始于个案的开放对话

一部中国园林史由无数座名园个案连缀而成，宛如珍珠串起的项链，寄畅园是项链上一颗别致的明珠，因其精彩纷呈的历史，独到精湛的艺术，为人所津津乐道。

寄畅园的传奇色彩首先来自其悠久的历史。这座园林1527年由秦金建造，此后迭经秦瀚、秦梁、秦燿、秦埈、秦伯钦、秦德藻、秦松龄、秦道然诸人之手，始终由秦氏保有，因称“秦园”。寄畅园背后的秦氏家族，历史还要更为久远，秦氏始祖是北宋文学家秦观，距今已近1 000年。寄畅园所在的惠山山顶有一座秦观墓，背靠三茅峰，前对太湖，气象开阔，不仅在文字图画上，更在真景实物上，将这个绵延千年的传奇家族展示在世人面前。

不过仅仅是古老，还不足以让寄畅园享有如此盛名。寄畅园卓越的园林艺术，代表了古代造园的最高水平，几乎符合计成《园冶》提出的各项重要原则：这座园林选址于《园冶》最推崇的山林地，与局促在城内的宅园拉开了距离。中国园林以山水取胜，寄畅园假山出自“山子张”叠山世家之手，人工之巧自不必言；尤难得的是园外邻近惠山，山脉延入园中，使假山与真山浑然一体。川流于假山间的八音涧从“天下第二泉”引水，成为惠山整体水系的一部分，使假水与真水也浑然一体；再加上寄畅园对锡山和龙光塔的借景，绝佳诠释了《园冶》“巧于因借”的构园理念，营造出“虽由人作，宛自天开”的浑融境界。

值得一提的是，寄畅园卓越的园林艺术并非唾手得来，而是随着时光流逝，日雕月琢而成。寄畅园的前身只是惠山寺旁的14座僧房之一，到秦瀚手中成为无锡五大名园之一，万历年间跻身无锡两大名园之一，排在愚公谷之后；但到康熙年间一跃成为无锡乃至江南的第一名园。寄畅园的园林艺术与历史演变紧密相连，在一次次改造中愈改愈奇，最终从众多园林里脱颖而出，这对今天的设计师而言，尤其值得借鉴和学习。

寄畅园还有许多独到之处，每处都足以成为一项议题，因此有学者倡议成立“寄畅园学”。如何通过扎实的个案研究，构筑一个开放的研究体系，使寄畅园与悠久的历史脉络、广阔的地域空间、丰富的艺术人文联系起来，是“寄畅园学”成败的关键。事实上，寄畅园所取得的成就，一直与它的开放性有关，今天更应继续保持。

这种开放首先表现在时间上，不同时期的寄畅园始终在与历史对话。这座园林里有庄子的濠上之乐，谢安的东山高卧；有陶渊明的孤松独抚，王羲之的曲水流觞；有白居易的赏月之榭，李德裕的醒酒之石……中国数千年的隐逸文化几乎都荟萃在园中，漫步其间如同展看一幅幅生动的隐逸画卷，汉唐宋明一脉相连。这正是我们今天努力寻找的，如何与历史亲密对话，让历史照进现实，活在当下。

其次，这种开放表现在空间上，包括三个维度。寄畅园是惠山的有机部分，惠山有118座祠堂，为中国最大的古代祠堂群；寄畅园与其西的二泉书院辟小门相通，是园主秦金和名士邵宝友谊的见证；附近的听松石床、竹炉山房、碧山吟社……都是园主和宾客的游息之所，这些景致构成第一个维度。今天惠山的保护开发仍应作为整体来规划，这既是出于保护古镇肌理的需要，也是基于景致间的内在关联。寄畅园与所借景的锡山龙光塔，秦观墓所在的惠山构成第二个维度，它们与无锡城遥相呼应，成为整座城市最重要的文化守护和精神寄托。中国许多城市都有类似的场所，如苏州虎丘、扬州蜀岗、杭州西湖，这些场所在历史上发挥的重要作用，今天仍需深刻体会，将它们重新打造为城市的精神锚点。第三个维度需要把视野放大到全国，康熙年间寄畅园所取得的突出成就，与它对杭州飞来峰、嘉兴放鹤洲的取法有关，此后它又被侯杲亦园、乾隆惠山园所取法，这种开放的姿态将各地的景观联系到一起，构成更大维度的有机整体。

