in which things now appear be indeed the consequence of much thought and labour, yet the hand of art is no way visible either in the shape of ground, the disposition of trees, or (which are here so numerous and striking) the romantic fall of his cascades.24

I need to say only a few words in conclusion. My argument throughout this article is that we might be in danger of posing the wrong questions, when

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comparing and contrasting English 18th-century gardens, in particular with the Chinese garden tradition. Debate over the issues of “influence” raised by the texts of Temple and Chambers will no doubt continue. But there are other ways of approaching the subject. In both England and China, long-lasting academic communities, such as the Yuelu Academy and New College, Oxford, have succeeded in creating gardens that are concerned with the perpetuation of communal values, whether involving their desire for integration into the natural world or (to some extent) over-determined by the political ideologies of their members. This feature offers a fertile ground for comparison. William Shenstone, possibly the most internationally influential of all mid-18th century garden designers in England, has been shown here to hold a view of China that effectively cuts across the traditional debate about “influence”. On the one hand, he associates Chinese visual culture, in general, with the “meretricious” (with “vain alcoves” and their content); Dodsley’s “Description” hardly goes further than identifying China with the “romantic scenery” of stage sets. On the other hand, Shenstone’s work at The Leasowes could be understood as the outcome of a dialectical process in which the art of the poet and designer consists, precisely, in enabling nature to have the upper hand. This objective, which is hardly alien to the Chinese approach, is elegantly summed up in the verse of Lady Luxborough, one of Shenstone’s greatest admirers: How well the bard obeys, each valley tells; These lucid streams, gay meads and lonely cells; Where modest Art in silence lies conceal’d. While Nature shines so gracefully reveal’d, That she triumphant claims the total plan, And, with fresh pride, adopts the work of man.25

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Notes 1.

Stephen Bann, “The Poet’s Garden: Notes on a British Tradition”, Rivista di estetica 8 (1981): 160.

2.

I am delighted to say that my meeting with Daniel Greenberg at Zurich in 2013 led to the identification of this work. It was painted by the minor Qing dynasty painter Yao Enjia, sometimes called “Yao the Donkey” in reference to his well-known work entitled 100 Donkeys. It is a free copy after the Yuan painter Ni Zan (1301–74).

3.

Stephen Bann, “A Description of Stonypath”, Journal of Garden History 1, 2 (1981): 140. The sentence had first appeared in Finlay’s “Unconnected Sentences on Gardening”, published in Nature Over Again after Poussin, exhibition catalogue, Collins Exhibition Hall (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1980), p. 22.

4.

See my reference in The Clothing of Clio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 91.

5.

Craig Clunas, Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China (London: Reaktion Books, 1996), p. 140.

6.

Alison Hardie, “Conflicting Discourse and the Discourse of Conflict: Eremitism and the Pastoral in the Poetry of Ruan Dacheng (c. 1587–1646), in Daria Berg, ed., Reading China: Fiction, History and the Dynamics of Discourse (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 129–34.

7.

Xin Wu, “History, Neo-Confucian Identity, and Landscape at the Yuelu Academy”, in Interlacing Words and Things: Bridging the Nature-Culture Opposition in Gardens and Landscape, ed. Stephen Bann (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2012), p. 68.

8.

This print, which celebrated the founders and benefactors of the college from William of Wykeham onwards, was later copied in a small-scale steel engraving by Joseph Skelton (1817).

9.

Yang Hongxun, The Classical Gardens of China (New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982), p. 121.

10. See Nicholas Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991). 11. Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope 1731–1743 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 232. 12. The plate does indeed abound in symbolic references, among which the presence of Rousseau’s name on the spine of a book is doubtless the most significant. Another book depicted there bears the name of the Renaissance

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autobiographical writer, Michel de Montaigne. A. Ollivault (c. 1760–1813) originally practised his craft in Rennes, and is known for the trade cards that he produced there. He is thought to have moved to Paris around 1788. 13. The line is quoted again in Dodsley’s “Description”, where it comes just before the account of the descent into “Virgil’s Grove”. See William Shenstone, Works, 5th ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1777) vol. II, p. 313. 14. Clunas, Fruitful Sites, p. 142. 15. Yang, Classical Gardens, p. 117. 16. Shenstone, Works, vol. I, p. 59. 17. Shenstone, Works, vol. III, p. 42. 18. Shenstone, Works, vol. II, p. 316. 19. Ibid., p. 310. 20. Ibid., p. 320. 21. See Michel Conan’s postface to the new edition of the notable study of 1777: René-Louis de Girardin, De la composition des paysages [Of the Composition of the Landscapes], new ed. (Paris: Editions du champ urbain, 1979), p. 207. 22. Clunas, Fruitful Sites, p. 141. 23. Ibid., pp. 144–5. 24. Shenstone, Works, vol. II, p. 288. 25. Ibid., p. 321.

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Chapter 7

Culture and Nature Human Landscapes in Chinese and European Imaginations DAVID E. COOPER

Influence and Affinity DURING and since the 18th century, the influence of Chinese gardening traditions on European, especially English, landscape design has been argued over. Was there really such a phenomenon as le jardin anglo-chinois? According to one Frenchman, “tout le monde sait que les jardins anglais ne sont qu’un imitation de ceux de la Chine”.1 This was a judgement contested by, among others, Horace Walpole and Thomas Gray for whom—the kitsch of chinoiserie apart—the influence of China on English landscape design was minimal. The dispute has continued into our own times. According to Maggie Keswick, people familiar with “the flowing lawns and country spaces” of “Capability” Brown and his contemporaries will “marvel that anyone could have associated them with China”. English designers, she writes, “by-passed the reality of Chinese gardens and interpreted them entirely in the[ir] own image”.2 Yu Liu, in a book devoted to the influence of Chinese ideas on European culture in the 17th and 18th centuries, argues, by contrast, that the Chinese garden “inspired” not merely English landscaping but, through this, a whole “aesthetic revolution” in Enlightenment thought.3 229

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I am not a historian of gardens and am unable to comment on scholarly disputes about, for example, the impact of Matteo Ripa’s drawings of the Imperial Gardens at Chengde on the landscape aesthetic of Lord Burlington and his circle. The question I want to address does not concern the historical impact or influence of Chinese gardening on that of 18th-century Europe, but rather the ideological affinities between the traditions—the “worldviews” manifested in these traditions. The “entanglements” I discuss are less those that existed among actual landscapes than among the ideas and imaginations that inspired them. It might turn out, of course, that Keswick is right when she denies that there is any real similarity of “underlying philosophy” in the Chinese and English traditions. But this is not something that is entailed by the salient differences in style and design to which, as we have just seen, she draws attention. Consider, after all, how some very different styles of garden were nevertheless inspired by the shared ambition to replicate the Garden of Eden. It is possible, for example, that Marie-Louise Gothein was correct to suggest that the “underlying principle” of Chinese and English gardens—the “imitation of Nature”— was the same, and that the “only differences” were ones in the stylistic “directions” taken by those who followed this principle.4 Gothein’s suggestion, however, suffers—like many others—from excessive vagueness and breadth. It is not hard to think of several very different “principles” that might all inspire the imitation, in some sense or other, of nature. These would include the idea that gardens should reveal the essential forms of nature, for example, or the currently popular conviction that a garden should be designed so that it functions as a natural ecosystem. The same problem of vagueness and breadth affects Yu Liu’s proposal that English gardens were the product of a “fundamental principle”, borrowed from the Chinese, of “beauty without order” or “natural irregularity”.5 A taste for “beauty without order” could surely be motivated by very different considerations or principles— for example, by Joseph Addison’s belief that regular beauty is dull and allows little scope for the imagination, or by the idea that regularity, given her “abhorrence of straight lines”, is a betrayal of nature, or by the perception of regularity in garden design as evidence of a determination to “enslave” nature. My aim is to consider the affinity, or lack of it, between a few rather more specific examples of Chinese and 18th-century English philosophical conceptions of gardens and of their relationship to culture and nature.

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I shall identify one important affinity between the traditions, but one significant lack of affinity as well—a lack that was to have unfortunate implications, I shall argue, for the subsequent Western discourses both of nature and of gardens.

Paintings and “Great Nature” A clue to the affinity I want to identify is the frequent appeal made, in both traditions, to landscape painting as a model or inspiration for landscape design. Keswick points out, in her Introduction to the famous Chinese treatise on “the craft of gardens”, the Yuan ye (1631), that nearly all Chinese garden makers were painters as well. They were men who looked at nature “through eyes educated by a thousand years of landscape painting”. And in the text itself, the author, Ji Cheng, remarks that the person moving through a garden should “feel as though [he] were wandering within a painting”.6 In 18th-century England, correspondingly, it was virtually a received idea that, as William Shenstone put it, “the landskip painter is the gardener’s best designer”.7 After all, the very term “landskip” or “landscape” was originally applied not to actual places but to pictures of them. The most emphatic expressions of this received idea were to be found, unsurprisingly, among the champions of a landscape style whose very name displays its debt to painting—the picturesque. The picturesque scenes that gardeners should emulate are those, according to one such champion, Richard Payne Knight, that “nature has formed in the style and manner appropriate to painting”.8 The question is invited, naturally, of why both Chinese and 18th-century English garden designers looked towards paintings for a model? This was not, surely, for the same kind of reason that was later given by Gertrude Jekyll and Christopher Lloyd, among others, to the effect that gardening is essentially a visual art, derivative from painting, of arranging colours. The real reason is hinted at in Uvedale Price’s Essay on the Picturesque (1794), where it is suggested that the landscape designer must be acquainted with “that art [painting], the very essence of which is connection”.9 The painter’s genius, inherited by the picturesque garden designer, is to connect up into a coherent whole, and in “a small space”, a rich, complex and diverse set of elements. The designer’s aim should be to create a place of “intricacy and variety” that is nevertheless indicative of the unity and the underlying

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‘spirit and animation” of nature.10 Sir William Chambers, an enthusiast for picturesque gardens, was perhaps making a similar point when he insisted that the garden, although it should not try to copy “vulgar nature”, must be “natural”.11 It will be “natural”, Chambers implies, not through resembling some natural scene, but through manifesting or epitomising nature as a unitary phenomenon, as possessing—for all its apparent tensions and oppositions—the “concordance” discerned and admired earlier by Renaissance writers (see Yue Zhuang’s discussion in this volume). Chambers, of course, was also an enthusiast for the Chinese garden, and the theme of nature’s unity is one that is not only pervasive in Chinese thought at large, but is especially prominent in the discourse of Chinese garden makers. When the Qing literatus Zhang Chao (1650–1707) writes that “planting flowers serves to invite butterflies, piling up rocks serves to invite the clouds, planting pine trees serves to invite the wind” and so on, he is recommending that the garden should be an epitome of the web of relationships that exist in nature.12 This is nature thought of, in Hanfeizi’s phrase, as “the course of all beings” that embraces opposites within a harmonious whole and allows each thing to resonate or vibrate with everything else. In the Yuan ye, it is said that a good garden should enable “great nature to be seen”. Such a garden would, in effect, enable an experience of nature that, as it is put in The Book of Zhuangzi, manifests “the Way [that] runs through and connects everything”.13 This affinity between the underlying philosophies and ambitions of Chinese gardeners and English picturesque landscapers explains a recurrent and otherwise puzzling demand made in the literatures of both traditions. This is the insistence that, while gardening should take an art form, namely painting, as its model, the gardener’s own art must be recessive. “Though man-made”, according to the Yuan ye, a garden “should look like something naturally created”.14 For William Shenstone, the gardener’s art should be “clandestine”, and for that most strident champion of the picturesque, Richard Payne Knight, every “formal trace of art” should be hidden with care.15 The main motive behind such remarks was not, in my view, that gardens which wore their art on their sleeves would necessarily be poor imitations of nature. Nor was it that such gardens must somehow reduce the pleasures of the imagination. The reason, rather, was that these gardens would obstruct an authentic experience of nature as a power and process that connects all things together and courses through them. In the 18th-

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century Chinese classic, Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the character’s objections is not to the use of artifice in a garden—for this is inevitable—but to “the appearance of artifice”, to an all too evident “forcible interference with the landscape”. Gardens in which artifice or interference is salient and obvious are lacking in any appearance of “spontaneity” or “naturalness” [ziran]. Hence they fail to provide a theatre in which people are able to experience nature’s own “spontaneous suchness”.16 Chambers, similarly, has no objection to the landscape designer’s employment of art and artifice, but unless this is disguised the garden he designs will fail to excite an experience of nature as it is, in all its power and “horror”. The thought I have been describing, common to the designers both of Chinese gardens and European picturesque landscapes, is not, of course, a precise one. That the garden should be an epitome of nature in its power and “connectivity” or unity is an ambition that allows for many different interpretations and hence for many forms of design. There are, after all, many ways in which the elements in a garden can be made to resonate or “vibrate” with one another. But the thought is not therefore a vacuous one: it marks a real affinity between certain Chinese and English traditions and it helps to distinguish these from other tendencies and convictions in the history of garden making. I now want to turn, however, to an equally substantive lack of affinity between the two traditions.

Human Beings and Nature There is a striking feature of the long and rich Chinese literature of gardens that is far less prominent in 18th-century European garden writing. In the countless poems, memoirs and “records” that the Chinese wrote about their gardens, what is unmistakably present are the authors themselves. In early works like the poems of Tao Yuanming and Wang Wei or Wang Xizhi’s celebrated Preface to the poems composed at the Orchid Pavilion, we read less about the gardens as physical or aesthetic spaces than about the experiences or activities of the authors and other people within those spaces. Tao Yuanming, for example, writes of a sense of going “back to nature”, of “waking up” to the “meaning of life”, when he returns to his smallholding.17 Wang Xizhi’s Preface tells of the “rambling hearts” of the poets gathered at the Pavilion, of their sense of freedom

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and awareness of “the manifold riches of the earth”.18 Wang Wei writes of how, back in his “old forest home”, he regains a sense of freedom when, loosening his belt and playing his zither, he communes with the pines, the river and the moon.19 A classic of the genre is the 11th-century historian Sima Guang’s description of his Garden of Pleasure in Solitude (Dule Yuan)—or, rather, of what he did, felt and thought as he sat or moved through this garden. He fishes, reads, cuts down bamboo, seeks insight into the origins of benevolence, allows “the principles of things to gather before his eyes” and enjoys an experience of the falling away of artifice and restrictions.20 Likewise, as Joseph Cho Wang explains in his discussion of the 1688 work of Chen Fuyao Huajing [Flower Mirror], the narrative focuses less on the physical features of the garden than on the narrator’s “daily life”, his responses to the seasons and his reflections—on Zen Buddhism, for example—that are inspired by his garden.21 This autobiographical or self-reflective tone of Chinese garden writing— records of people’s immersion in their gardens—testifies to important and abiding themes in Chinese thought. To begin with, it reminds us that for the Chinese—as, later, for the Japanese—gardening is a “way”, a Dao. Gardening may have its aesthetic and practical aims, but it is first and foremost a mode or way of self-cultivation. Gardening, moreover, is especially suited to an essential aspect of self-cultivation—that of promoting an appropriate and authentic relationship between a person and the natural order. In the garden, as one commentator puts it, there is a “dialectic” of “cooperation between human beings and the natural world”.22 A practice or craft is only a way—a mode of self-cultivation—because it promotes harmony or intimacy with the Way, the Dao, that holds sway over everything. The Way, declares the early Daoist work Neiye, is “not separated from us … it fills the entire world”, natural and human. As Zhuangzi was to put it, nature—“heaven and earth”—was “born along with me … the myriad things and I are one”.23 The garden, for the Chinese garden makers and writers who were just cited, is an epitome of the harmony or “dialectic” of human life and the natural world. If, as an image familiar in Chinese literature conveys, the garden is a miniaturisation of the world, this is primarily because it condenses into a small space the mutual dependence of nature and human practice. It is a dependence nicely symbolised by the moon bridges that grace many Chinese gardens. For, looked at from an appropriate angle and in an appropriate light,

