Abstract
Chinese culture has an obsession with moonlight. It struck the people from Western cultures living in old China that the Chinese so trusted the ebb and flow of moonlight and always looked forward to the day when the moonlight would be at its best.2 Especially so when the memory of a garden named Yuanming is cherished. Yuanming means the ‘round brightness’ or the ‘perfect brightness’ that only the full moon can give.3 The obsession with moonlight was widespread in Chinese gardens. At the time of the Yuanming Yuan, a painter in Suzhou wrote, ‘Every time the wind rustled the bamboos in my courtyard or the moon silvered the leaves of the banana trees beside my window, I remembered other moons and other nights until my soul became entranced with an unreal world of dreams and fancies.’4
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