Characteristics of Traditional Gardens in China

China garden art and western garden art are two major schools of garden art in the world. Different styles, different forms of expression. For example, westerners like sculpture, and there are many sculptures in the garden. On the other hand, people in China like to build rockeries in their gardens. People in China don't pay attention to diversity when they look at trees and flowers. They only appreciate one kind of flower, not quantity, while westerners pay attention to variety and quantity, as well as the patterns of various flower arrangements and combinations in the altar. What they appreciate is the beauty of patterns.

China's garden art originated from China's traditional painting, so it can be said to be another manifestation of traditional painting in a sense. As far as aesthetic discipline is concerned, it is cultivated by long-term profound philosophy and aesthetics, and the discipline itself is a well-formed art category independently developed through various mature art poems, paintings, arts and crafts, architecture and so on. "Poetic and picturesque" is the aesthetic realm pursued by China classical gardens. In France, there is a saying that "the garden is a foil, a background, an appendage of the building, and they are really not an independent and complete art" (in Hegel's place). Western gardens, based on science and technology, naturalize buildings and show the beauty of abstract artificial skills; China gardens are predestined friends with painting, which naturalizes buildings and shows the beauty of natural rhythm of images. Western gardens are open and frank, and they are good at the beauty of the overall symmetrical pattern. China gardens win by pursuing artistic conception through winding paths.

Generally speaking, the beauty of China's classical gardens is implicit, profound, quiet and indifferent, with emphasis on emotional feelings. Various formal attributes of natural objects, such as lines, shapes, proportions and combinations, do not occupy a major position in pre-aesthetic consciousness. It is a closed garden that imitates and pursues nature, and it is a "unique paradise". Western gardens are lively, regular, luxurious and warm. All the buildings in the park pay attention to integrity, and achieve the harmony of numbers with the combination of geometric shapes. Western gardens pay attention to everything in a glance and pursue artificial beauty. They are an open garden and a "paradise enjoyed by many people". It can be said that China gardens are basically natural, freehand and imaginative; Western gardens are basically intuitive, artificial and regular.