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the bridge—a product of human artifice—forms a perfect circle with its natural reflection in the water below. Themes, ideas and perspectives like these are, as mentioned, much less salient in 18th-century garden writings in England. (Exceptions, like some of the essays of William Shenstone and Pope, prove the rule.) Here the focus—for example, in the interminable squabbles about the respective merits of formal and informal design—is primarily upon the garden as an aesthetic object, something to look at and admire rather than an arena in which significant aspects of a person’s life are cultivated and realised. It is interesting, in this context, to contrast Chinese paintings of human figures—sages, poets and others—immersed in their little gardens with those of, say Thomas Gainsborough, depicting country gentlemen, gun in hand, surveying their domain. As Robert Macfarlane points out, Chinese works seem more to “partake” in the environment than to “represent” it.24 By contrast, it is rare for English paintings, poems or essays of the period to attest to a perception of the garden as a place where the “dialectic” of the human and the natural is played out, as a location for following a “way” in the sense just described. Poems or pictures that show people walking in their gardens or immersed in the enjoyment of flowers or streams, depict human interactions with nature. They do little, however, to indicate a serious recognition of the garden as a theatre in which, through enacting their intimacy with nature, men and women are at their least isolated from the natural world and hence at their most authentically human. The contrast is indeed sharp between the gun-toting landowners who populate the art and literature of the 18th-century English landscape and a figure like the Daoist sage Liezi, who invites wild birds and animals to roam in his garden and to “regard [him] as one of themselves”.25 Contrasts like this are hardly surprising, of course, given the 18th-century European Enlightenment confidence in the autonomy and special dignity of human beings. This, when superimposed on the legacy of Christianity, was bound to result in the drawing of a firm distinction between the realm of human culture and the natural world. Chinese garden making and picturesque landscape design, I argued earlier, testified to a similar understanding of the role of the garden in bodying forth, as it were, “great nature”—in making manifest the power, connectivity and unity of nature. Where the affinity ends, however, is in the European inability or reluctance to place human beings within “great

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nature”—or better, to appreciate the co-dependence between human endeavour and natural processes. For this to have been appreciated, what was required was something like the notion of the Dao as “the course of all beings”, ourselves included, and as what “fills the entire world”, our cultural world included.26 It was the presence of this notion of the Way in the Chinese imagination that enabled their landscape designers and gardeners to regard themselves as practising a way, a Dao, of selfcultivation. The relative absence of any such notion from the 18thcentury European imagination was, I now go on to suggest, to have a debilitating effect, in the following centuries, on the discourses both of nature and of the garden.

Nature Versus the Garden It has been contended that “the Daoist spirit” of Chinese landscaping contributed, not least through its influence on the picturesque style, to “that great shift of thought and sensibility known as the Romantic movement”.27 There is, however, a crucial difference between the Daoist spirit and the Romantic vision of nature. Amplifying the picturesque taste for rough, rugged terrain, the Romantics identified nature with wilderness—with natural environments that have escaped any significant and visible human imprint. Such is the vision palpable in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, J.W.M. Turner and Thomas Cole of sublime mountain ranges, forests and lakes where, if a human figure is included at all, it is someone contemplating the awesome scene from above or below, not a person who belongs within it. Entirely absent from these paintings and the wider Romantic vision is any sense of a “dialectic”, a mutuality between people and nature. While the Romantics may have rejected “a model in which culture … take[s] precedence over nature”, explains one landscape archaeologist, “the underlying split between culture and nature was not itself questioned”. Indeed, it was “reinforced”.28 Far from seeking any intimacy with nature, a Romantic artist like Thomas Cole applauded the American landscape precisely for its overwhelming “wildness” and “want of associations” with human life.29 The Romantic legacy was a discourse or rhetoric of nature, later inherited by “environmental ethics”, from which human practice is excluded, except as a potential threat to wilderness. For John Muir, Aldo

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Leopold and many other voices in this discourse, human beings should either stay away from, or at any rate “tread lightly” in, the world of nature. Gardens and other types of human or cultural landscape—parks, farms, ski slopes, swimming beaches—have no place in this discourse. Concern for the environment—moral, aesthetic, spiritual—became in essence a concern for the wild, for the “intrinsic value” it allegedly possesses independently of any relationship to humans. This is surely something to regret. The philosopher Arnold Berleant is right to emphasise that “how we engage with the prosaic landscapes of home, work, local travel, and recreation is an important measure of the quality of our lives”.30 A myopic focus on wild nature has meant, therefore, that a significant measure of our lives has been neglected. In China, there has never existed this myopia. There it has been the gardener, more than—or at any rate no less than—the mountaineer or explorer, who exemplifies an authentic stance towards nature. If the Romantic discourse of nature excluded the garden, the prevailing European discourse of the garden during the 19th century had little room for attention to nature. Instead, it was squarely situated in the “practical” discourses of horticulture or in the aesthetic ones of art and craft. While 19th-century Romantics contemplated virgin wildernesses, garden enthusiasts bought books and magazines devoted to techniques of kitchen gardening, flower colour combination or the construction of fishponds. Rare were the publications in which an author addressed questions concerning the garden’s relationship to nature at large. Despite its title, the Victorian bestseller, William Robinson’s The Wild Garden, was concerned, not with the garden’s relationship to the wild, but the importance of stocking gardens with non-native foreign plants. And despite the occasional publication that proclaimed the merits of gardening as a form of exercise or a way of channelling one’s sexual energies, there was little serious discussion of the garden’s place within a good and fulfilled life. It would be a long time before the equation between nature and wilderness was broken. A long time, therefore, before attention to human landscapes, including the garden, could be accommodated—as, of course, it always had been in the Chinese tradition—within a larger discourse that encompassed culture and nature, human practice and natural process. That it took so long is due to the failure of 18th-century European admirers of Chinese landscape design properly to appreciate the understanding of the world, and of the location of human beings within it, that the Chinese garden epitomised. Perhaps the consequences

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of this failure are still with us, for there remain pockets of resistance in the West to gardening. By some it is still regarded as an illegitimate intervention in nature. It is interesting to note, moreover, that when, in the late 20th century, theorists and designers in the West began closely to attend to the garden’s distinctive relationship to culture and nature, these were often people who had been influenced by their experience of Chinese and Japanese gardens. One thinks, for example, of Keswick and her husband Charles Jencks, the designers of The Garden of Cosmic Inspiration in Scotland, who both wrote on Chinese garden history.

Conclusion One value of the metaphor of entangled landscapes is its implication that different narrative strands may get confused and therefore need to be separated by historians and other students of landscapes and gardens. Perhaps, for example, Walpole and Gray were right to distinguish, in effect, between the Chinese influence on the decoration of English gardens and its alleged influence on landscape design and planting. That English gardens bore the marks—pagodas, moon-bridges and so on—of an enthusiasm for chinoiserie that was undeniable. But this was hardly sufficient to warrant the judgement of an Italian visitor in the 1760s that “the English have derived their present taste in gardening from the Chinese”. English gardens, Walpole agreed, were “whimsically irregular”, as were Chinese ones. The similarity, however, was a very broad one and, in Walpole’s view, quite insufficient to establish an actual debt by English designers to Chinese traditions.31 In this article, I have not been concerned with the entanglements of historical narratives. Instead I have tried to identify and distinguish strands in the “worldviews” that are manifested by Chinese gardens and English—especially picturesque—landscapes respectively. I argued that, in both cases, a certain conception of nature—as a unifying power that courses through things—is expressed. This is not a vacuous or insignificant similarity between the traditions. It should not, however, be allowed to mask a crucial difference between them. In the Chinese imagination, I argued, we human beings are among the “things” that nature courses through, so that there is artificiality in any sharp separation of nature and

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culture. This same separation, however, remained central in the European imagination during both the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. There may well be a narrative to tell of the influence of Chinese—or, more broadly, East Asian—philosophies of nature on European landscape design. But, as I indicated at the end of the previous section, this story is, in effect, a late 20th-century one—a story, at any rate, that unfolds much later than the era to which the articles in this volume attend.

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Notes 1.

Georges-Louis Le Rouge, Détails de nouveaux jardins à la mode [Details of New Gardens in Fashion] (1786), quoted in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, eds., The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620– 1820 (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1988), p. 33.

2. 3.

Maggie Keswick, The Chinese Garden (London: Academy, 1980), p. 24. Yu Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden: Chinese Gardening Ideas and a New English Aesthetic Ideal (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008).

4.

Marie-Louise Gothein, A History of Garden Art (New York, NY: Hacker, 1966), Chapter XIV.

5. Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden, pp. 33, 41. 6.

Ji Cheng, The Craft of Gardens (Yuan ye), trans. Alison Hardie (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 23, 120.

7.

Cited in Hunt and Willis, The Genius of the Place, p. 291.

8.

Ibid., p. 350.

9.

Cited in Richard Mabey, Beechcombings: The Narratives of Trees (London: Vintage, 2008), p. 142. My italics. My remarks on the picturesque owes much to Mabey’s discussion.

10. Cited in Hunt and Willis, The Genius of the Place, p. 351ff. 11. Ibid., p. 322. 12. Zhang Chao 張潮, Youmengying 幽夢影 [The Shadow of Dim Dreams] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2008); English translation cited in Jean C. Cooper, An Illustrated Introduction to Taoism (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2010), p. 122. 13. Zhuangzi: The Essential Writings, trans. Brook Ziporyn (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009), Chapter 22. 14. Ji Cheng, The Craft of Gardens, p. 43. 15. Cited in Hunt and Willis, The Genius of the Place, pp. 293, 348. 16. On Dream of the Red Chamber, see Charles Jencks’ remarks in Keswick, The Chinese Garden, p. 193ff. 17. Cited in David E. Cooper, Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective (Dartington: Green Books, 2012), p. 18. 18. Cited in Cooper, Convergence with Nature, p. 55. 19. Wang Wei, in Three Hundred Tang Poems, trans. Peter Harris (New York, NY: Knopf, 2009), p. 224. 20. On Sima Guang, see Keswick, The Chinese Garden, p. 84ff; Leonidas

Koutsoumpos and Yue Zhuang, “Phronēsis and Dao: Cultivating Ethics

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and Wisdom in the Process of Making Architecture”, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 9, 2 (2016): 218–21. 21. On Chen Fuyao, see Joseph Cho Wang, The Chinese Garden (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 23ff. 22. Jeffrey F. Meyer, “Salvation in the Garden: Daoism and Ecology”, in Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape, ed. N. Girardot et al. (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 223. 23. For the citation in Neiye, see Harold D. Roth, “Translation of Inward Training”, in Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Training (Nei-yeh) and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1999), V (16.1b10–2a2), XIV(16.3a2–8); for Zhuangzi’s remark see Ziporyn, Zhuangzi, Chapter 2. 24. Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places (London: Granta, 2007), p. 32. 25. The Book of Lieh-Tzu: A Classic of the Tao, trans. A.C. Graham (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 43. 26. For a more detailed discussion on this topic, see Cooper, Convergence with Nature; “Gardens and the Way of Things”, in Earth Perfect: Nature, Utopia and the Garden, ed. A. Giesecke and N. Jacobs (London: Black Dog, 2012), pp. 20–33. 27. J.J. Clarke, The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 158. 28. Matthew Johnson, Ideas of Landscape (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 27. 29. Cited in Yuriko Saito, “Cultural Construction of National Landscapes and its Consequences”, in Humans in the Land: The Ethics and Aesthetics of the Cultural Landscape, ed. S. Arntzen and E. Brady (Oslo: Unipub, 2008), pp. 226, 228. 30. Cited in ibid., p. 243. 31. See Liu, Seeds of a Different Eden, p. 3ff.

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Chapter 8

Postscript: Contemporary Chinese Landscape Aesthetics between Crisis and Creativity ANDREA M. RIEMENSCHNITTER

Introduction IN traditional Chinese culture, the empire’s network of rivers and mountains was considered its bloodline, or moral and spiritual essence. Impenetrable, mountainous landscapes constituted a sacred geography where the life forces of rebirth and renewal dwelled.1 Religious or, more generally, moral practice was connected with the most spectacular mountainscapes, making use of their sublimity partly in service of the ruling political power, and partly in defiance of the same. It was widely believed that there was a link between the spiritual essence of the lofty mountain and the moral superiority of people who chose to conduct their lives in such rigid environments.2 Landscape painting and poetry occupied a privileged space in the cultural production of the educated elite,3 who, as part of their aesthetic education and recreation, reproduced miniature landscapes with rare natural objects deemed spiritually advanced—such as charismatic trees and pitted stones—for their urban gardens.4 Stephen West, discussing Zhu Changwen’s contribution to the poetics of Chinese landscape, comments: “Trees and flowers are not only a link to the ‘wild’ nature he loved, but were also constitutive symbols in a naturalized poetics of cultural space.”5 242

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In the wake of China’s cultural modernisation, following the late 19th century, these religiously invested values withered, although landscape symbolism continued to play an important role in the formation of the nation and its cultural production. A major change was to vernacularise the region’s landscapes: the new territorial imaginary derived from European Enlightenment thought promoted the subjection of national space to scientific rationalism, progress and linear time,6 thus economising nature and bringing to the fore negative notions of rural backwardness or desolate wilderness. Consequently, Mao Zedong established the elimination of rural poverty as a major political target.7 But despite the tragic failure of his war against nature, China’s transition from revolutionary to reform society continued to turn landscapes into wastelands. Harmful modes of production and the over-exploitation of resources still threaten to jeopardise the recent high governmental investment into a programme called environmental modernisation.8 Observing the regrettable impacts of Chinese topographical constraints, social realities and capitalist economic policies that have taken an unprecedented toll on the environment, concerned writers and artists engage with the crisis by probing into the epistemes and paradigms of globalisation. Inspired by ancient ethico-cosmological ideas, their works aspire to a far-reaching revaluation of Chinese modernity. They radically question the present political economy of uneven development by quick profit extraction, and insist on the world’s need for a new landscape aesthetics as the precondition for sustainability and a morally reconstructed community. In this way, they significantly contribute to the formation of an environmental turn in China’s cultural production.9 One way of articulating environmental worries is to invoke the nation’s cultural memory by relating the present to earlier periods of historical crisis. Exposing widely shared anxieties, the voices of this ecoaesthetic discourse chime in with China’s NGO activists.10 While their discourse of protection and restoration reinvigorates ancient visions of organic interaction between the “ten thousand things” 万物 (wanwu)—a category that includes human beings—the state project of environmental modernisation still operates under the master narrative of scientific progress and an unlimited horizon of change, which defines ecological interests in a restricted, anthropocentric framework based on tolerance for unsustainable production modes. As will be demonstrated below, culturally encoded criticism of industrial landscape degradation interrogates the

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official policy on historical, aesthetic and economic grounds. The authors’ calls for re-orientation lean towards ancient cosmological ideas, such as the concept of ziran 自然—“self-evidencing” or “self-actualization”11— supporting grassroots creativity rather than hierarchical power exertion. In the following discussion, it will be demonstrated that eco-critical cartoons and literary works address environmental issues from the point of view of an interference of economy, politics, pedagogy as well as history and ethics, thus offering themselves as blueprints for the concept of entangled landscapes. Drawing from Rey Chow’s reflections on the concomitant processes of a politicisation of identities and the dismantling of identification, which resulted in an instrumentalist order of partition, I will argue that feelings of loss haunt modernity’s “conscious disengagement from binding emotions such as empathy and compassion”12 in figures of ghostly recurrences that are presently restructuring narratives about human-thing relationships in eco-aesthetic contexts. Chow understands the efforts of early 20th-century modernist intellectuals to disentangle Chinese audiences from emotional identification with the witnessed (aesthetic) spectacle as unintentionally supportive of the emergent, neocolonial world order of partition. Contemporary works of art reflect on the new generation’s worldly entanglements and present a Chinese self which is both trapped and captivated by residual, suppressed or sublimated feelings of attachment to the premodern, native world order. When read carefully, such art works may derive “evolving states of freedom” from the “most painful entanglements”, argues Chow. The fact that the Chinese term for entanglement, chan 缠, is homonymous with the term for Buddhist meditation, chan 禅 (zen), inspires the imagining of alternative forms of enlightenment.13 Shifting her conceptual suggestions on the plane of environmental landscape aesthetics, two major trends can be discerned; first, the shift from anthropocentric to ecocentric world view brings melancholic comments on actual hazards, such as air pollution, to the fore. Second, an eco-critical discourse in aesthetic theory and representation engages with ancient cosmological epistemes that are selectively retrieved as transposable paradigms for modern environmental ethics. Both trends generously borrow from traditional literati culture while constructing alternative sets of moral and aesthetic values. From this point of view, the values ingrained in ancient conceptions have been foreclosed prematurely in the early phases of modernisation. Envisioning a new moral community,

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the regime’s recent trajectory of environmental modernisation is put to test and blueprints of an alternative, sustainable future fostered by responsible, politically mature and effectively empowered environmental subjects are developed. Most certainly, the authors of such utopian ideals are aware that their actual lifestyles are entrenched in the same harmful consumerism they criticise. Hence Buddhist, Daoist and Confucian revaluations of nature and landscapes in Chinese eco-art and environmental aesthetics are investigated with respect to their potential for answering questions of how to deal personally and collectively with the civilisational entanglements stemming from globalised capitalism.

