Weaving Suzhou timelines and (spatial) narratives
Weaving Suzhou timelines and (spatial) narratives
GMT+8
Once called paradise on earth, famous for its gardens and its exquisite silk garments, historic Suzhou is kept alive in poetry and painting. Famous examples include the 18th-century scroll 'Prosperous Suzhou' originally entitled 'Burgeoning Life in a Resplendent Age.’ The painting, commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor, records life crossing the threshold into the modern age, in a traditional Chinese style that incorporates the Western perspective. Today, Suzhou is one of China’s most dynamic and rapidly developing cities. Suzhou is part of the Yangtze River Delta megalopolis, which accounts for a fifth of China's GDP. Once known as the city of silk it has become the centre of wedding dress production, selling paradise on earth for one day, including copies of the last royal wedding dress, out of shops at the foot of mythic Tiger Hill. Suzhou is also the host of what is known as the Silicon Valley of the East. It has attracted millions of migrants searching for a better future; millions of tourists visit every year to experience the past, strolling through the gardens and courtyards of its Old Town. The contrasts could hardly be more apparent. Slow time, and fast time, and the time of the in-between, are woven into the city’s complex spatial fabric.
Three of us are on site. Two have been locked out for more than a year. Two have never been there. Two have left. Each of us embodies a real/virtual pandemic position in relation to Suzhou. At the same time, there, not there, never there, no longer there. While speaking from a position there, in the real/virtual city that is Suzhou past/present/future.
This is a dialogue on a city that connects us.
Amir:
(Chinese) paintings are palimpsests which are enriched over time by poems, notes, comments, seals and stamps from connoisseurs, literati, poets and critics. Painters left white space on their scenes to allow for these additions over time. A signature is not an authorial act that declares an artwork finished, but it is an additive process. Copies of the same artwork, even made in different times and according to different styles and tastes, are considered part of the same artwork. A painting is an open work.
The garden as a method. There is no difference between a painting and the landscape that it is meant to represent. Like a painting, a garden is also a palimpsest, a collective work of art which changes and is enriched over time. A garden is a copy: Suzhou private gardens are small copies of the large emperor’s hunting estates. Gardens reproduce in a small scale mountains and rivers. Their pavilions reproduce ancient architecture and buildings from far away lands. They are portable versions of the world, mnemotechnic devices, theatres of the world, time-travelling machines for self-secluded knowledge workers. (How can UNESCO list objects that are deliberate copies? How can you define the “integrity” of a palimpsest?)
(Am I reading Chinese aesthetics from the point of view of Surrealism and Dada? Or were the avantgardes influenced by Chinese aesthetics? What we are used to call “Western modernity” is a negligible parenthesis into a global history)
Yiping:
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Tordis: [just a sketch..]
I am speaking from inside a domestic courtyard located between the halls of a house in a city far away. Several courtyards and small garden-like spaces organise life within this compound which also includes a sizeable garden. They belong together, the house and garden, although they are not of the same order. The house – with its Confucian orientation – is axial, hierarchical, and somewhat symmetrical, while the garden is a Taoist space for free and easy wandering in the hills and valleys of the mind/heart. They are like two sides of the same coin – distinct but also related, in agreement but also apart, never fully revealed to each other. A wall with a gate holds everything together in one.
The garden is a miniature cosmos, a realised painting, a spatial manifestation of a way of thinking. It is human-made and, as such, artificial, yet everything inside is kind of alive. Stones, plants, soil and water with pavilions, corridors and landscaped architecture breathing the qi – that is, vital flows of energy animating things of all kinds. Here is paradise on earth – quite literally, heaven on earth pulsating from the centre of the garden-courtyard-house. The etymologies of several languages support this claim, yet what lies beyond the walls of such a place?
Other houses with several courtyards from the smallest lightwell to the almost-garden. Open spaces within and between that hold the houses together as frameworks for family life across generations. The courtyard and the garden, setting the pace of lives to the rhythms of seasons, have something in common when navigating open and closed, light and darkness, ceremony and the everyday … among myriad other things with names and without. The Chinese courtyard is a place where something appears, takes place or transforms.
