What is the structure of Suzhou gardens?

Suzhou is a famous historical and cultural city in China. It has always been famous for its beautiful scenery and elegant gardens, and enjoys the reputation of "Jiangnan Garden is the best in the world and Suzhou Garden is the first in Jiangnan". According to local records, there are nearly 200 gardens in Suzhou, ranking first in the country. These gardens can be divided into three categories: home gardens, suburban gardens and temple gardens. Suzhou gardens are mostly house gardens, built by nobles, bureaucrats and wealthy businessmen, which are exquisite and elegant. These gardens reflect the different styles of gardens in past dynasties, and they are all representative works of China's garden art.

The existing Suzhou gardens are mostly Ming and Qing architecture, including hundreds of classical gardens. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Suzhou became one of the most prosperous areas in China, with private gardens all over the ancient city. During the heyday of 16 ~ 18 century, there were more than 200 gardens in Suzhou, and now dozens of them are well preserved, making Suzhou known as "paradise on earth". Suzhou is a water town with convenient water diversion, and Taihu Lake is rich in rocks nearby. It is suitable for the construction of exquisite rockeries. In addition, there were many literati in Suzhou in the old days, and some bureaucratic landlords and literati pursued "although they lived in downtown areas, they also had fun in the mountains", which greatly promoted the development of Suzhou gardens.

One of the characteristics of Suzhou gardens is the unity of home and garden, which can be enjoyed, traveled and lived. The formation of this architectural form is a creation that human beings attach themselves to nature, pursue harmony with nature, beautify and improve their living environment in a densely populated city lacking natural scenery.

The "bending" of Suzhou gardens is also a typical feature. Judging from the three elements that constitute the "interest" of gardens, there are three main types: architectural winding paths, landscape winding paths and flowers winding paths. Curved corridors are essential in gardens, and they are the garden roads that shelter from the wind and rain. For example, there are seven different trends in a short passage in My Humble Administrator's Garden. Some of them listen to the sound of Beidou, but they don't feel artificial. Another example is "Liu Yin Road Song". With the movement of aesthetic steps, people can see that its colonnade forest is constantly changing its combination form, just like the melody of music is dancing and the rhythm is changing, while the colonnade is hanging under the eaves, Iraqis are sitting on the sill, weeping willows are piled with stones and the green, fat, red and thin scenery on both sides are combined together, the levels are changing, flowers and birds are singing, creating a fascinating scene with its twists and turns. The winding path leading to a secluded place is a kind of landscape beauty with a sense of picture. In the static view, the winding path can enhance the landscape picture and enrich the level. In the dynamic viewing tour, people's views on the scene were added. At the same time, it expands the garden space and extends the tour route. Play the role of missing people's aesthetic steps. The beauty of winding path is the unity of art and function.

An important feature of Suzhou classical gardens is that they are not only the product of history and culture. It is also the carrier of China's traditional ideology and culture. It is manifested in the naming, plaques, couplets, calligraphy stones, carving and decoration of garden halls, as well as the meanings of flowers and trees and the feelings of stacking stones. It is not only a beautiful work of art that adorns the garden, but also stores a lot of historical, cultural, ideological and scientific information, with extremely profound material and spiritual content. Some reflect and spread various philosophical concepts and schools of thought such as Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; Some preach the philosophy of life and cultivate noble sentiments; With the help of classical poems and literary works, the landscape is embellished, germinated and rendered, so that people can turn the landscape into feelings in their lives and sightseeing, produce artistic beauty and obtain spiritual satisfaction. The park has a well-preserved collection of calligraphy works by famous calligraphers in China, which is a precious work of art with high cultural value. In addition, Suzhou Classical Garden, as the first house garden in China, reflects the life style and etiquette of folk living and leaving their relatives in the south of the Yangtze River in ancient China, and is the material for understanding and studying the folk customs in the south of the Yangtze River in ancient China.

