Chuantongzaoyuanjiyi
01 · Historical Records
The Yangzhou garden-building craft began in the Western Han dynasty, flourished in the Sui and Tang, matured in the Song and Ming, and reached its height in the Qianlong period of the Qing dynasty.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yangzhou garden-building craft is a comprehensive art that takes architecture as its main form of expression, combines rockery piling, is supplemented by plants and water management, and through scientific arrangement and careful combination constructs a poetic and painterly, most liveable environment. The Yangzhou garden-building craft synthesises northern and southern characteristics, forming a style of its own and maturing day by day; it is distributed over most of northern Jiangsu centred on Yangzhou, over the Nanjing and Zhenjiang areas of southern Jiangsu, and over southern Anhui Province. The traditional gardens built in Yangzhou combine dwelling and garden, and achieve special distinction and style in their architecture. Among these, the dwelling-gardens built select fine materials and are finely wrought; they pursue not only the overall effect but also exhaust the possibilities of carving in the smallest details, and such features as double galleries and winding corridors, decorated lattice windows and walls of rubbed bricks with tight joints all display the refinement of Yangzhou's building craft. Yangzhou-style rockery piling is 'hollow within and strange without', either using the projecting method to create peril or the floating method to seek movement; inside the caves stone beds, stone stools and stone tables are placed, or water is led in and bridges are laid out, so that the atmosphere of life is rich and the scenery creates a world of its own; where it is hollow and open it is unfathomably deep, and where it juts out peril appears in a thousand forms. The Yangzhou garden-building craft excels at 'making water in a dry garden', creating the shapes of mountain streams, waterfalls, rivers and waves, and such waterside features as boat bows, bridges, water pavilions and pond banks, so that people have the feeling that where there is no water it seems there is water, and the water is in the mind. In the arrangement of flowers and trees, the varieties are abundant, the colours varied, the forms and postures each different, and the meanings auspicious, so that they bring out the best in the other scenery. Overall, the Yangzhou garden-building craft displays a distinctive beauty not only in outward form but also in structure and detailed workmanship; its characteristic lies in combining southern elegance and northern grandeur, synthesising the features of north and south, forming a style of its own, and embodying the mood of poetry and painting, so that it may be called a garden of brush and ink, rich in the atmosphere of scholarship. Ji Cheng of the Ming dynasty built gardens in Yangzhou and there wrote the book 'Yuan Ye' (The Craft of Gardens), the world's first monograph on garden-making, which highly summarises the theory and practice of Yangzhou garden-building and is still revered as a classic by garden-makers today. The Yangzhou garden-building craft has gradually developed into an art category with a complete system and a style of its own.
Faking water in a dry garden
Even a garden without water can be made to show streams, falls, rivers and waves, furnished with a boat, bridge, waterside pavilion and embankment, so that water is perceived before its absence is noticed.
Yang-style rockwork, hollow within and strange without
Yang rockwork is hollow within and striking without, built either by cantilevering into danger or by floating movement, with stone beds, stools, tables or a bridged stream set inside the hollows.
Brick walls with ground and matched joints
Walls require bricks ground flat and laid to matched joints, aligned so that no tool marks remain; the fine level mortar joint is where the Yang school's workmanship shows most plainly.
Galleries and carved lattice windows
Galleries link the courtyards so that walking and viewing become one act, while carved lattice windows ventilate, screen and frame the view; solid structure set against void, they work with rockwork and water to complete the house-and-garden whole.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yangzhou garden-building craft is centred on Yangzhou, and most of northern Jiangsu as well as the Nanjing-Zhenjiang area and southern Anhui all came under its influence. The pattern of dwelling combined with garden is preserved most completely in the lanes of the southeastern part of the old city. Ji Cheng of the Ming dynasty built gardens in Yangzhou and composed 'Yuan Ye', in which the methods of siting, laying foundations, buildings, fittings, doors and windows, and walls drew largely on the experience of Yangzhou craftsmen and were followed as a model by craftsmen throughout the realm.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The garden scholar Mr Chen Congzhou held that the gardens and dwellings of Yangzhou are of important value in China's architectural history and can serve as a reference for modern garden architecture. This craft is at present transmitted by the method of a master leading apprentices. The transmission, protection and development of this craft not only plays an indispensable and important role in maintaining and making use of famous gardens and historic districts of past dynasties, but also has an outstanding role and precious cultural value in building cultural cities and garden cities and in beautifying people's lives. Wu Yulin (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Hui ethnicity, born in June 1963, a native of Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Representative inheritor of the fifth national-level batch of the intangible cultural heritage item Traditional Garden-Building Craft (Yangzhou garden-building craft). A Yangzhou garden-building technician. He selects fine materials and works with great refinement, pursuing not only the overall effect but also exhausting the possibilities of carving in the smallest details. He integrates function, structure and art into one, so that culture, art and technology are harmoniously unified. In garden-building practice he introduces the creative ideas of Yangzhou-style potted landscapes (penjing), using such methods as planting trees with graceful postures and placing stones to form scenery to express the marked characteristics of a garden as a large potted landscape; he absorbs the style of the Yangzhou school of painting, taking ordinary materials yet expressing elevated and far-reaching meaning, with varied techniques that never fall into convention, expressing boldness and giving voice to the spirit; he pursues refinement and elegance and the character of poetry and painting, embodying natural scenery and the unity of heaven and humanity. He pays attention to profundity of mood and to appealing to both refined and popular tastes. The projects he has directed include the Yangzhou ancient canal landscape belt, the 'Huajuli' project, and the 'China Tang Garden' project in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wu Yulin 05-2910
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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