The Chinese garden: death of a symbol

Abstract

In many modern Chinese cities, it is customary to give large high-rise blocks of flats flowery names. ‘The Garden of a Hundred Virtues’ is in actual fact a complex of apartments perched on a mountainside in Hong Kong, overlooking a new town down in a valley where fifteen years ago there were little more than a few villages and paddy-fields. The area at the foot of the mountain — now an industrial estate — still bears traces of its humble origins in its name, Charcoal Burners.1 Up above, behind the Garden of a Hundred Virtues, stands a vast quarry cut into the side of the mountain. One side of my apartment looks out onto this quarry: the rock face rises sheer into the sky, like a mighty Song dynasty scroll. The other side looks down into the red (?black) dust of warehouses and workshops of Charcoal Burners.