最后，这种开放还表现在人事上。寄畅园在古代首先属于秦氏家族，秦氏子弟贡献良多，可称作“秦园”。同时，这座园林也属于邵宝、邹迪光、安绍芳、王永积、严绳孙等无锡人，他们都曾为其出谋献策，可称作无锡名园。再进一步，为寄畅园绘图的宋懋晋来自松江，撰写《寄畅园记》的王穉登来自苏州，主持寄畅园改筑的张鉽来自嘉兴……所以它还是一座江南名园。最后，康熙、乾隆等帝王的游赏与仿建，使寄畅园突破了江南文士的圈子，进入到皇家系统中。

名园个案研究常见的局限是只见树木，不见森林，在一个封闭的话语体系里自说自话，与开阔的外部世界隔绝开来，越走越窄。这样的名园研究难免成为一份凝固的化石标本，可供欣赏却丧失了活力。寄畅园研究希望能够打破这种局限，提供多种对话的可能——历史与现实的对话，单体与环境的对话，地域与国际的对话……基于这一考虑，2017年寄畅园490周年纪念活动上成立了“中国古典名园研究中心”，设在北京林业大学园林学院，计划借助这一平台，将高校学者与地方学者、研究机构与政府机构、学术资源与社会资源结合起来，以点带面，通过个案研究展开多方面的探索，引领人们体验鲜活的历史人文，构建坚实的学科理论，指导现实的保护和实践。

本期专题组稿人：黄晓

2018年11月1日

PREFACE

An Open Dialogue from the Garden Cases

The Chinese garden history is made up of numerous well-known garden cases like pearls of a necklace. The Jichang Garden as a unique pearl on the necklace with colorful history and distinctive art has been very popularly talked about.

The legendary color of Jichang Garden comes first of all from its long history. It was built by Qin Jin in 1527 and handed thereafter in Qin family to Qin Han, Qin Liang, Qin Yao, Qin Jun, Qin Boqin,Qin Dezao, Qin Songling, Qin Daoran etc. so also named “Qin’s Garden”. The Qin family that owned Jichang Garden is traced back to their ancestor Qin Guan the litterateur and writer of the Soft Tuneful School in Northern Song Dynasty about 1,000 years ago. The Qinguan tomb was located on the top of Hui Hill where the Jichang Garden was built. The tomb stands against the Sanmao Peak overlooking the Taihu Lake with a wide magnif i cent vision to present the thousandyear-long legendary family to the living world, practically with the real scene in addition to the artistic writing and painting.

The antiquity is however not enough to make Jichang Garden highly reputable. The outstanding garden art of Jichang represents the highest level of ancient gardening of China for that it conforms almost to all the garden principles put forward in Yuan Ye such as the principle of location at “hilly woodlands” to be distant from the narrow residential areas in downtown. Chinese gardens are characterized by the use of mountain (Shan) and water (Shui). The rockery of Jichang Garden was built by the well-known “Rockwork Zhang” representing very high landscaping level as indicated by the neat integration of the rockery with the natural Hui Hill outside the Garden. The Music Stream of the rockery draws water from the “Second Spring of the World” as part of the overall Hui Hill water system to make the artif i cial and natural water system integrated. The garden landscape is also supported with the scenery from Xi Hill and Longguang Tower coinciding with the Yuan Ye principle of “skillful design depends on basis of supporting”for works “although artif i cial, it appears natural”.

It is worth mentioning that the outstanding garden art of Jichang Garden is not originally so. In the very beginning it was only one of the 14 mortuaries neighboring the Huishan Temple. Jichang became one of the fi ve most famous gardens of Wuxi in the hands of Qin Han, and one of the two most famous gardens in Wuxi during the Wanli reign of Ming Dynasty by ranking next to the Yugong Valley.Up till the Kangxi reign of Qing Dynasty Jichang Garden became the most famous garden in Wuxi and southern China. The landscape art of Jichang Garden evolved with the history to become increasingly amazing and distinguished by times of reconstruction and innovation which is much worth learning from by nowadays designers.

Jichang Garden has many unique qualities with each suff i cient for thematic research so some scholars have proposed to set up the “Ji-Chang Studies”. Whether this can be achieved depends largely on the success or failure of in-depth case study for an open research system to link Jichang with the long history, broad geographical space and rich humanities. In fact, the achievements of Jichang Garden in the past has been partly due to its openness which should still be maintained for expansion today.