Rendezvous with the Classics Historical Models of Chinese Eco-writing “Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language”, remarks Raymond Williams,14 while James Elkins notes that of all the subjects tackled in his Art Seminar series, landscape “may be the most desperately confused”.15 This certainly holds true beyond the Euro-American canon of landscape aesthetics, as the present volume amply demonstrates. Whereas the ruling Qing elite still believed that it was possible to control the influx of foreign ideas, modern intellectuals noticed the unpredictable effects of compounded agency when they began seriously to reflect upon the relationship between their nation’s modernisation and environmental issues during the 1980s. While industrial pollution was not yet on their radar, the Maoist assault on landscapes in the name of industrial modernisation became a prominent metaphor for the violence inflicted upon the reconstructed revolutionary subject in rusticated youth narratives. Younger authors who grew up under Deng Xiaoping’s regime of capitalist modernisation are currently contributing to a thriving literature on the damaging effects of consumerism on humans and their environment. Wang Shudong mentions four different ways of relating to nature in contemporary environmental literature: first, the violent assertion of one’s own vital energy against inimical forces, and in the Dionysian spirit derived from Western modernism. Such an approach has been ascribed to Mo Yan’s 莫言 novel Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang jiazu 红高粱家族, 1987). Second, the Daoist spirit of unobtrusive self-actualisation, which is re-enacted, from the perspective of irreversible civilisational damage, as a melancholic

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search for a lost paradise in the mode of Tao Yuanming’s canonical story of the Peach Blossom Spring (which Hui Zou discusses in Chapter 5)—the tale of an idyllic peasant community dwelling in a remote mountain valley, outside the reach of history. This story was repeatedly rewritten during the 1980s by authors like Chi Zijian 迟子建, Jia Pingwa 贾平凹 and Wang Zengqi 汪曾祺. Third, a focus on the female power of creation reconfigured in secularised narratives of mother goddesses—Mo Yan’s novel Big Breasts and Wide Hips (Fengru feitun 丰乳肥臀, 1995) is a well-known example of this concept. Pace Wang’s mantra of secularism, I want to suggest that this novel develops a post-secular, deliberately promiscuous figure of hope.16 Fourth, a post-naturalist spirit that is concerned with the affirmation of one’s natural disposition and instincts against the disciplining violence of high culture. According to Wang, this trend was initiated by the hooligan fiction of Wang Shuo 王朔 and continued in the so-called lower body poetry of authors like Nanren 南人, Shen Haobo 沈浩波 and Duo Yu 朵 鱼.17 In a subsequent publication, Wang highlights three main topics in 1980s eco-writing: first, historical reflection; second, a critique of the kind of reality that was incubated by socialist modernisation; and third, social improvement based on ecological ideals. Identifying Yunnan’s endangered rain forest as a leitmotif for early eco-critical writings, Wang discusses a short story by Sichuan woman writer Ding Xiaoqi 丁小琦 as an example of critical intellectual engagements with rainforest extermination by the state-run rubber plantation industry. As one of the most positively acclaimed eco-critical narratives, Ah Cheng’s 阿成 King of Trees (Shu wang 树王, 1984), features the same subject matter as Ding’s story, but shims its criticism with shamanist beliefs and Daoist nature philosophy. Gao Xingjian’s 高行健 drama Wild Man (Yeren 野人, 1985) also argues for the protection of pristine forests, while indicting Chinese modernity for its Western-derived materialism through the lens of Daoist ideas about vitality, spiritual rejuvenation and species transcendence.18 These forerunners of an environmental discourse were joined by a growing group of intellectuals and writers during the 1990s, who broadened the scope of themes and genres. Since the turn of the millennium, the reflection on the relationship between natural phenomena and human society, and the possibility of engendering a new world order based on alternative ideas about politics, history, ethics and the role of aesthetic performance, has become a major concern in both literary and artistic creation.

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“Song of Ever-lasting Sorrow” (Chang hen ge) Nature symbolism and landscapes in classical poetry are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for contemporary environmental art and literature. But while bloggers frequently draw from popular culture to make cynical jokes relating to the latest environmental hazards, concerned intellectuals express some apprehension as they contemplate historical precedents for today’s crisis, comparing the aggravating national situation to a defeat in war.19 For example, the beginning lines from the Tang poem, “Spring Scene” (Chunwang 春望) (757) by Du Fu 杜甫, “The nation destroyed though mountains and rivers remain./Spring in the city, grass and trees lush” (Guo po, shan he zai, cheng chun cao mu shen 国破山河在, 城春草 木深) only required minimal editing to express the citizens’ worries about the present ecological condition. Hence the poem was deliberately misquoted as: “The nation remains, though mountains and rivers are destroyed” (Guozai, shanhe po 国在山河破). In the original poem, Du Fu bemoans the destruction of the Tang dynasty capital Chang’an, which had been instigated by the rebellious generals An Lushan 安禄山 and Shi Siming 史思明: Feeling the time, flowers shed tears, Hating separation, a bird startles the heart. Beacon fires span over three months, A family letter equals ten thousand taels of gold My white hairs, as I scratch them, grow more sparse, Simply becoming unable to hold hairpins.20

An had originally been showered with favours by the imperial concubine Yang Guifei 杨贵妃, who was later immortalised in Chinese opera and literature on account of her skills in dance and music, as well as for her tragic death in the midst of this turmoil. Du Fu himself was caught in flight and taken hostage for a while by the rebels. His poetry is praised for its strong expression of sympathy with the ordinary people, but can also be admired for its articulation of trans-human sensibilities. Zong-qi Cai suggests that the relationship between nature and the realm of the human in this poem can be read in three different keys: as a disheartening juxtaposition of

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suffering man and indifferent nature; as the poet’s empathy with nature in its presumed abandonment by humankind; and as the mutual resonance, or a shared emotional state between man and nature.21 In the context of the present rewriting, the first variant has been reversed, as it is now indifferent man who has caused nature to suffer and perish. From this follows that the second variant must be writ large, and the third variant is staged as a utopian desire farther away from its realisation than ever. The reshuffling of words within the first verse of Du Fu’s poem did not originate from an insulated view on some local incident, but rather aligned contemporary experience with earlier manmade historical disasters, thereby exposing a pattern of recurring national crises. However, this time around it is not a war between states or military armies, but the aftermath of Mao’s “War on Nature”. During the 1980s and 1990s, its legacy survived in different guises in Deng’s reform China, such as in the Xibu da kaifa 西 部大开发 (Great Development of the West) programme. It was kicked off to develop economically the non-Han western peripheries, and recently reissued as a transnational trajectory under the name of Yidai yilu 一带一 路 (One Belt One Road). Environmental scholars and activists are alarmed, though, because the mining industry and other ambitious development projects put pressure on the region’s most vulnerable landscapes.22 One politically sensitive aspect of the classical poetry-based comments is their allusion to the most dreaded, recurring historical misfortune: rebellion and the eventual fall of the dynasty. The An Lushan rebellion is estimated to have caused a temporary decline of up to two-thirds of the country’s population, a decline that comprises the high number of casualties and the large-scale southward migration. Will such a situation be met, or even surpassed by, the consequences of an ecological collapse that pessimistic environmentalists adumbrate as imminent?

A River of Representatives Flows East Recourse to historical precedents need not always be just tragic and tearful. There is much room for humour, as blogger cartoons demonstrate. Commenting on the March 2013 Huangpu River incident—to be discussed in more detail below—a web cartoonist known by the English pseudonym of Crazy Crab drew a group of dead pigs floating towards the eastern ocean, while one lonely survivor with a crown and a name tag that identifies him as a “Reform” leader frantically paddles upstream (Fig. 8.1).

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Fig. 8.1: Xie Nongchang 蟹农场[Crab Farm], “Yi jiang daibiao xiang dong liu” 一江代表向东流 [A River of Representatives Flows East]. From https://chinadigitaltimes. net/chinese/2013/03/【图说天朝】一周网络漫画选 摘-2013-3-17/ [accessed 8 Feb. 2016].

The title of the cartoon is a pun on the 1947 movie The Spring River Flows East (Yi jiang chunshui xiang dong liu 一江春水向东流, Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli), which in turn is derived from a classical poem written roughly 200 years after Du Fu’s times. It reads as follows: Spring flowers, autumn moon—when will they end? Past affairs—who knows how many? Last night in the small pavilion the east wind came again. I dare not turn my head toward my homeland in the moonlight. The inlaid balustrade and jade stairs must still be there, It’s only the youthful faces that have changed. I ask you, how much sorrow can there be? As much as a river full of spring waters, flowing east.23

The poem was written by the last (southern) Tang emperor, Li Yu 李 煜 (936–78), who followed his father on the exile throne in 961. In 975, his relocated capital Nanjing was seized by the Song forces and he was

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taken hostage and transferred to the Kaifeng court as nominal Marquis of Weiming. When he wrote the poem to lament his fallen empire (and possibly also the rape of his second wife by the victorious Song emperor) in 978, he was killed by means of poison. The imagery of water, moon and death relates to the cosmic yin force and, with its cyclical encodings, bridges different historical times. In passing we may note that the poem’s title alludes to a tune called Beautiful Lady Yu. The name of the disgraced Tang emperor’s wife was later used as a signifier of the poppy flower, which not only symbolises love, but also the death of war heroes. In its new stage setting, moreover, it may carry the connotation of violated nature. As the leading representative’s body displays the characters for reform, viewers are further inspired to imagine the imminent “water burial” of the regime’s leading political orientation. By alluding to the 1947 movie, which shows a family ruined through the corruption, lust and greed of its failed patriarch— who had started his family life as a virtuous communist24—the cartoon suggests that a similar problem may lurk behind the many environmental casualties that have become daily news in the media. Apparently, the cartoonist likens the current situation to two of the most notorious epochs of leadership failure and dynastic crisis in Chinese history. Yet at the same time, the concept of entangled landscapes possibly unfolds its most sinister interpretation in the figure of the river representing the Chinese nation’s temporality as forever haunted by the sorrows of a captured emperor and his raped wife.

The Apocalyptic World of Neorealist Fiction Whereas casually reworded classical poetry serves as the widespread mouthpiece of political comment, fiction contributes more profound and durable possibilities for intervention. Authors of diceng wenxue 底层 文学 (literature of the lowest social rungs) are among the most exigent proclaimers of the pending crisis. In Chen Yingsong’s 陈应松 novella Taiping gou 太平狗 (Peace Dog, 2005),25 migrant worker Cheng Dazhong’s dog, who is named Taiping, stubbornly accompanies his master from their mountain hamlet to the city, and then on to a chemical plant in the outskirts of Wuhan. Taiping— allegory of the nation’s disenfranchised and voiceless subjects—does not understand why he is led to this cold urban wasteland, and why his master suddenly beats, kicks and even sells him to a dog butcher. Yet, his loyal character forbids him to abandon Cheng even under

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the most dire circumstances. When Cheng and Taiping end up caught as prisoners in the industrial compound, the master is forced into slavery and the dog narrowly escapes another slaughter by swimming across a pungent tarn filled with the plant’s toxic waste. The landscape out there is degraded to the point that the dog finds no food, other than a pack of belligerent rats and the poisoned corpses of larger animals. Cheng Dazhong is made to process hazardous chemicals unprotected until he is too sick for further exploitation. Upon Cheng’s death and cremation the badly weathered dog limps back to the village, spurred by its memory of the place where it had lived in dignity. Early on, readers learned that this race was famous for its fearlessness even in the face of tigers or bandits. Hence before the dog was forced to survive on sly nightly rummaging through urban waste, it had served as a highly respected hunter and guard in a poor, yet convivial, village community of humans and domestic animals. Drawing on Cary Wolfe and others, Lily Hong Chen explains that Chen Yingsong’s story illustrates how institutional acceptance of the systematic exploitation of, and violence against, other species, like animals, suggests an ability to turn a blind eye to these same principles when applied to humans. Indeed, aspiring urbanite Cheng Dazhong treats his dog exactly the way he himself is treated by his new peers. Chen consequently reads the dog’s perception of this brave new world as an indicator of an independent, subjective voice, contending that: the author’s creation of the dog character by giving him a voice of his own is less a naïve act of anthropomorphism than an honest and posthumanist recognition of the animal and the human as not fundamentally different from each other.26

In Western philosophy, a voice of one’s own is a marker of modern subjectivity. In the story, neither master nor dog reflect their situation in their own words. However, based on the dog’s discrimination between good and evil environments, and bare life pragmatism, a diceng 底层 (lower rung) subjectivity emerges. Concomitantly, a poetics of landscape is translucent in Taiping’s nostalgic memories of the remote home village. This community still observes the rhythm of seasonal cycles and is firmly embedded in a world of pristine mountains, forests and waterways. The distinction between the modern urban wasteland that entirely depends on excessive resource extraction, an infernal border zone in between

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city and countryside where pollution and degradation are rampant, and the affectionate warmth of a frugal village bears political overtones. The topography of such a landscape awkwardly connects a sanctuary of the poor and voiceless, depicting their avatars as recently subalternised human and non-human resources, and the nation’s equally endangered natural realms of timeless magnitude. Whereas modern nationalism had appropriated these landscapes as mythic signifiers of the nation’s glorious origins, Chen Yingsong’s post-humanist story contends that in the advent of the 21st century the nation began to speed head-on into a state of “never-ending sorrow”—now not so much for the transitoriness of imperial splendour and female youth and beauty, as in the two poems discussed above, but for the decay of human kindliness and the irrevocable destruction of nature’s regenerative power.

