Gardens and walls: history and morality in urban China

Abstract

This anthropological-historical paper explores the oft-neglected inner connotations of morality and history as embedded in China’s historic landscape. Situated in the heritage city of Kaifeng, it reveals how local gardens not only are architectural imitations of this ancient capital, but also are connected to the nation’s past and mediate moral lessons. A deeper textual dimension is further exposed, with an examination of a dynastic record, as well as the rich historiographical corpus lying behind it, to which garden designers refer. The arguments appearing in such a textual and intellectual dimension are then explicated with regard to the city’s old walls. The walls, which are supposed to be formidable defensive facilities, now are viewed as the symbols of learning, virtue and civilisation in contrast to sheer militarism. A further discussion about pertinent ideas in Chinese thought finally discloses the richness of this historical-moral aspect of the city’s landscape.

Keywords:

• History
• morality
• China
• garden
• wall

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and Prof Emma Waterton for editorial attention. I also venture to thank Prof Joel Robbins, Prof James Laidlaw, Prof Charles Stafford, Prof Heonik Kwon, Sir Geoffrey Lloyd and Prof Adam Chau for their help.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 It is by no means true that gardens, which are sometimes broadly described as something related to ‘nature’ and ‘art’ (Ross, 1998), merely refer to historic relics. They can fall into varied categories such as ‘home gardens’ (Alon-Mozes, 2007), ‘garden cities’ (Swensen & Berg, 2020) or modern ‘botanic gardens’ (Kim & Zoh, 2017). In such a sense, the gardens examined below are historical sites mainly because of their specific locality in a heritage city. Another relevant issue is the fact that yuan or yuanlin, the Chinese word for ‘gardens’, is mostly associated with classical gardens. For a juxtaposition of dynastic and contemporary gardens in China, see Rinaldi (2012). For a European account which presupposes such a historically-defined notion of Chinese gardens, see Rinaldi (2016).

2 The polymath Hu Shih penned an informative note on this topic. See White (1927) for Hu’s introduction to a collection of Peking photographs.

3 See Wu (1994) for a literary account.

4 For Su, see Songshi (1977, p. 10859–10868).

5 For the prince, see Wang (2014).

6 Guanzhong is the ancient plain in modern Shanxi. For Luoyang, see Jenner (1981).

7 Cheng refers to Cheng Dachang of the Southern Song; for Sanfu Huangtu, see Vankeerberghen (2021); and Lü refers to Lü Dafang of the Northern Song. For a summary, also see Zhang (1962).

8 Chen refers to Chen Yi of the Ming dynasty.

9 For this text, see West (1985).

10 These are two records on Kaifeng.

11 For a contemporary usage, see Ng and Wang (2005). For its appearance in early texts, see the Mencius 4A2. For an oft-cited source in classical histories, see Ouyang (1975, p. 3880).

12 For another discussion, see Botz-Bornstein (2010).

13 See also Lau (1979).

14 See also Lau (1976).

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by the Cambridge Trust (Grace & Thomas C. H. Chan and Cambridge International Scholarship, 2015–2018); the Department of Social Anthropology (the Richards Fund, 2016) and the Trinity College (the Final Term Emolument, 2019) at the University of Cambridge; and the East China Normal University (Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2023).

Notes on contributors

Yi Qiao

Qiao Yi is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Anthropology, East China Normal University, and received his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. His studies focus on China’s ethical and historical issues.