Reasons behind Rocks in Suzhou-Style Gardens

When spring glorifies the New York Chinese Scholar's Garden, visitors are bound to marvel at the garden's pink blossoms around ruggest rockeries, which imitate those in Suzhou, a Chinese city famous for having exquisite gardens. It would be enlightening to find out why Chinese gardens cannot do without rocks.

The following book excerpt will clearly explain what rocks and rockeries symbolize in a Suzhou-style garden like the New York Chinese Scholar's Garden.

It is a distinctive feature of Chinese garden design to cement rocks and assemble them into a hill.

According to historical records, the earliest imitation hill was built for the first emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC). That hill in the imperial garden of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) comprised not only rocks but also other components of real hills, such as dirt and grass.

It was in the next century and during the Han Dynasty (202 BC- AD 220) when Prince Liang Xiao (unknown birth year – 144 BC) invented rockery hills, with nothing but rocks cemented seamlessly.

Westerners may find it puzzling, especially after learning that Chinese gardens are supposed to copy nature. Why aren't the imitation hills within the garden walls made more similar to their counterparts in wilderness?

The answer to this question is in traditional Chinese culture, which values endurance. Ancient Chinese scholars found rocks admirable for their long-standing existence through hardships.

What has survived more natural disasters than rocks? That explains why rockery hills became essential for classical Chinese gardens. Long before the rise of surrealism in the early 20th century, Chinese garden designers created surrealistic hills, which would stand like gigantic sculptures, starting with components carved by nature and completed with assembly work performed by men.

Pre-modern Chinese scholars indeed regarded rocks as sculptures made by nature, so they collected them. When they acquired an extraordinarily shaped rock, they would not incorporate it into a rockery. Instead, they would literally (and of course metaphorically) put it on a pedestal.

Rocks in the classical gardens of Suzhou usually came from a large lake in the suburbs, namely Tai Lake.

Tai Lake rocks generally meet the four qualifications of an awe-inspiring rock: perforation, partial hollowness, lankness, and rugosity. Many Chinese scholars believe it was an artist named Mi Fu (1051-1107) who set these four criteria, because a later artist, Zheng Banqiao (1693-1766), said so.

Interestingly, three of these four qualities (except lankness) are far from what is normally considered physical attractiveness. Even being thin was not so desirable in ancient China, where it was a status symbol to look a little plump, because of frequent food shortages back then.

Given the fact that supple skin and smooth contours have always been universally regarded as two essential characteristics of a pretty face, why did ancient Chinese scholars call porous, hollowed-out, and creased rocks beautiful?

The answer is in traditional Chinese culture, in which rocks represent survivors, who have sustained injuries. The lank, dented, and perforated rocks are bony and wrinkly old soldiers with scars. Beneath each scar is a survival story.

How about the hollowed-out part then? Why do the best Tai Lake rocks have holes through which one can see the other side?

It's because a hollow core stands for a humble heart in Chinese culture. Such a humble heart always keeps an empty space for learning something new. This attitude is called xuxin, which literally means “having an empty space in the heart.”

The glory of Tai Lake rocks is in their souls. They are comparable to the hero of the world famous French fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast.”

Above is an excerpt from Insights into Suzhou Gardens