Strange Stories from Cathay (Huaxia yishi lu) Animals loom as large in ecological protest cartoon art. As mentioned before, and while Beijing suffered from the worst-ever smog pollution, up to 16,000 dead pigs were sent floating down Huangpu River, supposedly from the city of Jiaxing in the western neighbourhood of Shanghai in March 2013. A few days later, more than a thousand dead ducks followed on the pigs’ heels. The Huangpu, after a prolonged period of serving as a domestic sewage and industrial waste receiver, is today considered sufficiently safe to be one source of Shanghai’s drinking water. When worried citizens called the authorities they were told that there was no danger as the water quality showed no impact. Netizens offered a cornucopia of satirical commentary. One cartoon used the image of the—ritually improper—water burial by showing a fat pig who advises a skinny, poor and desperate-looking old man that he should take water into consideration as the cheapest available burial space (shuizang 水葬), hinting at the fact that the fine for dumping (animal) corpses usually does not exceed 3000 Yuan (Fig. 8.2). Another cartoon shows Narcissus scrutinising his porcine counterfeit in the river, commenting that it can serve as a mirror for the Chinese people (Fig. 8.3). Folklore transgresses the boundary between human and non-human bodies with great ease, as the popular genre of the ghost story exemplifies. A turn towards traditional folklore in youth culture recently produced a great amount of narratives that combine this archaic genre of anomaly accounts with modern environmental issues. Consequently, its attempts to

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Fig. 8.2: Dashixiong 大尸兄, “Fine of 3000 Yuan for Disorderly Disposal of Pig Corpses”. http://chinadigitaltimes. net/chinese/2013/03/【图说天朝】一 周网络漫画选摘-2013-3-24/ [accessed 8 Feb. 2016].

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Fig. 8.3: Meng Chenshang 梦晨伤, “Casual Thought: The Huangpu River is a Mirror of the Chinese People”. http://www.360doc. com/content/13/0326/20/23665 _274098469.shtml [accessed 8 Feb. 2016].

mobilise audiences to resist the pervasive practice of alienating the realm of non-human nature for quick material benefit are steered by a desire to restore premodern, transhuman aesthetic sensibilities. This call to move away from Mao Zedong’s slogan of “people are masters of their own fate” (ren ding sheng tian 人定胜天) takes issue with scientific modernisation and anthropocentric development theories, which are legitimating both the communist and capitalist exploitation of bodies and natural resources, and expresses concern about the cultural loss suffered from their enforced implementation.27 Cartoonist Mr Satan, for instance, created a storybook of allegorical cartoons related to crime, political malpractice and environmental issues under the title of Strange Stories from Cathay (Huaxia yishi lu 华夏异事录). The outlandish name of Huaxia, which is a retranslation of Marco Polo’s Cathay, indicates an ongoing entanglement of modern China’s self-perception with ancient European Orientalist ideas about the East. Mr Satan’s Pig-Dipper looks like a Buddhist demon; maybe it was based on the Tibetan model of Yamantaka, a wrathful demon

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of the underworld with many arms. The commentary explains that this strange demon, whose whereabouts are unknown, is addicted to dipping pigs, but when there is a shortage, chicken and ducks may be dipped by him too (Fig. 8.4). The cartoon’s narrative is arranged in the fashion of a traditional anomaly account, a hybrid form featuring ghost stories and spiritual geographies, which was popular as early as the first century BCE

Fig. 8.4: Sadan Jun 撒旦君 [Mr Satan], “The Pig Dipper”, Huaxia yishi lu 华夏异事 录 [Strange Stories from Cathay]. http:// baike.baidu.com/view/10497270.htm [accessed 8 Feb. 2016].

and commercialised during the late imperial Ming and Qing dynasties.28 It continued doing very well in newspaper and magazine supplement literature throughout Republican times.29 Mr Satan’s naked Pig-Dipper sits on the shore of a river with a heap of dead pigs in his lap. In the background viewers see a picturesque Chinese village nested into a landscape of mountains. Behind the mountains, a menacing black sun rises. The demon, with his pig-head mask, is depicted as a liminal creature encroaching upon the centre from the uncivilised periphery, thereby signifying a crumbling cosmological order which

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cannot hold its monsters at bay. His arrival at the shores of China’s economic boom region could announce a new world arising from the ashes of the old one—which anomaly accounts since antiquity have helped to usher in and disseminate.30 Despite campaigns against superstition conducted to wipe out feudal remnants in Maoist times, some religious legends survived the modernist secularism. Besides the predominantly Daoist legacy of the earliest anomaly accounts, Buddhist legends like the ones collected and standardised in the novel Journey to the West (Xiyouji 西游记) thrived throughout imperial times and continued to be applied to legitimate political turns in modern national history. Zhang Guangyu’s 张光宇 cartoon series Journey to the West (Xiyou manhua 西游漫画) attacked the nationalist Guomindang party in 1945, and a poster showing Mao’s fourth wife Jiang Qing 江青 as the White Bone Demon beaten in battle by the mythological Monkey King Sun Wukong 孙悟空 was published in the wake of the fall of the Gang of Four, dating from 1977 (designed in 1976).31 Porcine demon Zhu Bajie 猪八戒, a comic figure renowned for his physical power and martial spirit, but also for uncontrolled gluttony and lust, is another helper of Journey to the West’s main protagonist, Monk Tripitaka (Xuanzang 玄奘). Zhu was banned from Heaven because he tried to seduce Chang E 嫦娥, the Moon Goddess. One cartoon shows Zhu Bajie as a corrupt official who is heading south rather than west—with Shanghai and Shenzhen as centres of China’s economic miracle—while his mistress urges him to put on more clothes, because of late, she says, the south has turned cold.32 The cartoons’ witty quotes and puns from the classics suggest a long legacy of unaccountable governance. In the present context, the rapidly growing collateral damage of shortsighted profit orientation meets with the frowning of a cultural memory which has seen and recorded too many similar incidents over a long period of time. While contemporary society experiences the numbing effects of cultural homogenisation, mass production and amnesia, a local spirit of revolt still thrives in social media, celebrating independent judgment and the transcultural diversity of aesthetic traditions, genres and styles.

“Life of Pig” Only a few months before the dead pigs incident, in November 2012, Taiwan director Ang Lee’s movie Life of Pi was released in China. In the wake of its screening, netizens fathomed the gap between the universalist

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ethical appeal to tear down the boundaries between human and nonhuman forms of existence that is at the heart of Yann Martel’s novel on the one hand, and the excessively utilitarian attitude towards life which motivates agri-industrial livestock farming and the ensuing mass disposal of dead animals crushed under insufferable conditions on the other. Life of Pig cartoons inundated the web, raising questions about slippery morality, such as the practice of self-blindfolding with respect to everything that we do not want to see, as well as modern civilisation’s packaging of spiritual death as physical comfort.33 In one picture featuring gas mask-protected Pi and hungry Richard Parker surrounded by floating dead pigs, the tiger with the respectable human name acts in a rather undignified way. He darts into the water screaming: “There’s meat! If I die, I will at least be a ghost who has eaten his fill (baosigui 饱死鬼)!”34 Another cartoon designed as a “5D” mock DVD cover displays Papa and Mama Pig watching from the riverbank, while a fisherman retrieves what looks like their dead offspring. This dystopian family romance alludes to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, which was on stage in Beijing in 2002 and since then has also been alluded to in Chinese eco-documentaries and docu-style feature films. A rather subtle scene is offered by Gou Ben’s cartoon (Fig. 8.5): Pi, turning his back to the viewer, is busy handling his shipload of dead pigs’ bodies. It is left unclear in which direction his gesture is aiming. Is he clearing pig corpses from the ship or trying to retrieve the ones from the ocean? This moment of pause strikes as a comment on the current political situation, raising the question of where the fragile (national) ship and its significantly tiger-less captain are headed for. Is the routine of daily incidents to be continued or will a heroic effort be made to confront the damage? There is early modern literary precedence to this image of a

Fig. 8.5: Dashixiong, “Life of Pig”. https:// chinadigitaltimes.net/ chinese/2013/03/ 【组图】网民恶搞回 应浙江死猪事件: 少年pig的奇幻漂流/ [accessed 29 Apr. 2014].

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shipwrecked Chinese nation. In his 1904 social satire Lao Can youji 老残 游记 (The Travels of Lao Can), novelist Liu E 刘鹗 (1857–1909) evokes the scene of a sinking ship on which crew and passengers endlessly debate over ways to save their lives instead of taking action. When they finally come up with a solution, it is to throw overboard the only figure of hope, a passenger who possesses a compass.35

From Landscape Aesthetics to Environmental Ethics Melancholia is not only the signature mood of the modernist intellectual, but has a long cultural history that reaches back to the first Chinese poet, who was known by the name of Qu Yuan 屈原 (343–278 BCE). More broadly speaking, quotations from the classics continually resurface as a suitable vehicle for conveying feelings of loss. Striving to retrieve the moral standards inscribed in traditional landscape aesthetics, many poets, artists and cultural critics found inspiration in Qu Yuan’s elaborate plant symbolism. Nevertheless, the venerated practice of referencing Qu Yuan’s poem “Encountering Sorrow” (Li sao 离骚) was not sufficient in establishing peaceful forms of pressure for change in China’s past. Therefore, the early modern adoption of Western enlightenment values, which operated in defence against Western aggression, turned vehemently against these native traditions.36 This led to the roundabout discrediting not only of local folk religions—which modernisers since the late 19th century had sweepingly denounced as superstition—but everything that did not conform to scientific rationalism, including the philosophical traditions of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism with their strong focus on continuity and the harmonious relationship of humans with nature. Ideas adumbrating the fusion of Chinese religious thought and modern nation-building had been considered early on, but they could not win sufficient recognition under the historical circumstances.37 Equally unheeded were Karl Marx’ ecological warnings concerning the growing metabolic rift between nature and modern societies: Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.38

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The situation, however, has changed dramatically under the spell of Anthropocene concerns. Hence, intellectuals facing the latest phase in the environmental crisis begin to ask whether a system that integrates Marxist and Confucian thought, at the same time as incorporating Daoist and Buddhist elements, and which endorses traditional wisdom—that claims humans constitute a privileged, but not isolated part of an integrated cosmic organism—could perhaps help to do away with the most destructive forms of industrial exploitation. Taken seriously, it implies a radical refashioning of one’s lifestyle and consumption habits. Indeed, ancient elite techniques of self-cultivation were based on sternly disciplining exercises like meditation, special (vegetarian) diets and an overall ascetic attitude towards worldly temptations such as the accumulation of material wealth. Recently, the Chinese ascetic tradition has been mobilised by present-day environmentalists outside of China, observes Aat Vervoorn in his monograph on recluses: [T]he relevance of early Chinese hermits to the modern world is unexpectedly direct; the fascination they hold is to no small extent due to the fact that the problems they faced and their responses to them seem so familiar. Those who either have been tempted or have actually gone so far as to drop out of contemporary society, take up subsistence farming so as to minimize contact with a world gone crazy, ignore the demands of a State they regard as corrupt, or otherwise embrace civil disobedience in an effort to retain a belief in their own integrity, will find that their actions have been fully prefigured by the Chinese hermits of long ago.39

His book was published in 1990, when China had a mere ten-year-old history of reform capitalism, and its hopes for a quick turn towards a clean and green economy were still alive. Meanwhile there are signs that ancient eremitism has also experienced a revival in China, adding to the diversification of urban middle-class eco-lifestyles, and circulating in new forms of nature writing. A growing number of movies, documentaries, novels, poems and essays, which employ modern technologies and traditional religious values and beliefs in order to critically address the environmental consequences of the nation’s ambitious economic policies, can be easily identified. Other texts search for places where nature still

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seems more or less intact, so that humans can engender alternatives to the prevailing approaches to landscapes.40 Relying on Walter Benjamin’s critique of capitalist modernisation, and with an eye to Hong Kong’s accelerated transformation since the 1970s, Ackbar Abbas had termed the attitude of looking at vanishing objects with sentiments of love at last sight as an aesthetics of déjà disparu.41 When surveying aesthetic approaches addressing this phenomenon, a parallel between Hong Kong’s post-colonial architecture and mainland China’s landscapes can be drawn. For several decades, the general trend of demolition, reconstruction and urban sprawl was not met with much resistance in the cities. Even now, as the wind is changing in favour of environmental protection, in the majority of protest cases only those citizens who are directly affected, for instance by industrial pollution or new traffic routes, constitute temporary activist groups. This urban inertia may historically be seen as a result of the changed relationship between elite subjects, the city and the countryside. Nowadays hardly any urban citizens plan to retire to their countryside home after the completion of their professional duties—mainly because their family homes were collectivised and destroyed during Maoist times. But this change is also due to a change in prevailing ideologies, which for the most part no longer attribute any value to rural life. In addition, land acquisition is not only expensive, but also still not sufficiently protected unless it is part of an institutional development scheme. Therefore, the countryside has lost the investment and, as a consequence, the aesthetic appeal that was traditionally accorded to it by the cultural elite. Before the Maoist land reforms, even modern literati would still arrange their houses to be surrounded by scenic gardens.42 But today, landscapes outside protected nature reserves are widely accepted as but targets for industrial and real estate development, or as touristic sites for mass consumption. Only a few can afford to cultivate gardens for their private enjoyment.43 The educated elite’s ambivalent attitude towards environmental concerns has indeed many roots, among these the class’ active participation in the destruction of the nation’s scenic peripheries during the Cultural Revolution. Although much of their action was not personally designed or supervised, contemporary literature as well as oral history testifies to lingering feelings of guilt and shame concerning the damage the Revolution yielded.44 Jiang Rong’s 姜戎 bestselling novel Wolf Totem  (Lang Tuteng 狼图腾, 2004), for instance, informs audiences

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about the rusticated youth (zhiqing 知青) generation’s negative impact on Mongolian grassland regions, at the time considered backward. The zhiqing helped CCP cadres to modernise these regions in good faith, instructing the nomad herders that their animal allies and myth-mapped territories henceforth were to be considered as exploitable resources. In this way, formerly revered and protected natural landmarks—giant trees, caves, lakes and the like—were subjected to secularisation, exploitation, pollution and demolishment. When the state implemented a new regime of ecological surveillance in accordance with its recent greening policy, the re-environmentalised local inhabitants were threatened once again with loss. On the surface, land users were indemnified with money and other benefits for their participation in reforestation or grassland reclamation projects. Yet this policy, while hailed by external observers, was often accompanied by an enforced urban resettlement scheme. The reclamation scheme (tuimu huancao 退牧还草) sought an irreversible withdrawal of local inhabitants from their land, thus turning it into state-owned property. Abuse by cadres was conceded. Some project agents coerced reluctant farmers into the programme, pocketed money from the benefit scheme or accused the suddenly idle and impoverished urbanised settlers of uncivilised behaviour. Moreover, these greening campaigns often failed to meet their immediate targets, as unexpected side effects went squarely against the desired results.45 For these and many more reasons, there is not much trust in currently implemented political solutions to the environmental crisis among critical observers. Rather, they think it is time for a completely different approach, based on a new ethico-aesthetic outlook.