This openness lies firstly in time as Jichang Garden has always been in certain dialogue with history. With Zhuangzi’s Joy on Moat,Xie’an’s Retirement with High Ease, Tao Yuanming’s Solitary Care of pine, Wang Xizhi’s Wine Cup Floating on Winding Water, Bai Juyi’s Moon-watching Pavillion, Li Deyu’s Sober-up Stone and so on, the thousands of years of seclusion culture are wholly consolidated in the Garden so that strolling through Jichang Garden means watching a vivid reclusive handscroll of painting with Han, Tang, Song and Ming dynasties closely linked. We look for ways today to engage in close dialogues with history, so let history shines into reality to allow us treasure the current moment.

Secondly, the openness is manifested in space with three dimensions. Jichang Garden as one of the 118 ancestral halls of the Hui Hill, composing the largest ancient ancestral temple complex in China, is an integral part of the Hill landscape. Jichang Garden has a small door to its western Erquan Academy, a witness to the close friendship between the Garden owner Qin Jin and the famous literati Shao Bao. The nearby Tingsong Stone Bed, Bamboo Stove Cottage,the Bishan Yinshe Villa combined as the first dimension of the integrated landscape to offer leisure service for the Garden owners and their guests. The protection and development today of the Hui Hill needs to be planned as a whole to form integral residence-tourism space for both conservation of the texture of the ancient town and for inherent linkages among the landscape. Jichang Garden in addition to far-visioned Longguang Tower of Xi Hill and Qin Guan Tomb backgrounded Hui Hill combine to constitute the second dimension to echo the Wuxi City as its prime cultural guardian and spiritual sustenance. Many cities in China have places like Hui Hill such as Tiger Hill in Suzhou, Shu Hill in Yangzhou, and West Lake in Hangzhou.These places that have played an important role in history still deserve our deep understanding so that they can be further utilized as spiritual anchors of the cities. The third dimension needs to be expanded to the perspective of whole country. The outstanding achievements of Jichang Garden during the reign of Emperor Kangxi of Qing dynasty are related to the adoption of the landscaping methods for Flyover Hill (Feilaifeng) of Hangzhou, Crane Freeing Island (Fanghezhou)of Jiaxing, and the later Yi Garden by Hou Gao, Huishan Garden by Emperor Qianlong were further inf l uenced. The openness approach connect the landscapes of various places of the country to form an organic whole in a larger dimension.

Finally, the openness is manifested in human figures. Jichang Garden belonged in ancient time to the Qin family whose members contributed as owners of “Qin’s Garden”. At the same time, Jichang Garden belonged to some local personage of Wuxi such as Shao Bao, Zou Diguang, An Shaofang, Wang Yongji, Yan Shengsun etc. who made suggestions for the famous gardens in Wuxi. Furthermore, Song Maojin from Songjiang made drawings for Jichang Garden, Wang Zhideng from Suzhou wrote the Jichang Garden Records, Zhang Shi from Jiaxing hosted the reconstruction project of Jichang Garden… Thus it is also a famous garden among the river south of China. Last but not the least, the emperors such as Kangxi and Qianlong toured south, brought garden art like Jichang from southern China into the royal system.

One common limitation of the garden case studies is that they tended to see trees instead of forests so that the self-talking in closed discourse system to narrow the open external world. Case studies to famous gardens thereby inevitably become solidified fossil which can only be appreciated as invigorous specimen. It is recommended that the research of Jichang Garden should break this limitation by providing multiple dialogues between history and reality, the individual and the environment, the region and the world etc. Based on this consideration, the “Chinese Classical Garden Research Center” was established at the 490th anniversary of the Jichang Garden in 2017,based on the School of Landscape Architecture of Beijing Forestry University. The plan is to combine university scholars with local scholars,research institutions with government institutions, academic resources with social resources with this wide platform. So that such studies may promote researches in all areas by drawing upon the particular cases,may guide the public to experience fresh history and humanities. With these solid academic theory, it may guide today’s garden protective development and landscape practices.

Translator: WANG Xiyue

Acquiring Editor of the current issue: HUANG Xiao

November 1st, 2018