THE SPIRIT OF STONE

Stone is likened in Chinese thought to the lifeblood and structure of the world. The typical showcase of stone in a traditional garden is a rocky hill, artificially and artfully composed from a composition of individual rocks that snake and zigzag, spiraling upwards and downwards, encircling, overlapping and embedded, giving a rich and complex feel to the structure, as well as forming a unique Chinese sculptural tradition that is both aesthetically sophisticated and as deep in meaning as more conventional sculpture. Although small, the rocky hill has a maze of paths, caves, running streams, stone chambers, secluded ravines and surging peaks. A second tradition, that of the miniature landscape or penjing, interconnects with this. Alhough it commonly features miniature trees (bonsai is derived from this), it also includes stones chosen and arranged for their replication of landscape. In contemporary Chinese garden design, space limitations and a more modernist approach generally demand fewer stones to represent the same philosophy. What the painter Shi Tao wrote about traditional Chinese ink paintings might well be paraphrased to describe these stones: “Some leaning upward and others leaning downward, some slanting and others leaning, some gathering and others separating, some near and others faraway, some inside and others outside, some false and others true full, some broken and others connected, some open and others closed, some vaulted and others standing, some squatting and others jumping, some majestic, some gorgeous, some steep, some precipitous, some hierarchical, some stripped, some charming and some barely discernible.”

A garden sculpture and a massive ornamental stone in the center of a compound of villas on the outskirts of Beijing.

A limestone rockery with intermingled plants and pond occupies one corner of the city garden of the 1930s Pei mansion in Shanghai.

A display of rocks in the form of penjing, or miniature landscape, in the Humble administrator’s garden (Zhuo Zheng yuan), Suzhou.

World-renowned architect I. M. Pei, whose early family garden is shown below, installed ranks of peaked stones in this large Suzhou garden to represent ranges of hills.