Disappearing Nature in the Poetry of Yu Jian Wang Shudong’s chapter on those literary narratives which maintain an anti-environmental, aggressive attitude towards nature, discusses the formula of conquest, human domination and extinction of so-called useless or dangerous species as romances of heroic modernisation. Such approaches abounded in the Maoist years (1949–76), but are also present in later fiction, which supports consumerism and an anthropocentric worldview.46 Countering this master narrative of an omnipotent, rapidly transforming modernity, eco-critical authors eulogise the beauty and

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uniqueness of nature, contemplate the alienation of the modern subject and bemoan the demolition of inherited cultural forms. Among the ecocritical writers who frame environmental degradation as a consequence of the vanishing, without adequate replacement, of traditional cosmology is Kunming-based poet Yu Jian 于坚 (b. 1954). Invoking the spirit of the earliest transmitted shamanistic songs—and by implication their alleged author, Qu Yuan—Yu dedicated the poem “Mourning Lake Dian” (Ai Dianchi 哀滇池) to the deceased spirit of a once scenic lake that had met with its biological death: Woo

let me fly the flags at half mast in my soul country

Let me run your funeral all by myself! Woo ye Spirit

When I was born atheism was the current of the

times I am not awestruck in front of eternity I took from you my animated being and wisdom

But no awe

or affection Woo

Great Spirit in the Dark

I put my hand into your foul

water Let me rot as well Please bestow me with affection awe I want to use my poems

to build your shrine!

In your big temple I want to redeem my crime!47

The long poem, from which the quote is drawn, laments the consequences of a mechanical, material profit-oriented worldview, suggesting that the impact of the “order of the machine”48 on modernist aesthetic paradigms led to the production of a corresponding set of socially disruptive consumption habits. Yu’s eco-poetry speaks about the beauty of useless things, bemoans modernity’s indifference towards natural phenomena and monitors the vanishing of seasons, scenic sites, trees, tigers and birds of prey. In his poetological essays he argues that this civilisation blindfolds itself with respect to non-human worlds, which causes the poet to “feel the fear of humankind in the natural world. Their only way of opposition is disappearance, vanishing, extinction or taking the shape of a frightening landslide.”49

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Embracing Thirst: Landscape in the Poetry of Xi Chuan Whereas Yu Jian has turned to Qu Yuan and southern China’s shamanistic traditions, Beijing-based poet Xi Chuan 西川 (b. 1960) revisited the Confucian literati canon of landscape art. In three poems on Song landscape paintings and a long interview, Xi explored this venerated cultural legacy’s possible impact on contemporary aesthetics.50 Contemplating the different worldviews and the living conditions of landscape painters across time, from the most influential blueprints dating from the tenth to the early 20th century, Xi Chuan traces an aesthetic universe wherein individuals can let go of mundane pursuits in order to attune their spirit to the rhythm of nature. Two poems on a world-famous landscape scroll by Fan Kuan 范宽 (fl. 990–1030) measure the distance between human society, with its mundane affairs, and the sphere of the non-human, where natural phenomena absorbed in self-cultivation can be observed: In Fan Kuan’s view, the homeland means landscapes: mountains and rivers; it means peaks, waterfalls, streams, tiny wooden bridges high above the streams, rocks, trees, temples, mountain paths, tiny little people on mountain paths, donkeys driven by tiny little people. The donkeys are tiny little birds who walk on their four legs. Each of the tall trees that they unhurriedly pass by has already attained the Dao. Their coarse roots hold firmly to the vast Shaanxi region’s stubborn perseverance. And in this moment the Zhenzong Emperor in the Capital is busy balancing the profits of the bigwigs. And in this moment none of the bigwigs has appreciated this scroll and its “Travellers among mountains and streams”.51

The paradoxical character of the landscape experience—Xi Chuan would call it oxymoronism, which can be taken as an equivalent for entanglement52—is brought to the fore even more explicitly in the second poem. The lyric “I” freely roams the scenery of Fan Kuan’s picture and concludes that, contrary to the scroll’s title, the human figures seem to be the least important characters: The minuscule peddlers and travel-worn, antsy passers-by in this quiet scenery aren’t officials or landlords. And even if officials or

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landlords came to this mountain, they would be equally minuscule. This is not only Fan Kuan’s conception, it is the conception of the local Earth God. This is a landscape painting where you can hardly spot the people. Yet it is called “Travellers among mountains and streams”.53

Xi Chuan stresses the modest position of humankind with respect to both its material needs and spiritual achievements vis-à-vis nature, showing how their vitality is equally nourished by the local qi 气, the life force that is pulsating through all bodies, as a shared substance. Spiritual cultivation depends on absorbing the environmental qi while forgetting the self: here, the non-human inhabitants of the landscapes are shown to be much more advanced in this practice, and thus act as superior teachers of the Dao. An even stronger ethical statement is made in the observation of thirst as a divine gift to the mountain’s trees, travellers and other bodies. Surprisingly, it is recommended as a prerogative of successful self-cultivation, and distinguishes this realm from the futile, mundane ambitions of an oversupplied cultural centre mentioned in the first poem: The stinginess with water, I have seen it. The thread of a waterfall on the right side of the peak, I have seen it. I’ve tried to understand: this is not merely Fan Kuan’s composition, it is the composition of the local Earth God, too—it is thirsty nature itself. The thirsty travellers at the foot of the mountain drive their thirsty donkeys, passing by giant trees whose thirst made them stretch out their arms.54

Thirst, or scarcity, is thus seen as the primordial condition for the development of superior physical embodiments in terms of form, power and beauty. At the core of Xi’s interest in the art of traditional ink wash landscape painting is a philosophical and a technical issue; the technical momentum that interests him most is its origin in generic limitations. This tradition differs from the dominant, Western techniques in that one cannot paint everything in ink wash. Industrial chimneys, highspeed trains and other insignia of modernity do not look right housed in the range of abstractions a Chinese ink brush allows for. In fact, the perceived inadequacy of this art contributed to its silencing and oblivion in the contemporary aesthetic mainstream, which in Xi Chuan’s view may paradoxically become its greatest potential in our times of cultural

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revision. As painters could not aim at realism and did not wish to privilege the visual over other forms of aesthetic perception, they looked elsewhere and found suitable brush stroke techniques for the artistic abstraction of lived experience on silk or paper. Philosophically, the poet stresses the long experience of Chinese thinkers with a world in upheaval. Bringing together this ancient wisdom and an aesthetics of restriction as a formula for the liberating potential of this art, Xi Chuan suggests its productive employment in contemporary contexts.55 Even before his work on landscape painting, the language and imagery of Xi Chuan’s poetry frequently tackled issues related to the human relationship with nature. In poem no. 11 of the cycle Flowers in the Mirror (Jinghua shuiyue 镜花水月, 2003–04), a cookie hawker sells his merchandise supported by the continuous tape deck playback of the revolutionary musical icon Yellow River Cantata (Huanghe dahechang 黄 河大合唱, Xian Xinghai, 1939). On a different scale than the revolution, the lyric “I” admires the magnitude of the Yellow River, into which one may throw the accumulated commodities of a hawker’s lifetime business without anyone noticing change. Marvelling at the river’s seemingly unlimited cookie intake capacity, it observes that the same amount of cookies visibly piled up on a market street would bestow a great deal of lofty sentiment. In this poetic persiflage, time measured by a day’s trade under the regime of redundant simulacra of the revolutionary past’s heroism exposes the gap between the river’s own, unhurried natural history, modern China’s rapid transformation and the fleeting moment of a petty street hawker’s eager participation in the theatre of capitalism.56 Inspiration for this montage of landscape, history and myth may be seen to derive from the most highly regarded poetological poem on the origins of human creativity, Li Shangyin’s 李商隐 (813–58) Brocade Zither (Jin se 锦瑟). According to Robert Ashmore, the poem can be read as a multiply encoded text centring on the “mysteries of transformation and of occult sympathy, that span the gap between human experience and the creatures and objects of the natural world”.57 I read Ashmore’s notion of “occult sympathy” as a formula for the premodern ways of aesthetic landscape appreciation fostering contemplation as a process of sense-based reunification with the “creatures and objects of the natural world.” Bridging the gap between Li’s enigmatic lines and the wide-spread nostalgia for a more holistic rather than singularly vision-

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centred approach, Chen Anying’s comment on the function of traditional landscape aesthetics in contemporary culture and society summarises the environmental writers’ concerns and offers an intriguingly simple formula for their privileged positioning in pedagogical contexts: Literati art is like Chinese gardens: it combines culture and nature within a restricted space. It is to be hoped that the modern study of literati art will not only enable us to reconnect with nature but that it will also enable us to reconciliate modernity and tradition, modernism and culture. It is only by achieving this reconciliation that China can become a country that is pleasant, reliable, and an attractive place to visit and live in.58

Conclusion Judging from the above mentioned comments and aesthetic projects, an emergent discursive space for ecological reconstruction can be discerned. Within this space, different kinds of environmental subjects seek recognition, articulating their worries—or finding ventriloquists for themselves—in various cultural patterns. Among them are urban bloggers and creative netizens, the lower strata of society, intellectuals and artists, urban activists, and even the experimentally integrated non-human others with whom we share this planet. These agents address the project of environmental modernisation as such, but more concretely those state institutions and investors who are supposedly the most powerful force for prompting change, but so far did not fulfil the citizens’ expectations. They critically watch the regime’s construction of a marketable green facade, which might not do much more than sugarcoat the ongoing environmental degradation. As Emily Yeh puts it: China’s own articulation of its ecological modernization path eliminates discussion of what are arguably the most promising parts of the ecological modernization framework, concerns about the changing nature of politics and the relationship between state and civil society. Instead, the focus is only on the greening of China through market logics and new plans and projects.59

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Given a voice in cartoons and literary texts, China’s environmental activists may already have begun to constitute their own Latourian “Parliament of Things”, where human as well as non-human planetary inhabitants’ interests are expected to be more prominently represented.60 Indeed, the protesters from the grassroots, although still trapped in an awkward stereotype as the repository of the nation’s residual premodernity, broke through the walls of public indifference in the wake of migrant workers’ literary careers.61 Side by side with peasants, cyber warriors and urban intellectual nature writers, a growing number of grassroots activists and volunteers have plunged into landscape protection and nature conservation projects. Concomitantly, nature and non-human living beings are staged in a realm of aesthetic immanence and dialogue as environmental subjects in their own right, representing material embodiments of religious, ritual, ethical, creative, reproductive and metabolic processes and traditions. The literary texts and cartoons reflect a revival of moral concerns, leading to a heightened interest in the nation’s native and naturalised religious traditions. Their spiritual legacy is screened for sustainable values, which can be adapted to modern needs in order to provide orientation for a larger environmental community.62 The creative writings moreover suggest historical landscapes

Fig. 8.6: Bi Chuanguo 毕传 囯, “Gushi nan yin” 古诗难 吟 [Ancient Poems are Hard to Recite]. http://guancha. gmw.cn/2011-05/12/ content_1952521.htm [accessed 27 Apr. 2014].

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Fig. 8.7: Bi Chuanguo 毕传 囯, “Ku lin” 哭林 [Forest of Tears]. http://pub.gdepb.gov. cn/pub/culture/pub_comic_ detail.jsp?ID=5bb0e43a0138-1000-e00000ac0a0a0a02&attKey=culture_ comic [accessed 27 Apr. 2014].

as models for the reconstruction of Chinese modernity, advocating them as privileged sites for the implementation of environmental justice and a reformed aesthetic outlook. This implies that the planet’s first cosmological principle, the reciprocity of giving and taking, must replace the present practice of short-sighted wealth extraction from whatever Other.63 If this basic survival principle is ignored, it will not only become more and more difficult to recite the ancient poems (Fig. 8.6), but the sympathetic forest of tears (Fig. 8.7), once a lush grove where disconsolate hero Jia Baoyu could go to weep over his beloved Lin Daiyu’s death in the popular Qing novel Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 红楼梦, 1791), will itself soon be remembered as a spectre.

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Notes This article is based on a paper conceived and written during my stay at the Asia Research Institute, NUS, in 2013, and published there as a working paper in 2014. I thank ARI for offering a highly inspiring intellectual environment, generous funding and excellent services for research. Zhang Yuheng, PhD student at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich, helped me to trace and access the blogger cartoons.

1.

Feng Li, Landscape and Power in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Michael Sullivan, The Birth of Landscape Painting in China: The Sui and T’ang Dynasties (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Fusheng Wu, The Poetics of Decadence: Chinese Poetry of the Southern Dynasties and Late Tang Periods (New York, NY: SUNY Press, 1998).

2.

Linda A. Walton, “Southern Sung Academies and the Construction of Sacred Space”, in Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society, ed. Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1998), pp. 23–51.

3.

Martin J. Powers, “Why is a Landscape like a Body?”, in Landscape, Culture, and Power in Chinese Society, ed. Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1998), pp. 1–22.

4.

Rolf Alfred Stein, The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990); Alfreda Murck and Wen Fong, eds., Words and Images: Chinese Poetry, Calligraphy, and Painting (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991); Stephen West, “Zhu Changwen and His ‘Garden of Joy’”, in The Transmission and Interpretation of the Chinese Literary Canon: Papers from the Fourth International Conference on Sinology Meiyi Lin (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 2013), pp. 203–53.

5.

West, “Zhu Changwen and His ‘Garden of Joy’”, p. 232.

6.

Q. Edward Wang, Inventing China through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography (New York, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).

7.

Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

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8.

269

Judith Shapiro, China’s Environmental Challenges (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Emily T. Yeh, “Greening Western China: A Critical View”, Geoforum 40, 5 (Sept. 2009): 884–94.

9.

Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

10. Influential environmental NGOs, or ENGOs, are Friends of Nature, Greenpeace, Green Age Volonteeers, Greencamp, Greenforum, etc. See Jiang Ru and Leonard Ortolano, “Development of Citizen-Organized Environmental NGOs in China”, VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 20, 2 (2009): 141–68, 151ff. 11. Roger T. Ames, “Taoism and the Nature of Nature”, Environmental Ethics 8, 4 (1986): 343–7. 12. “Introduction”, in Rey Chow, Entanglements, Or Transmedial Thinking about Capture (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2012), p. 6. 13. Ibid., p. 12. 14. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 219. 15. Rachael Ziady DeLue and James Elkins, eds., Landscape Theory, vol. 6 (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), p. 88. 16. See Andrea Riemenschnitter, “Mo Yan”, in Chinese Fiction Writers, 1950– 2000, ed. Thomas Moran and Ye Xu (Detroit, MI: Gale Cengage Learning, 2013), p.188. 17. Shudong Wang 汪树东, Zhongguo xiandai wenxue zhong de ziran jingshen yanjiu 中国现代文学中的自然精神研究 [A Study of the Spirit of Nature in Modern Chinese Literature] (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 2005). 18. Shudong Wang 汪树东, Shengtai yishi yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue 生态 意识与中国当代文学 [Ecological Awareness and Chinese Contemporary Literature] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2008), pp. 47–80. 19. As of 2010, agri-industrial pollution has surpassed the ratio of the other major polluters: industries and transportation. See http://www. chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/5599-China-s-growing-appetitefor-pork-creates-new-pollution [accessed 11 June 2013]. 20. Cited in Zong-qi Cai, How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008), p. 162. 21. Cai, How to Read Chinese Poetry, p. 167.

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22. Yeh argues that: in China’s west, the environmental protection programs that have been celebrated by both western observers and Chinese proponents of ecological modernisation have in many cases had the effect of further marginalising already politically and economically marginalised citizens, whilst producing only questionable environmental benefits. In particular, multiple cases of the implementation of forestry and rangeland protection programs show that a key assumption of ecological modernisation—that economic growth and ecological protection will feed each other in a virtuous, mutually sustaining circle—often does not hold. (Yeh, “Greening Western China”, p. 892)



See also David S. G. Goodman, ed., China’s Campaign to “Open Up the West”: National, Provincial and Local Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For one of many official announcements on the conjunction of One Belt One Road and ecological modernisation policies, see Zhou Yamin, “‘Yi dai yi lu’: jingji xiaoyi yu shengtai xiaoyi bingzhong de hezuo moshi” “一带一路”:经济效益与生态效益并重的合作模式 [One Belt One Road: On the Cooperative Pattern of Laying Equal Stress on Economic and Ecological Benefits], first published in Renmin ribao 人民日报 [People’s Daily] on 25 Aug. 2015: see http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2015-08/25/ content_2919229.htm [accessed 8 Feb. 2016].

