Interior display and its relation to external spaces in traditional Chinese gardens

Abstract

Generally speaking, the arts associated with traditional Chinese gardens can be divided into three major divisions: the various arts of landscape construction, including the fashioning of hills and hydraulics; architectural works (including the carving and painting of such features as doors, windows and beams); and the art of interior display. Regardless of whether we are discussing an underlying artistic theme or a cultural ethos, these three divisions are intimately connected. In studies of Chinese gardens, garden construction and architecture were what attracted scholarly attention; component elements of interior display, such as furniture and bonsai (pen jing), also attracted research as an independent topic. Until now, however, very few scholars have treated interior display as a synthetic system of arts warranting study as a totality, and very few researchers have systematically examined the art of interior display as a significant expression of ideal human character and the relationship between interior display and the art of gardening, nor have they examined the deeper underlying relationships between the art of interior display and the entirety of Chinese art and culture — questions that this essay seeks to address. Because of the very long historical period over which the art of interior display developed, and the fact that most relevant materials are to be found scattered unsystematically in works of literature, biographies in official histories, paintings and the applied arts, I have chosen to focus this discussion on the art governing the arrangement and decoration of residences within the Grand View Garden (Da Guan Yuan) as described in the novel A Dream of Red Mansions (Hong lou meng), hereafter Red Mansions. I hope that through a discussion of those scenes familiar to all who have read this Chinese masterpiece we will have a fairly convenient medium for examining these questions. I have adopted this approach not only because Red Mansions provides one of the most detailed documentary descriptions of Chinese classical gardens and residential art, but also because the novel profoundly expresses the humanistic spirit imbuing the Chinese arts of gardens and residences. Such an approach also allows us not to be limited to a pure discussion of various arts and crafts or merely to provide an historical introduction.