page_title: Chinese garden
section_title: Song Dynasty (960–1279)
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese garden / History / Song Dynasty (960–1279)
caption_attribution_description: English: Games in the Jinming Pool, by Chinese artist Zhang Zeduan, a silk painting with dimensions of 28.6 by 28.5 cm, dated to the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127 AD). It depicts the imperial gardens of Kaifeng, the capital city of China during the Northern Song era.
context_page_description: The Chinese garden is a landscape garden style which has evolved over three thousand years. It includes both the vast gardens of the Chinese emperors and members of the imperial family, built for pleasure and to impress, and the more intimate gardens created by scholars, poets, former government officials, soldiers and merchants, made for reflection and escape from the outside world. They create an idealized miniature landscape, which is meant to express the harmony that should exist between man and nature.
  A typical Chinese garden is enclosed by walls and includes one or more ponds, rock works, trees and flowers, and an assortment of halls and pavilions within the garden, connected by winding paths and zig-zag galleries. By moving from structure to structure, visitors can view a series of carefully composed scenes, unrolling like a scroll of landscape paintings.
context_section_description: There were two periods of the Song dynasty, northern and southern, and both were known for the construction of famous gardens. Emperor Huizong (1082–1135) was an accomplished painter of birds and flowers. A scholar himself, he integrated elements of the scholar garden into his grand imperial garden. His first garden, called The Basin of the Clarity of Gold, was an artificial lake surrounded by terraces and pavilions. The public was invited into the garden in the spring for boat races and spectacles on the lake. In 1117 he personally supervised the building of a new garden. He had exotic plants and picturesque rocks brought from around China for his garden, particularly the prized rocks from Lake Tai. Some of the rocks were so large that, in order to move them by water on the grand canal, he had to destroy all the bridges between Hangzhou and Beijing. In the center of his garden he had constructed an artificial mountain a hundred meters high, with cliffs and ravines, which he named Genyue, or "The Mountain of Stability."  The garden was finished in 1122. In 1127, Emperor Huizong was forced to flee from the Song capital, Kaifeng, when it came under attack by the armies of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty. When he returned (as a captive of the Jurchens), he found his garden completely destroyed, all the pavilions burned and the art works looted. Only the mountain remained.
  While the imperial gardens were the best known, many smaller but equally picturesque gardens were built in cities such as Luoyang. The Garden of the Monastery of the Celestial Rulers in Luoyang was famous for its peonies; the entire city came when they were in bloom. The Garden of Multiple Springtimes was famous for its view of the mountains. The most famous garden in Luoyang was The Garden of Solitary Joy (Dule Yuan), built by the poet and historian Sima Guang (1021–1086). His garden had an area of eight mu, or about 1.5 hectares. In the center was the Pavilion of Study, his library, with five thousand volumes. To the north was an artificial lake, with a small island, with a picturesque fisherman's hut. To the east was a garden of medicinal herbs, and to the west was an artificial mountain, with a belevedere at the summit to view the surrounding neighborhoods. Any passer-by could visit the garden by paying a small fee.
  After fall of Kaifeng, the capital of the Song dynasty was moved to Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang). The city of Lin'an soon had more than fifty gardens built on the shore of the Western Lake. The other city in the province famous for its gardens was Suzhou, where many scholars, government officials and merchants built residences with gardens. Some of these gardens still exist today, though most been much altered over the centuries.
  The oldest Suzhou garden that can be seen today is the Blue Wave Pavilion, built in 1044 by the Song dynasty poet Su Shunqing. (1008–1048). In the Song dynasty, it consisted of a hilltop viewing pavilion. Other lakeside pavilions were added, including a reverence hall, a recitation hall, and a special pavilion for watching the fish. Over the centuries it was much modified, but still keeps its essential plan.
  Another Song dynasty garden still in existence is the Master of the Nets Garden in Suzhou. It was created in 1141 by Shi Zhengzhi, Deputy Civil Service Minister of the Southern Song government. It had his library, the Hall of Ten Thousand Volumes, and an adjacent garden called the Fisherman's Retreat. It was extensively remodeled between 1736 and 1796, but it remains one of the best example of a Song Dynasty Scholars Garden.
  In the city of Wuxi, on the edge of Lake Tai and at the foot of two mountains, there were thirty four gardens recorded by the Song dynasty historian Zhou Mi (1232–1308). The two most famous gardens, the Garden of the North (Beiyuan) and the Garden of the South (Nanyuan), both belonged to Shen Dehe, Grand Minister to Emperor Gaozong (1131–1162).  The Garden of the South was a classic mountain-and-lake (shanshui) garden; it had a lake with an Island of Immortality (Penglai dao), on whi
caption: The Lake of the Clarity of Gold, an artificial lake and pleasure garden built by Emperor Huizong of Song at his capital, Kaifeng
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