23. The poem’s title reads: “When will Spring Flowers and Autumn Moon End” (To the Tune “Yu Meiren” 虞美人 [The Beautiful Lady Yu]). For translation and comments see Cai, How to Read Chinese Poetry, p. 255. 24. The husband remarries into a rich family of opportunistic collaborators with the Japanese. On returning to Shanghai, he secretly falls for another rich lover. When confronted with her husband’s corruption, the shamed wife commits suicide by drowning herself. See Carolyn FitzGerald, Fragmenting Modernisms: Chinese Wartime Literature, Art, and Film, 1937–49 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 170ff, n. 8. 25. First published in Renmin wenxue 10 (2005). 26. Chen in Simon C. Estok and Won-Chung Kim, East Asian Ecocriticisms: A Critical Reader (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 218. 27. Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature. 28. Robert Ford Campany, Strange Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996). 29. Rania Huntington, “The Weird in the Newspaper”, in Writing and Materiality in China, 2003, ed. Judith Zeitlin, Lydia Liu and Ellen Widmer

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(Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 58, 2003), pp. 341–96. 30. On one website it is described as a modern Soushen ji 搜神记 (Records of an Inquest into the Spirit Realm): see http://baike.baidu.com/ view/10497270.htm?fromTaglist [accessed 29 Apr. 2014]. See also SingChen Lydia Chiang, Collecting the Self: Body and Identity in Strange Tale Collections of Late Imperial China (Leiden: Brill, 2005); Paul Waldau and Kimberley Christine Patton, eds., A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2013). 31. http://chineseposters.net/posters/e13-327.php [accessed 27 Apr. 2014]. 32. Gou Ben 勾犇, “Don’t Freeze”. See https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/03/ drawing-the-news-life-of-pig/ [accessed 27 Apr. 2014]. 33. James Mensch, “The Intertwining of Incommensurables”, in Corinne Michelle Painter and Christian Lotz, Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal: At the Limits of Experience (Berlin: Springer, 2007), pp. 135–47. 34. Gou Ben, “Youth of Pig”. See https://chinadigitaltimes.net/ chinese/2013/03/【图说天朝】一周网络漫画选摘-2013-3-17/ [accessed 8 Feb. 2016]. 35. David Der-wei Wang, “Return to Go: Fictional Innovation in the Late Qing and the Late Twentieth Century”, in The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China’s May Fourth Project, ed. Milena Doleželová-Velingerová, Oldvich Král and Graham Martin Sanders (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001), pp. 257–96. 36. On the role of intellectuals in the abortion of native ritual traditions see Chapter 3 in Rey Chow, Not like a Native Speaker: On Languaging as a Postcolonial Experience (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 61–77. 37. On this topic see, for example, Francesca Tarocco, The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma (New York, NY: Routledge, 2007). 38. Jon Elster, ed., Karl Marx: A Reader (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 41. 39. Aat Emile Vervoorn, Men of the Cliffs and Caves: The Development of the Chinese Eremitic Tradition to the End of the Han Dynasty (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990), p. vii f. 40. Shaogong Han 韩少功, Shan Nan Shui Bei 山南水北 [South of the Mountain, North of the River] (Beijing: Zuojia, 2006).

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41. Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). 42. On this matter, see my earlier work on the ethical and economic revaluations of the empire’s landscapes based on recoded aesthetic principles during the late Ming political crisis and the ensuing Ming-Qing transition, where I focus on the literati construction of a prosperous, latently counter-imperial West Lake scenery in Hangzhou and new perceptions of the wilderness at the empire’s peripheries: Andrea Riemenschnitter, China zwischen Himmel und Erde: literarische Kosmographie und nationale Krise im 17. Jahrhundert [China between Heaven and Earth: Literary Cosmography and National Crisis in the 17th Century] (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998); “Traveler’s Vocation: Xu Xiake and His Excursion to the Southwestern Frontier”, in Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. Don J. Wyatt, Nicola Di Cosmo and Benjamin I. Schwartz (London and New York, NY: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp. 286–323. 43. T. Oakes, “Commentary: Laser Tag and Other Rural Diversions: The Village as China’s Urban Playground”, Harvard Asia Quarterly 13, 3 (2011): 25–30. 44. Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature. 45. Richard B. Harris, Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China’s Wild West (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), p. 54ff.; Yeh, “Greening Western China”, pp. 884–94; Emily T. Yeh, “Green Governmentality and Pastoralism in Western China: ‘Converting Pastures to Grasslands’”, Nomadic Peoples 9, 1 (2005): 9–30. 46. Wang, Shengtai yishi yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue, pp. 208–49. 47. Ibid., p. 253. My translation. 48. Carolyn Merchant states: The removal of animistic, organic assumptions about the cosmos constituted the death of nature—the most far-reaching effect of the Scientific Revolution. Because nature was now viewed as a system of dead, inert particles moved by external, rather than inherent forces, the mechanical framework itself could legitimate the manipulation of nature. Moreover, as a conceptual framework, the mechanical order had associated with it a framework of values based on power, fully compatible with the directions taken by commercial capitalism ...The mechanical philosophies of Mersenne, Gassendi, and Descartes all exhibited a strong common reaction against naturalism, vitalism, and animistic magic, which in a world of social upheaval and religious conflict, could be seen as aiding and abetting disorder and chaos. ... The mechanists ... transformed

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sympathies and antipathies into efficient causes. The resultant corpse was a mechanical system of dead corpuscles, set into motion by the Creator, so that each obeyed the law of inertia and moved only by external contact with another moving body. (The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution [New York, NY: HarperOne, 1990, pp. 193–5)

49. Wang, Shengtai yishi yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue, p. 264. 50. See his “Dangdai shuimohua zhong de maodun yu wenti—cong Songhua tan qi”当代水墨画中的矛盾与问题—从宋画谈起 [The Contradictions and Problems in Contemporary Ink Paintings: Starting from a Discussion of Song Dynasty Paintings], in Canghua 藏画 (Painting Collection) no. 3 (2013), c1–c4; see also a revised version of this article on http://baokun. blog.siyuefeng.com/blogArticle/show/8909# [accessed 29 Apr. 2014]. 51. Ibid. 52. Xi Chuan states: Some thirty years ago, people said that in China ‘left is right and right is wrong.’ And now, to live in the shadow of oxymoron means to live in embarrassment; it means to enjoy absurd happiness. Yet to speak in oxymorons means that you are a person who is not understandable. I am not using words like “contradiction,” because contradictions are to be blended and eventually dissolved, whereas the social oxymoron is the reality. Yes, I do know concepts such as freedom, justice, love, privacy, equality, democracy, the literati, the elites, etc. But these quasi-saturated concepts are stronger and more popular. The reason why things are going the way they are lies probably in the fact that overdone revolution has met half-done modernisation. It may also derive from a geographic condition: although China is big, three fifths of its territory consist of mountains and plateaus unsuitable for agriculture. You have to learn to go with this natural condition, in the name of mercy.” (“In the Shadow of Oxymoron”, 91st Meridian 7, 2 [2011]).

53. Xi, “Dangdai shuimohua”. 54. Ibid. 55. Among the Western artists that Xi Chuan finds particularly inspiring are Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Lucian Freud, Jan Saudek, Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley. See Xi, “Dangdai shuimohua”, C4. 56. Xi Chuan, Shenqian: Xi Chuan shi wen lu 深浅: 西川诗文录 [Depth: Poems and Essays by Xi Chuan] (Beijing: Zhongguo heping chubanshe, 2006), p. 49ff. 57. Robert Ashmore, “Recent-Style Shi Poetry: Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse (Qiyan Lüshi)”, in Cai, How to Read Chinese Poetry, p. 196ff.

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58. Jörg Huber and Chuan Zhao, eds., A New Thoughtfulness in Contemporary China: Critical Voices in Art and Aesthetics (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 70. 59. Yeh, Green Governmentality. 60. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 142–5. 61. See, for instance, Sheng Keyi 盛可以, who was a migrant labourer during the 1990s and published a novel based on her experience by the title of Bei mei 北妹 (translated as Northern Girls, 2004). See also her New York Times essay on the pollution of her home village river. http://www.nytimes. com/2014/04/05/opinion/chinas-poisonous- waterways.html?_r=0, 4 Apr. 2014 [accessed 21 July 2014]. 62. Kenneth Dean and Zhenman Zheng, Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 63. Arnold Berleant, Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2002).

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List of Contributors Roland Altenburger is Professor of East Asian Cultural History at the University of Würzburg. He received his PhD from the University of Zürich in 1997. His main fields of research are the cultural and social history of late imperial China, premodern narrative literature and regionalism, place as well as landscape representation in literature. His publications include the co-edited volume Yangzhou: A Place in Literature: The Local in Chinese Cultural History (2015) and The Sword or the Needle: The Female Knight-errant (xia) in Traditional Chinese Narrative (2009).

Stephen Bann is Emeritus Professor of History of Art and Senior Research Fellow at Bristol University. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and was awarded CBE in 2004. Among his books are Distinguished Images: Prints in the Visual Economy of Nineteenth-century France (2013), Ways around Modernism (2007), Parallel Lines: French Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in Nineteenth-century France (2001), Paul Delaroche: History Painted (1997) and Under the Sign: John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler and Witness (1994). He has published many essays on the Scottish garden designer and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay, as well as on the French landscape designer Bernard Lassus.

David E. Cooper is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Durham. His extensive writings on the history of Eastern and Western philosophy, environmental ethics, the philosophy of language, and aesthetics include Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective (2012), A Philosophy of Gardens (2005), the co-authored Buddhism, Virtue and Environment (2005) and World Philosophies (2003).

Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and co-directs Metis, an atelier for art, architecture and urbanism. His work spans topics in architecture and urbanism, cultural history, landscape studies, media theory and visual culture, and has appeared in journals such as Architecture and Culture, Cabinet, Chora, Cultural Politics, The Journal of Architecture, Journal of Narrative Theory, Log, Parallax, Radical Philosophy and Word & Image. His books include Writing on the Image: Architecture, the City and the Politics of Representation (2015); Seeing from Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture (co-edited, 2013); and Deterritorialisations … Revisioning: Landscape and Politics (co-edited, 2003). 311

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312   Contributors

Michele Fatica is Professor Emeritus of Modern and Contemporary History and Director of the Centre of Studies on Matteo Ripa and Chinese College of Naples at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. He is the editor of Matteo Ripa’s manuscript Giornale, 1705-1724, 3 vols (1991–). He organised the International Colloquium on Ripa and the Catholic mission in China during the 17th and 18th centuries, and edited the proceedings with Francesco D’Arelli (Matteo Ripa e la missione cattolica in Cina tra i secoli XVIII–XIX [Matteo Ripa and the Catholic Mission in China between the 18th and 19th Centuries], Istituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli 1999). He is also the curator of an exhibition “Matteo Ripa e il Collegio dei Cinesi di Napoli (1682–1869)” [Matteo Ripa and the Chinese College of Naples, 1682–1869] in the Public Archive of Naples (2006–07) and contributed to the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani [Biographical Dictionary of Italian], published by the Institute of the Italian Encyclopedia.

Andrea M. Riemenschnitter is Chair Professor of Modern Chinese Studies at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zürich. Her research is focused on literary and cultural negotiations of Sinophone modernities. Her recent book publications include the edited and translated The Visible and the Invisible: Poems Leung Ping-kwan (2012); Carnival of the Gods: Mythology, Modernity and the Nation in China’s 20th Century (in German, 2011); the edited Jia Pingwa—Stories from Taibai Mountain (in German, 2009); and the co-edited Diasporic Histories: Archives of Chinese Transnationalism (2009). She is Honorary Fellow at Lingnan University, Hong Kong and was Fellow of Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore; Beijing Normal University; University of California, Berkeley; Tsinghua University, Beijing; International Research Center Cultural Studies (IFK), Vienna; and Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.

Yue Zhuang is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the intersection of the imperial landscape traditions between Britain and China in the long 18th century. She has twice received the prestigious EU Marie Curie fellowship for her innovative research on the cultural contact between China and the West around landscape issues. Her publications include Imperial Arcadia: Architecture, Landscape and the Funereal Imagination in 18th-century Britain (forthcoming) and the co-authored Zhongguo yuanlin chuangzuo de jieshixue chuantong 中国园林创作的解释学传统 [The Hermeneutical Tradition in Chinese Gardens] (2015). She is currently working on a project on Sir William Temple funded by the Leverhulme Trust.

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Contributors 

313

Hui Zou is an Associate Professor of Architectural History and Theory, School of Architecture, University of Florida. He was a fellow of Dumbarton Oaks of the Harvard University and the Asian Cultural Council in New York. His research interest lies in comparative studies in architecture and garden histories, with a focus on the 18th-century cultural encounter between European Jesuits and the Chinese imperial court. He is the author of two books: Suipian yu bizhao: bijiao jianzhuxue de shuangchong huayu 碎片与比照:比较建筑学的双重话语 [Fragments and Mirroring: The Twofold Discourse of Comparative Architecture] (2012) and A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture (2011).

