Cool Shanshui
He took his eyes off the blinking computer screen, and refocused them on the horizon beyond the glass-curtain wall. A dignified layer of clouds was warmly illuminated by faint traces of the gloomy setting sun. The tall buildings chased after each other, extending upward toward some indefinite point, reproducing and recombining like self-dividing cells to create the boundaries of our life.
Pressing the keyboard, a theme park in color rocked, built up, spun around, and diffused.
The constant destruction and rebuilding of a city, where history layering upon itself, finally so vague it could never again grow clear.
Returning to the construction site, the feeling of collapse grew more intense in multiples, perhaps because the contrast with the happy world that was about to finish construction was too strong.
Mechanical arms extend, poking into the heart of the earth. Looking down at the worksite from the mountain of the future, the outline of a winding river already appeared in this octopus-like ecology of buildings, all covered with wavy alloy roofs blinking in the sunlight. The entire site had an epic expansiveness to it, as if only in this era could so many resources be concentrated to create these new hanging gardens of Babylon.
He began to believe: the wonders of history doubtless existed and disappeared, but after a few thousand years, they reappear in a new form. 1
To this day, I can still vividly remember every detail of my first visit to the night zoo: after watching an exciting circus performance, I rode with a large group of tourists on a mini train headed towards the “South African grassland”. “In this mysterious night, we escaped the lure of the big city and came upon another world – an even more natural and realistic world…”. Listening to the genial words of our guide, I watched the antelopes, deer and snow leopards beneath the dazzling lights of the night zoo. As the animals looked back at me, I could not tell whether they were part of my dream or if I was part of theirs.
I can also distinctly recall a time when, after visiting the set of a TV sit-com, the artistic director nonchalantly revealed to me the essence of television dramas: “to be the idealization of reality itself”.
What I find most fascinating is that, while we are exposed to traumatic changes in the outside world, Chinese people readily adapt to these changes, forging new ways of living – albeit with a mixture of trepidation, sadness and elation – as if to acclimatize with reality meant undergoing the relentless test of everyday life, finding your balance as you go. Just like the harmonious co-existence of birth and reincarnation – resolving contradictions in the unity of opposites.
Water is an important metaphor in Chinese philosophy. Lao-zi says: “There is goodness in water” [“上善若水”]. Water is good is because “it benefits everything and treats the ills of the masses, as does the way” [“利萬物而不爭，處衆人之所惡，故幾于道”]. The way [道] is everything [“道” 是 “萬物之奧”] and since water serves to nourish everything, gently overcoming all obstacles, it is the perfect expression of the way.
In the Analects, it is written: “On the river Confucius says: the water passes by at all hours” [“子在川上曰：逝者如斯夫，不舍晝夜”]. Confucius also says, “the knowledgeable favor water, the benevolent favor the mountain. The knowledgeable move, the benevolent are quiet. The knowledgeable are happy, the benevolent endure” [“知者樂水，仁者樂山。知者動，仁者靜。知者樂，仁者壽”].
For the Chinese intelligentsia, Shanshui (the coexistence of Mountain & Water, in a kind of ideal landscape) have long been considered the key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe and reconciling the life of the individual and of society. In Chinese Shanshui paintings (classical landscape painted in Chinese ink), human figures are placed in insignificant positions (though in fact numerous landscape artists sought fame from this genre); and classical Chinese gardens, taking their cue from paintings, became tranquil spaces amidst the hustle and bustle of the metropolis (even though these gardens often ended up becoming privileged spaces for the rich).
In China, the scholarly ideal of the Shanshui landscape blends with natural scenery in strange and interesting ways. Like the way in which the I-Ching describes fortune and misfortune intertwining to create a future that is always breaking in the present moment. To construct is to destroy, and the future becomes the past.
It is a commonly-held belief in China that the transience of life and the passing of time are inevitable. Thus, taking hold of the present should be the objective of both idealist and materialist alike.