Simple and elegant, Humble Administrator's Garden is a classical garden built at the beginning of15th century, with strong characteristics of Jiangnan water town. After hundreds of years of vicissitudes, it still maintains the simple and spacious Ming style, and is known as "the best private garden in China", which is the largest and most famous garden in Suzhou. Wang was the first owner of this garden. Retire in his later years, buy land to build a garden, and borrow the meaning of "Humble Administrator's Garden" in "Idle Residence" to name it Humble Administrator's Garden. The Humble Administrator's Garden is dominated by water, accounting for about three-fifths of the water surface, and most of the buildings are near the water, maintaining the simple and elegant gardening style of the Ming Dynasty. The artistic conception of Humble Administrator's Garden can be summarized in one sentence: "Although it is made by people. Wan Tian Zi Qi ". Humble Administrator's Garden has a large space, so there is a lot of room for manoeuvre in the planning and design of the garden. Therefore, although the scenic spots are imitating nature, they are close to the scale of real landscapes, and there are few artificial traces. The overall layout of the Humble Administrator's Garden is centered on the pool, and all kinds of pavilions and pavilions are built by the water. The large pools in the Central Plains are patchwork, clear and wide; On the south bank of the pool, the halls and pavilions are relatively concentrated, while on the north bank of the pool, the trees are lush, birds and flowers are fragrant and scattered. In order to form the deep artistic conception of the stone path, there are many winding waters, winding paths, cloisters and winding bridges in the garden, which not only avoids the unobstructed view of the space, but also forms an infinite depth of field, which is close to the winding natural landscape in the south of the Yangtze River. Tourists walk along winding paths. Wide waters and winding streams, rockeries and real ports, dense trees and wide courtyards, stone bridges and pavilions make people feel a simple, cheerful, simple and naive natural landscape.

Canglang Pavilion, located in Sanyuanfang, south of the city, is the oldest garden in Suzhou. The layout of the whole park is natural and harmonious, which can be called a masterpiece with ingenious conception and appropriate techniques. Together with Lion Grove, Humble Administrator's Garden and Lingering Garden, it is listed as the four major gardens in Suzhou in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. The scenery of the whole park is unpretentious and elegant, winning by nature instead of ingenuity.

Lion Grove is one of the four famous gardens in Suzhou with a history of more than 600 years. From the Yuan Dynasty to Zheng Zheng for two years, Wei Ze, a disciple of the famous monk Tian Ru Zen Master, "invested in buying land and building houses at the same speed. Go to be a teacher. " It is named after "the forest is full of bamboo, and there are many strange stones under the bamboo, which look like a lion". Lion Forest not only has the humanistic landscape of Suzhou classical gardens such as pavilions, terraces, buildings, pavilions, halls and corridors, but also is famous for its grotesque rocks and deep caves, and is known as the "rockery kingdom".

Liuyuan was built in the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, and it is divided into four scenic spots: the middle part is centered on the mountain pond, and the scenery is quiet; To the east, the hall is magnificent and spacious, and pavilions are stacked; There are heaped-up mountains and maple forests in the west, and the scenery is natural and delicate; The north is idyllic. The layout of the whole garden is rigorous, especially the architectural space is properly handled, ranking first among Suzhou gardens and one of the four famous gardens in China.

Master Wang Garden covers an area of about eight acres, less than one-sixth of the humble administrator's garden. But it is small and medium-sized, with rigorous layout, clear focus and rich changes. There is a garden in the garden, and there is a scene outside the scene, which is exquisite and deep. Although there are many buildings, it is not congested. Although the mountain pond is small, it is not cramped, and it is considered as a model of Suzhou classical gardens.

Yiyuan Garden is the latest garden in Suzhou. It absorbs the advantages of other gardens and forms its own characteristics. Due to its compact layout and appropriate technology, Yiyuan Garden has high ornamental value. The whole park covers an area of about nine acres and is long and narrow from east to west. According to local conditions, the landscape is divided into two parts, separated by a corridor, and the corridor wall and flower window communicate the eastern and western scenery, which can increase the depth of field. The eastern part of the corridor is dominated by courtyard buildings, and the curved corridor surrounds the pavilion, dotted with flowers and trees and stone peaks. Looking from the empty window of the winding corridor, all Chinese paintings are meaningful. Langxi is the main attraction of the whole park, with water in the middle and rockeries, flowers and trees and buildings around. The central water surface gathers, the east and west ends are long and narrow, and a curved bridge and sluice are built to show that the water in the pool is inexhaustible. The rockeries in the north of the pool are all made of beautiful lake stones. Although the mountain is not high, there are peaks and valleys, which are set off by tree pavilions.

Suzhou Gardens, as the representative works of Jiangnan folk architecture in Ming and Qing Dynasties (14 ~ the beginning of 20th century), reflected the high living civilization in Jiangnan area of China during this period, once influenced the architectural style of the whole Jiangnan city, brought the design, conception, layout, aesthetics and construction technology of folk architecture closer to it, and reflected the scientific and technological level and artistic achievements of urban construction at that time. It has reached a historical height in beautifying the living environment and integrating architectural beauty, natural beauty and humanistic beauty, and has an irreplaceable position in the history of garden art development in China and even the world.