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Index accommodation policy (the “Ricci

Aphrodite 190

method”), 146

apostolic legation, 146–7, 165

Adam the Toiler, 16

arable cultivation, 43, 45, 47–8

Addison, Joseph, 58–9, 66, 73, 230

Aristotle, 15, 36n69, 190

see also pleasures of the

artificial hill (jiashan), 194, 198, 202 see also rockery art

imagination, sublime Aeneid, 12

associationism, 58, 68, 88

aesthetic, 4, 10, 80, 211

Attiret, Jean-Denis (Wang Zhicheng), 63, 199

contemporary, 262–3 cosmographic-, 118

Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales,

cultivation, 12, 59, 242

61

déjà disparu, 259

Augustus, 11

eco-, 22, 243–4 ethico-, 260

Bacon, Francis, 41

garden, 233–5

Bai Dyke, 134

infrastructure, 85–8, 89–90,

Baoding, 86

91–3

Barberini, Francesco, 158, 162,

landscape, 22, 129, 243, 245, 257,

181n59, 181n77

263–4

Beizhili (Pe-che-li), 85

late-Ming, 126

Berlean, Arnold, 237

modern, 58, 261

Bishu shanzhuang see Mountain

moral-, 11, 93, 168, 237, 244

Retreat for Escaping the Summer

negotiation, 15–6

Heat

psychology, 79–80

Blaeu, John, 87

revolution, 229

Blondel, J.-F., 59

sensibilities, 58, 253

Bolingbroke, Henry St John, 1st

sightseeing, 126

Viscount, 70, 102n39

agrarian development, 2, 16–7, 23

Bonjour, Guillaume (Shan Yaozhan),

alcove, 223–4, 226

148, 160, 176n20

Alexander VI (pope), 147

Book of Rites (Liji), 36n69, 184

Analects, 12, 182n93

Borges, Jorge Luis, 187

Anglo-Chinese Garden

Borghesi, Giovanni, 165, 182n91

see jardin anglo-chinois

Bourguignon d’Anville, J.-B., 131–4

Anlu, 164

Bouvet, Joachim, 85

Anthropocene, 257, 260

“Brocade Zither” (Jin Se:

314

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Index 

Li Shangyin), 264

Campion, Edmund, 39

Brown, Lancelot (“Capability”), 57,

Canton, 60, 64, 83, 148, 156, 165

64, 229 see also Brownian gardening, Brownist Brownian gardening, 59, 64, 66, 69, 86 Brownist, 60 Buddhism demon of, 253–4 enlightenment, 19, 196–7, 204 institutions, 116

Castiglione, Giuseppe (Lang Shining), 156, 198, 203 Castra colonelli, 50 Catholic missionaries, 7, 14 see also Ripa, Jesuits Catholic sacraments, 160, 163 Cerù, Giusseppe (Pang Kexiu), 165, 176n20 Chambers, Sir William

Lion Grove (Suzhou) and, 193–4

and Burke, 58, 60

nirvana, 19

and Frederick Louis Prince of

pilgrimage, 116

Wales, 61

zen, 234, 244

George, III 61

Burke, Edmund aesthetic theory see Philosophical

315

and Lord Bute, 101n30 and Sinologists, 60–1, 95

Enquiry into the Origin of Our

as designer of Kew Gardens, 61,

Ideas of the Sublime and

75, 78

Beautiful, sublime (Burkean)

as traveller in China, 60, 90–1

and Chambers, 58, 60

landscape theory, 17, 59–60, 81,

and Hume and Smith, 79

94, 232

and Montesquieu, 62

see also Designs of Chinese

Thoughts on the causes of the

Buildings, Dissertation on

present discontents, 70–1

Oriental Gardening, Kew

on Christianity and chivalry, 72 on English liberty, 68–9 on pride, 79–80

Gardens, Plans … at Kew in Surrey, A Treatise on Civil Architecture

on prudence and veneration,

chan (entanglement), 244

71–2

chan (zen), 197, 235, 244

Burlington, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of, 78, 230 Bute, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of, 61, 69, 101n30

see also Buddhism Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, 214 Chen Yingsong, 250–2 Cheng Hao, 168, 183n99

Cambyuskan (Genghis Khan), 41

Cheng Yi, 168, 183n99

Camden, William, 42, 44, 49

China and Europe relation, 2, 3–4, 7

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316   Index



see also landscape exchange,

cultural and artistic exchange

Chinese garden



and English garden, 229, 231–3



(emotions), 15, 20, 36n69,



59, 63–4

art imitating nature, 15, 57–8, 59,

61, 63

and Dao, 234



visual persuasion, 62, 73



and painting, 231



see also ut pictura poesis, sublime



as epitome of harmony between

Clement VII (pope), 158

human and the natural world,

Clement XI (pope), 14, 146–9, 158,

234

163–4



imitating nature, 63

Cole, Thomas, 236



psychological effects on the

colonia, 50



colonialism, 2, 7, 14, 16–7, 23



Europeans, 63, 73

see also garden



discourse of, 39–51

Chinese porcelain, 82, 224



colonists, 43–4, 48

Chinese Rites Controversy, 14, 144–7,

commerce

157, 164–5



chinoiserie, 1, 5, 9, 25n1, 56

and architecture/landscape,

81–2, 85, 92–3, 95

chivalry, 72



and early modern, 2, 11–2, 17

Chora, 188–9



Chinese, 7, 63–4, 83–5

Christ, 158–9, 164



Scottish theory, 81–2

Christian stewardship, 7

commonwealth, 12, 44

Christianity, 47–8, 156

community, 212, 216–7

Church, Vatican, 14, 146–7, 176n14

comparative philosophy, 69n36,

Cicero, 79 circulating concepts, 8

104n51, 188–9, 230–1 Compiled Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu

city and infrastructure construction

as empire building, 11, 23 British, 23, 59, 60, 78, 85, 88, 90–1



zhi zuan), 131, 134, 136 Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu), 119 “Complete Map of West Lake” (1734),

Chinese, 13, 17, 57, 63–4, 82–3,

89, 98n12, 106n64

129 “Complete Map of West Lake” (1751),



Italy, 82



Roman, 49–50, 83

concordia discors, 59

see also Dissertation on Oriental

Confucianism, 43

Gardening, A Description of







the Empire of China

classical rhetoric (European)

134

art cultivating human nature

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 316

ancestor worship, 146–8, 184n105



art cultivating human nature, 17

see also rites and music

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 



canon of landscape, 261



classics of, 12



contemporary adaptation, 257–8





Dao (the Way), 12, 15, 20–1, 36n69, 234, 236

cultivating moral emotion,

36n69, 57, 62, 98n12

as “the dim light latent in remote



darkness”, 189

as the “void”, 189

European perception of, 7,

Daodejing, 12



Daoism

31n37, 61, 102n42, 109–

317

10n125



cosmology, 196, 204, 245

governance, 62, 98n12, 109–



iconography, 203

10n125



legacy of anomaly accounts, 255

religiosity of, 146



on continuity, 257

rites and music, 36n69, 62,



self-cultivation, 69, 196

104n51



recluse, 188–9

see also Dao, nature, neo-

Daoist paradise, 188, 196, 203





Confucianism, Rites

Controversy

see also Peach Blossom Spring

Davis, Sir John, 44

Confucius, 12, 104n51, 146–7, 157–8

Daxue (The Great Learning), 185n116

connected history, 4

Dennis, John, 79

contact zones, 4

Description géographique, historique,

copperplate engravings, 13

chronologique, politique et



see also Thirty-six Views of Jehol,

physique de l’Empire de la Chine



et de la Tartarie chinoise (Du

Ripa

Cosgrove, Denis, 11 Council of Trent, 156

Halde), 131 A Description of the Empire of China

Counter-Reformation, 156

(Du Halde; Cave edition)

crucifixion, 164



China’s commerce, 83

cultural and artistic exchange, 2



Chinese urban and infrastructure



conventional modes, 4



construction, 17, 83, 85,



new approaches and their



87–9, 92, 104n53

limitations, 4–5





“Description of the Leasowes”

of concepts, 8

Cum Deus Optimus, 146

copy owned by Chambers, 62 (Dodsley), 211, 221–3, 225

Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Daedalus, 190

Dresses, Machines, and Utensils

daidala, 190

(Chambers), 61

damaged tree imagery, 150, 164–5

Destombes, Marcel, 131



diceng wenxue (literature of the lowest

see also Fengquan Qingting

(Ripa), Zhijing Yundi (Ripa)

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 317

rungs), 250

30/8/17 3:00 PM

318   Index

Dissertation on Oriental Gardening

Eden, 16, 47

(Chambers)

Edinburgh Medical School, 68



bridges, 89

Elizabeth I, Queen of England and



cultivating fear, 63, 74–5, 78



imitating nature, 71, 73–4



Ireland, 40 Elizabetha (Thomas Smith’s projected

journey as public spectacle, 83,

85, 92–3

colonial city), 50 emblem, 216



open space, 74

empire-building, 11–3, 16–8, 57, 64



opposite and violent sensations,



see also city and infrastructure

59



construction, colonialism,



public magnificence, 78–9



commerce, public



refining moral emotions, 57, 81



rivers, canals, and lakes, 74, 89,

improvement “Encountering Sorrow” (Li Sao; Qu

91

Yuan), 257



roads, 86



satire of Brownian gardening, 71



three scenes, 56, 72



and English identity, 20



water engineering, 90



and Whiggish history, 97–8n10



communal, 212–4, 216

the Leasowes”



imitating nature, 23, 230

Dong, Qichang, 169



naturalistic style, 57, 71, 87, 211,

Dodlsey, Robert see “Description of

English garden: and Chinese garden, 15, 187, 230

Dream of the Red Chamber (Cao Xueqin), 233, 267 Du Fu, 247–8



Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste, 17, 62, 82, 131, 133

see also Description géographique

… chinoise and A Description



of the Empire of China

Dubreuil, Jean, 201

Chambers, The Leasowes,



Mason, Shenstone

239, 243, 257

rationalism, 72, 75 reception of China, 7, 61–2,



shi), 119

63–4, 82, 102n42

Scottish, 56–7, 59–60, 63, 95, 97n9

early modern, 2–3, 27n9

see also Brownian gardening,

Enlightenment, 20, 97n9, 229, 235,

Dutch East India Company, 2 Dynastic History of the Ming (Ming

213, 221, 224, 238

picturesque, 231–3

see also Hume, Montesquieu,

Smith, Temple

Eclogue, 49

entangled histories, 5–7, 10–1, 22–3

ecosystem, 230

entanglement

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 318

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 





as complexity in trans/cultural

Forbidden City, 148, 191



narrative, 15, 23, 39–40, 57,

Formation of Yellow Flowers



204, 217, 230, 238, 253, 262

(Huanghuazhen) 191, 198–201,

as global network constraints, 14,

145, 244–5



defined, 6–8



risk, 10

environment, 63, 221, 235, 236–7, 243, 245

199 Forty Scenes (Sishijing), 198, 201 Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, 61, 92 French Academy, 99n20 French Revolution, 20, 220

eremitism, 188, 197

Friedrich, Caspar David, 236

Ermenonville, 224

Fu Wanglu, 131

ethnocentrism, 2

funeral mass, 160



319

see also Eurocentrism, Sinocentrism

Eurocentrism, 4, 7, 9

Gainsborough, Thomas, 235 Garden of Eternal Spring (Changchunyuan), 187, 191, 197,

Fan Kuan, 262–3 Fan Mingqian, 119

199, 206n25 Garden of Joyful Spring

Fan Shaozuo, 166–7 Fatica, Michele, 145

(Changchunyuan), 160 Garden of Pleasure in Solitude

fear (moral) 58, 59, 61

and landscape of concealment,

(Duleyuan), 234 Garden of the Unsuccessful Politician

75–8

(Zhuozhengyuan), 211



and obscurity, 74

garden



antidote to radical sentiments,







63, 67



vs absolute rational control, 72



see also reverence, veneration

feng and shan, 13

and emotion/passion, 12, 66 as expression of nature’s unity,

232, 235



as form of habitual practice, 62



as mode of self-cultivation, 234,

Feng Menglong, 122

236

Fengquan Qingting (Ripa), 150, 163–5



French (18th-century), 204

Fengquan Qingting (Shen), 150, 163



Greek, 190

“Fengquan Qingting” (Kangxi), 163–4



imitating nature, 5

Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 210–1



Italian (renaissance and

First emperor of Qin, 13



baroque), 72, 75, 190, 199,

Flowers in the Mirror (Xi Chuan), 264

216

Fontaney, Jean de, 85

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 319

30/8/17 3:00 PM

320   Index



literature/records (yuanji), 190,

Holy See, 146, 147



Horace, 15

193, 198

see also Chinese garden, English

House of Confucius, 61, 75, 102n39

garden

see also Kew Gardens

Gazetteer of West Lake (Xihu zhi), 126–30, 134

Huajing (Chen Fuyao), 234 human nature, 58, 62, 68, 97n9

Gelassenheit, 204

Hume, David, 60, 66–7, 80–3

George III, 61, 69, 78, 81, 88, 92–3

hybridity, 1, 13

Georgics, 11, 20, 221 Gerald of Wales, 39, 41, 43, 47–8

imperialism, 2, 4, 5, 13–4



Indra’s net, 5

see also Topographia Hibernica

Gerbillon, Jean-François, 85

Ireland, 17

Gernon, Luke, 43



and Christianity, 40, 48

Gherardini, Giovanni, 148, 156,



arable cultivation, 47



barbarity, 49

Giornale (Ripa), 145, 149, 171–2



land, 42–3, 44





marginality, 47

Girardin, Marquis de, 20, 224



settlement, 46, 50

global network, 5, 7, 9, 24



see also pastoralism, colonialism

globalisation, 2, 243

Irish, 16, 43, 46

177n30 see also Ripa

Goldsmith, Oliver, 66, 95, 101–2n34, 102n35

jardin anglo-chinois, 1, 16, 25n1, 94,

Gothein, Marie-Louise, 230 Grand Canal, 92

217, 229 Jehol (Chengde, Rehe), 144, 157, 160,

Gray, Thomas, 229

168–71

Great Development of the West, 248

Jencks, Charles, 238

Grenville, George, 70–1

Jesuits

Grimaldi, Filippo Claudio, 160



and apostolic legation, 149, 165

Gwynn, John, 79



and metaphysical light, 204



and Ripa, 149, 160–3



as builders of Western garden,

ha-ha (sunk fence), 73 “Hang-tcheou fou” (map), 133 Hamilton, Alexander, 83



Hanfeizi, 232

191, 200

as cartographers, 131–2, 134–5, 137

heathenism, 158, 171



as painters, 198

Henry VIII, 212



on Chinese Rites, 146, 160, 166

Herodotus, 41



political interests, 148

Hobbes, Thomas, 71

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 320

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 

travels in China, 64, 85–7, 89,

321

labyrinth

91–2

and enlightenment, 197–8

see also Matteo Ricci,

as connection between Chinese

accommodation policy Ji Cheng, 231

and European philosophes, 188–9, 204

Ji Donglu, 119

as game or wonder, 195, 196, 199

Jiang Rong, 259

as image of Chinese garden, 187

Jiangnan (Kyang-nan), 85

as image of human body, 188–9

Jiangzhou, 85

as image of fishing net, 188

Jiaqing emperor, 200

baroque, in Yuanmingyuan, 187,

John, Prester, 41 Journey to the West (Wu Cheng’en), 255

191, 198–201, 204 of renaissance and baroque gardens, 190 rockery, 187, 196–7, 204