During the Cultural Revolution, Shanshui paintings did not disappear. On the contrary, the Revolution provided a new lease of life for this genre. In order to reflect the triumph of the spirit, great people were often depicted gazing into infinite distance amid turbulent landscapes. Drawing upon the traditional symbolism of Shanshui painting, these works in fact reflected the insignificance of human scale compared to the vast expanses of nature. But the traditional spirit of Shanshui painting had changed. Whether it be a vista of colossal constructions on the Yangtse River, or the beautiful Jiangnan farmlands, one feels the insistence emphasis on the romantic revolutionary struggle of man against nature. In this way, landscapes became a way of demonstrating the power of New China to change the world.
From the landscape viewed through the eyes of the scholar to that viewed through the eyes of ‘the people’, so called, this enormous change brought together the ideals of academic Shanshui and Chinese revolutionary fervor. The central Chinese government is located at Zhong Nan Hai (meaning Middle Southern Sea), and this high sounding name itself conjures up the image of a thousand tributaries conjoining at the sea – a metaphor that gives a certain aura to the nation and its politicians – and it is here that we once again come across the importance of water in Chinese thinking.
Who, like water, can become calm after turbulence? And after that calm produce new life?[Lao-zi: Chapter 15]
Great changes have taken place in the now touristic Suzhou gardens since the days when in the Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni filmed a tranquil Suzhou in 1970. Chinese people seem could at least draw breath in the eye of Revolutionary hurricane, tread water in this sea of changes. The revolution turned the private garden into a garden for the people, thus inadvertently achieving the popular adaptation of the traditional Chinese scholar’s ideal life.
Today, urban planners and developers have appropriated the tradition of Chinese Shanshui painting (with estate agents producing ads with slogans like: “Cloudy Mountain Poetic Rain: the Eastern Philosophy of Life”). The ideals of landscape then, have become prominent in urban renewal: large expanses of lawns, big fountains adorning office buildings (representing waterfalls), green belts under overhead crossroad bridges, sculptures in the center of shopping plazas (emulating rock mountains), Chinese garden-style restaurants… although the developers have utilized modern European and North-American styles, the pretty Chinese gardens remain their favorite, with their balance of yin-yang and their ‘natural’ design. In this respect, the Chinese cannot escape from their historical and cultural traditions.
The principle of Shanshui as conceived by the intelligentsia has never actually been realized, nevertheless it seems to have inspired recent government plans for a “harmonious society”. From the poet Tao Yuan-ming’s verse “Gather the chrysanthemum by the east fence, leisurely view the south mountain hence” [“采菊東籬下，悠然見南山”] to Do Fu’s “A lost kingdom would not affect the mountain and river, the spring brought dense vegetation in the city” [“國破山河在，城春草木深”]. Can we say that Shanshui is a part of the “Chinese soul” and that, in modern times, it is the best remedy for hyper-consumerism? Whether or not a “landscape development” will meet with success, the very fact that nature is involved transcends the secret classical canon of Shanshui in the realm of practicality.
When we discuss Shanshui, we are in fact talking about the city.
If one cannot touch the spirit of Chinese Shanshui painting in the world of today, I would prefer to trace mazes on the world-wide-web, as if to construct an individual garden , rather then the landscape paintings of the modern intelligentsia, which amount to replacing mink hair with a dog’s tail bristle. After all, when one talks about the spirit of landscape, the web might certainly resemble just such an intricate network of little paths, of the kind you would follow in a Chinese garden.
If one cannot break the uniform grayness of this city, at the very least each individual should learn to perceive that he is in a certain situation of Shanshui, and to rediscover the fascination of the ancient scholars. In the city, the skyscraper is a mountain; storm drainage is flowing water; a few artificial plants can transform an office into a garden,as Ni Zan(1301-1374)’s poem indicating：
Love the inspiration of the windy forest,
Feeling the undulating knolls and ravines.
Painting is like singing,
Without worrying about sight or sound.
愛此風林意，
更起丘壑情。
寫圖以閑咏，
不在象與聲。
With the wish that Shanshui might continue to pacify our souls.
1. Cited from Hu Fang’s novel Mirror Flower Garden.
Trading Places –Contemporary Art and Cultural Imaginatries of the Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong Art School / Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2007, pp.65-71; Reprinted in Urban New Landscape, 2007 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, 2007, pp.11-13
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