Kangxi Atlas of China, 131, 173n1 Kangxi emperor

see also Chora, Formation of Yellow Flowers, Lion Grove

and envoys to Rome, 148–9

(Suzhou) and Lion Grove

and “Ricci method”, 146–7, 164

(Yuanmingyuan), “Record of

and Ripa, 148, 150, 160–1, 164–5

the Peach Blossom Spring”

and Tournon, 146–7

labyrinthine hill, 193, 197

and West Lake, 117

labyrinthine residence, 187, 202–3

banning Christianity, 164 calligraphy of “Honour Heaven”,

see also milou, Qianlong Garden landscape, 8–9

166

agricultural, 11

on neo-Confucianism, 167–8

and aesthetics, 15–6

poems and prose on Bishu

and cartography, 1, 13, 18, 23

shanzhuang, 163–4, 169

and empire building, 10–3

view of Tian and Tianzhu, 166–8

and geography, 1, 26n4

see also Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang

and modernity, 24

shi

as cultural practices, 8–9

Keswick, Maggie, 229, 231, 238

as governance technology, 12–4

Kew Gardens, 61, 75

as social and cultural history, 2, 9

pagoda, 71, 75

Chinese classical ideas of, 12–3

Kircher, Athanasius, 87

entangled, 2, 10–16, 21, 22–4,

Knight, Richard Payne, 231

217, 238, 244, 250

Kublai Khan, 41

European classical ideas of, 11–2

Kunlun Mountain, 13

exchange, 2, 9, 10, 13, 23–4 paintings, 59, 231

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 321

30/8/17 3:00 PM

322   Index



studies, 9

Lucan, 43

see also city and infrastructure

luxury, 59, 61, 82



construction, garden, jardin

anglo-chinois, wilderness

Macau, 147, 149, 165

Laozi, 189

Macfarlane, Robert, 235

Laussac, Marquis de, 220–1, 224

Manchu, 3, 28n14

Le Comte, Louis, 62, 85, 89, 91

Mandarins, 161–2, 166

Le Rouge, Georges-Louis, 94

Mandeville, Sir John, 41

The Leasowes, 218, 224, 225–6

Mao Zedong, 243, 248, 253, 255



see also “A Description of the

map (tu), 1, 18, 26n4, 118, 123–4, 129



Marlowe, Christopher, 41

Leasowes”, Shenstone

Lee, Ang, 255

Martini, Martin, 87

Leopold, Aldo, 237

Marx, Karl, 28n18, 257

li (rites), 36n69, 62, 104n51

Mason, William, 102n35

Li (Principle), 168, 183n93

mediator, 14

Li Laojun, 157

Mei Yufeng 150

Li Shangyin, 264

Memoirs of Father Ripa (Prandi),

Li Wei, 18, 127, 130, 136

147–9, 158, 160–1, 165

Li Yu, 249

mercantilism, 7, 60

Liang Shizheng, 131

merchant, 1, 60, 83, 125–6

liberty, 63, 68–70

milou (perplexing multi-storeyed

Liezi, 235

building), 203

Life of Pi (Lee), 255

mimesis, 190

“Life of Pig” (Dashixiong), 255–7

Ming dynasty, 3, 16

line-method (xianfa), 198

Mo Yan, 245

Ling Mengchu, 122

Molyneux, Crisp, 69

Lion Grove (Bishu shanzhuang), 193

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,

Lion Grove (Yuanmingyuan), 191,

Baron de La Brède et de, 62,

193, 195, 197–8

104n52, 109–10n125

Lion Grove (Suzhou), 191, 193–7

moral-religious emotion, 56–8

Liu Zongyuan, 199



local gazetteer (fangzhi), 117, 120–2, 127

see also fear, pride, reverence, veneration

More, Thomas, 45, 50

Locke, John, 66

see also Utopia

see also associationism

Moryson, Fynes, 46

Longinus

Mount Parnassus, 199, 216



see On the Sublime

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 322

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 

Mountain Retreat for Escaping

sublime, 67

the Summer Heat (Bishu

vs art, 69

shanzhuang), 144, 160, 162,

see also Dao, human nature,

168–9, 193, 203

naturalness, wilderness, ziran

views of 148, 150, 165

Needham, Joseph, 89

see also Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang

Neiye, 234

shi

neo-Confucianism, 167–9, 183n93,

mountains and water (shanshui) 22, 115, 204 “Mourning Lake Dian” (Yu Jian), 261

323

183–4n99 see also Kangxi, Li, Tianli, Yuelu Academy, Zhu Xi

Muir, John, 236

New College, Oxford, 213–4, 216

multiple modernities

Ni Zan, 193, 196, 198

see plural histories

Nian Xiyao, 200 Nieuhoff, Jan, 83, 103n44

narration, 211, 214, 225

Ningbo, 85

natural religion, 61

nirvana, 197

natural rights, 68–9

nomads, 16

naturalness, 232–3

North, Frederick, Lord of, 70

see also ziran

Nugent, Christopher, 68

nature, 42, 44, 47–8, 66, 68, 71–5, 87, 100n21, 199, 226, 230

Ollivault, A., 220, 228n12

and men, 2, 11, 21, 233–5

“Old Man in the Kettle” (Hugong), 196

and painting, 231–3

On the Sublime (Longinus), 59

as course of all beings, 15, 232

optics, 170

as disposition, 168–9

Orchid Pavilion, 233

as Heaven-Humanity, 15, 36n69,

Orientalism (Said), 5

232, 235–6

orientalism, 7

as idealised human life, 15, 70, 36, 58, 62–3

Padroado, 146–7, 176n15

as natural world, 9, 66–7

pailou, 61

beauty of, 63, 71, 170, 225

Paine, Tom, 68

imitated by art, 5, 15, 63, 69, 71,

Pandora’s box, 49

73, 94, 230

Parnassus, 216, 221

law of, 45, 62, 68, 71–2

parterre, 213, 216

Pope, Alexander on 157

Passage of King-tong, 88

principles of, 62

passion, 59, 66, 72, 74, 80, 85, 94

romanticism, 236

see also moral-religious emotion,

scenes of, 66

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 323

30/8/17 3:00 PM

324   Index



fear, pride, reverence,

Plans, Elevations, Sections and

veneration

Perspective Views of the Gardens

pastoralism:

Irish, 16–7, 41–2, 44–6, 48



Tartaric/Asiatic, 16–7, 42, 47, 49

Pausanias, 190

and Buildings at Kew in Surrey (Chambers), 75 Plato, 189–90 pleasures of the imagination, 58, 61,

Peace Dog (Chen Yingsong), 250 Peach Blossom Spring (Taohuayuan), 189, 190, 246 Pedrini, Teodorico (De Lige), 148, 160, 165, 167, 176n20

66, 73, 94, 232 Pliny the Elder, 41 plural histories, 6–7 Poivre, Pierre, 62 Polo, Marco, 16, 41

Pedro II, King of Portugal, 147

Pope, Alexander, 73–4, 218, 235

Peking (Beijing), 92, 146, 203, 211,

Poussin, Nicolas, 164

256

Pozzo, Andrea, 200



urban plan, 13

Prandi, Fortunato see Memoirs of



imperial gardens, 160, 161, 193



Jesuits and, 86, 131, 165, 182n91



Nantang, 166



pollution, 252

Price, Richard, 68



see also Forbidden City

Price, Uvedale, 231

Father Ripa “Present-dynasty Map of West Lake”, 123–4

Penglai immortals’ realm, 13

pride, 79–80, 58

“people are masters of their own fate”

Priestley, Joseph, 68

(ren ding sheng tian), 253 perspective, 13

Propaganda Fide, 146 Protecting Chu Pagoda (Baochuta),

convergent, 18, 129–30, 137,

134

142n40

prudence, 71–2



illusory, 190–1, 203

public improvement, 17, 82, 85



linear, 11, 13, 150, 198

see also city and infrastructure



see also line-method

Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of



construction, commerce

public magnificence, 78–9

Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful 56

Qianlong emperor, 14, 19, 117, 130,



beauty, 67



pride, 60



and West Lake, 117, 127



see also sublime (Burkean)



poems 35n62, 194–6, 198, 202

picturesque, 231



thoughts on gardening, 33n48

Piper, Fredrik Magnus, 94



universal enlightenment, 19

Pius VI (pope), 158



view of labyrinth, 187, 188, 204

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 324

136

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 



see also Formation of

Yellow Flowers, Lion Grove



(Yuanmingyuan), Lion



Grove (Suzhou), Qianlong



Garden, Western garden

Ricci, Matteo (Li Madou), 146–8, 164–7

see also accommodation policy, Tianzhu shiyi

Rich, Barnabe, 39

Qianlong Garden, 191, 201–3

riots, 3, 69–70

Qing empire, 3, 7

Ripa, Cesare, 158



consolidation, 3, 126

Ripa, Matteo (Ma Guoxian), 18,



identity, 23, 130, 168





144–5, 230

reception of European



and Jesuits, 148, 9, 160–3



landscape/ cartography, 13,



and Tournon, 147–8, 165



16, 23, 134



and Kangxi, 148, 164–5



as apostolic missionary, 147,

statecraft, neo-Confucianism, 168–9



universal, 23

325



Qu Yuan, 257, 261

162–3, 166

becoming priest of Propaganda fide, 145–6

qushui liushang, 201

engraving Thirty-six Views,

rationalism, 243







148–50, 156 see also Enlightenment

reason, 20, 58, 72, 97n9 reclamation scheme (tuimu huancao), 260 “Record of the Garden of the

on painting, 148, 170 on Rites Controversy, 149, 158,



165–7, 170

see also Giornale

Robinson, William, 237 rockery art, 202, 204

Unsuccessful Politician” (Wen



Zhengming), 221, 225

Roman Empire, 6–7, 9, 11–2, 81–2

“Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” (Tao Yuanming), 188, 191

see also labyrinth

Romans, 7, 17, 49 romanticism, 236–7, 239

Reformation, 3, 14

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 220, 224

reverence, 71

Royal Academy of Art, 78–9



and landscape, 72

Ruan Dacheng, 212, 218



as virtue, 72



for Heaven or Dao, 12



for nature, 74



for paternal power, 62, 78

Scythian 49



for throne, 93

see also Tartar

Scheffer, Carl Fredrik, Count, 60, 69, 94

revisionist historiography, 3–4

self-cultivation, 196, 257–8, 262–3

Reynolds, Joshua, 94

Shandong (Shan-tong), 85

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 325

30/8/17 3:00 PM

326   Index

Shangdi (High Lord), 183n93

Southern School (nanzong), 163, 169



and God, 146, 149, 157

southern tours (nanxun), 126, 193



Kangxi’s view of, 166

spectacular view (qiguan), 195, 200,



Jesuits’ view of, 166–7



Ripa’s view of, 166–7

Shanxi, 85

204 Spenser, Edmund, 40, 43, 46 The Spring River Flows East (Yi jiang

shared history, 4

chunshui xiang dong liu; Cai and

Shen Deqian, 131 Shen Yu, 150, 169

Zheng), 249 “Spring Scene” (Chunwang; Du Fu),

Shenstone, William, 211, 217–8,

247

220–1, 222–6, 231, 235

Stamp Act, 70

see also Works (Shenstone)

Stanihurst, Richard, 39, 42, 44



Shijing (Book of Poetry), 12, 168

Strabo, 41

Shixue (Studies of Perspective; Nian),

Strange Stories from Cathay (Huaxia

200–1

yishi lu; Sadan Jun), 253–4

sightseeing (youlan), 122, 128

Su Dyke, 134

sightseeing gazetteer (youlan zhi), 119

sublime (Burkean), 17, 56, 83

The Sightseeing Gazetteer of West Lake



(Xihu youlan zhi; Tian Rucheng), 18, 118–25, 123–4, 136, 140n22

cultivating moral emotions, 58,

67, 80



delight, 59

sightseeing sites (shengji), 120



difficulty, 89

Sima Guang, 234



effect of, 63, 91–2

Sinocentrism, 9, 35n68



greatness, 17, 86

Sinophile, 61, 82



infinity, 74

Smeaton, John, 90



obscurity, 74

Smith, Adam, 59–60, 64, 79, 80, 82



physiological, 67–8, 86

Smith, Sir Thomas, 39, 40, 42, 44–5



succession, 87

Society of Jesus, 145, 158, 172



terror, 26, 72, 89



sublime, 66–7, 88–9, 100n27

see also Jesuits

Solinus, 41



Somerset House, 60 “Song-dynasty Map of West Lake”, 123–4 “Song of Ever-lasting Sorrow” (Chang hen ge; Bai Juyi), 247

see also On the Sublime, sublime (Burkean)

sudden enlightenment, 187, 197, 204

see also Dao, nirvana, Gelassenheit

Sun Long, 125, 127 Supplement to the Sightseeing Gazetteer

Sorte, Cristoforo, 170–1

of West Lake (Xihu youlan zhi

Sousa, Francisco de, 158

yu), 122

South Church (Nantang), 166

187-328 Chp5-8,Endlims_5.indd 326

sustainability, 243, 245, 266

30/8/17 3:00 PM

Index 

Suzhou, 147, 188, 204, 211 see also Lion Grove (Suzhou)

327

Tianli (Heavenly principle), 167, 183n93

Swedish East India Company, 60

Tianzhu (Lord of Heaven), 147, 149,

Tao Yuanming, 188, 233, 246

Tianzhu shiyi (True Meaning of the

166–8 see also “Record of the Peach Blossom Spring” Tartar (Tartarians), 16, 28n14, 39–41, 45

Lord of Heaven; Ricci), 166, 183n93 Timaeus, 188–9 Topographia Hibernica (Gerald of

Tartaric landscape, 23 see also pastoralism Temple, Sir William, 62, 63–4, 70

Wales), 39, 44, 46–7 Torres, Anthony, 146 Tournon, Charles-Thomas Maillard

ten thousand things (wanwu), 243

de, 146–9, 165

Ten Views of West Lake (Xihu shi

traveller’s guidebook, 121

jing), 18, 126, 129, 141n29, 142n41 terms see Tian, Shangdi, Tianzhu

Treatise on Civil Architecture (Chambers, 1st and 3rd ed.), 58–9, 60, 81–2, 93

terror see sublime (Burkean)

trompe l’oeil see perspective (illusory)

thaumata, 190

“True Wonder” (zhenqu), 195, 204

theatre, 190, 191, 203

Turner, J.W.M., 236

Thirty-six Views of Jehol (Ripa), 150–1, 157, 162, 164–5, 170–1

universal empire, 6–7

Thunder Peak Pagoda (Leifengta), 134

university, 213–16, 218, 226

Tian (Heaven), 146

Unzer, Ludwig, 95

and God, 157

ut pictura poesis, 17, 36n69, 58, 99n15

and landscape, 170–1

Utopia, 50

and Li (principle) and Tianli (Heavenly principle), 167

Utopia, 51 Utopus, 50

Jesuits’ view of, 165–7, 183n93 Kangxi’s view of, 166, 167–8

veneration, 70–2

personhood of, 183

Virgil, 11, 49, 221

Ripa’s view of, 166–7, 170

see also Aeneid, Eclogue, Georgics

Zhu Xi’s view of, 167–8

Virgin Mary, 162

Tian Rucheng, 18, 118–20, 122,

Visdelou, Claude de, 85

125–9, 136

Vitruvius, 79

see also The Sightseeing Gazetteer

Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de, 60

of West Lake

Von Erdmannsdorff, Friedrich Wihelm, 95

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328   Index

Walpole, Horace, 73, 97n10, 102n35, 229

Yates, Frances, 48 Yidai yilu (One Belt One Road), 248

Walpole, Robert, 11

Yilantai, 199

Wang Wei, 233–4

Yongzheng, 127, 130, 191, 200, 203,

Wang Xizhi, 201, 233

208n49

Wang Youxue, 203

Yu Jian, 260–1

Wang, Liping, 125

Yuan ye (Ji Cheng), 231–2, 204

war against nature, 243

Yuanmingyuan (Garden of Perfect

Weber, Max, 28n18 Wedgewood, Josiah, 82

Brightness), 187–8, 191, 197–9, 201, 203

Weize, 193, 197

Yuelu Academy, 19, 212–3, 216, 226

Wen Zhengming, 221, 225

Yuzhi Bishu shanzhuang shi (The

Western garden (Xiyanglou), 191, 194

Emperor’s Poems on the

Whately, Thomas, 59, 66, 106n69

Mountain Retreat for Escaping

wilderness, 236–38, 243, 271n42

from the Summer Heat), 144,

Wilkes, John, 69

150, 168–70

William of Wykeham, 213 Wolf Totem (Lang tuteng; Jiang Rong), 259

Zhang Chao, 232 Zhang Kui, 150

Works (Shenstone), 220–6

Zhao Chang, 160, 166–7, 178n38

Wren, Christopher, 78

Zhejiang (Che-kyang), 85

Wright, Thomas, 92

Zhijing Yundi (Ripa), 150, 155

Wuxi, 164

Zhijing Yundi (Shen), 155

Wuyi (or Wuling), 197

Zhongyong (Doctrine of the Mean), 36n69, 168

Xi Chuan, 261–4

Zhou Dunyi, 168

Xiling Chenxia (Ripa), 150, 157–8,

Zhou Qingyuan, 122

162, 170–1 Xiling Chenxia (Shen), 150, 157

Zhu Gui, 150 Zhu Xi, 167–9 Zhuangzi, 12, 36 (n69), 232

Yan Kuan, 119

Zhuangzi, 234

Yang Guifei, 247

Zhuozhou, 86

Yang Mengying, 125

ziran, 204, 233, 244

Yangzhou, 86

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