It is a seemingly inverse part of the house connecting heaven and earth when someone or something stands in between or passes through. The courtyard is open – to the sky, the ground, a poem recited, or some household chore completed. A space awaiting fulfilment while connecting with other seemingly blank spaces, large and small, across the city when linking and becoming one huge blanket extending in all directions across a dense, dark rooftop-scape. Suzhou then becomes this huge mega-fabric weaving China into the wider world.
In a parallel setting, overgrown walls, closed gates and hidden corners remind me of trips to the Old Town, when from the fringes of time and place, I find a path leading back in.
Claudia [sketch]:
Behind the window, a girl enjoys a perfect view by looking through the clear circles that she has drawn into the transparent moisture aspirated onto the glass' surface. "Myth is close to the sacred source of language in gesture," she whispers.
A memory, a patterned view into the garden from inside a pavilion. I have not been in the garden for more than a year.
Walking down the path from the mythic mountain that is praised in ancient scroll paintings, views open up and close down. Far and near mark an in-between as space for agency.
You see a white path disappearing into the blue and think of traveling on it. You see the glow of setting sun over level waters and dream of gazing on it. You see hermits and mountain dwellers and think of lodging with them. You see cliffs by lucid water or streams over rocks, and long to wander there.
Excerpt of The Lofty Message of Forest and Streams by Guo Xi, ca. 1080 CE1
It was only in the 18th century that China learned of linear perspective. It is most lucidly termed 透视 tòu shì – through view. Chinese landscape paintings until then used oblique projection with shifting viewpoints, referred to with the terms 远近 yuǎn jìn – near far. These paintings engage the viewer in an oscillation between the poles of the far and the near, and the fixed and the flowing. There is no separation between these poles. There is connection. China did not frame paintings. Landscape painting scrolls were explicitly conceived for interaction with the viewer. The Chinese near-far ‘perspective’ appears to take this interaction into account. The view lines point outwards, and viewpoints – shifting at short intervals – draw the viewer in again and again into a different scene. The viewer enters into relations with a new set of scenes as she or he moves along. There is no fixation as the figures and objects seem to shift constantly, entering into new relations as the viewer unrolls the painting. In fact, Chinese landscape scrolls resist the viewer. They engage people with both bodies and minds as participants. Chinese landscapes in the physical world act in a similar manner.
Teresa:
The Water location ……situated in the centre of the Yangze delta. The city lies between to the great Lake Tai and the Yangtze River, a central point of the World Heritage listed Grand Canal and its hydraulic works, dating back to the Sui dynasty (581–618 C.E.). This very special water location, on three mighty waters, means that between the 13th and 19th centuries Suzhou was the centre of water transportation in China. The Grand Canal and the Yangtze arteries provided water routes connecting the major cities in China including, Beijing, Nanjing , Shanghai and Hangzhou….
The ancient town has an orthogonally designed grid that is connected to Lake Tai via a river moat that surrounds the old city forming a fortified islet. Suzhou is surrounded on all sides by a crisscross of canals and the wider area includes numerous lakes. The waterways were designed with parallel streets with courtyard houses between the two. A line of halls and courtyards that connect the street to the water’s edge and floating markets would deliver directly to the houses.
As China shifted from water to surface transportation 23 of canals were filled in but the water below ground is ever present. As we walked around the north west corner of the old city we counted 14 water wells within a short distance, some inside the courtyard houses, or some in the streets creating mini public spaces for outdoor cooking, mini gardens and public washing.
Suzhou’s waterfront development continues…….The Jinji Lake waterfront development in the new Suzhou Industrial Park is a modern day city equivalent of the ancient city and marks China’s changing attitude to public space. The large open spaces designed to encourage gatherings and celebrations create a contrast to the cities walled gardens and narrow waterways or the ancient cities river moat that provided fortification. Suzhou’s new water spaces play a key role in transforming the city into a 21st century city but are they at the same time preserving the ancient identity of the water city?
Jose: Hi everyone!!! I’m typing :)
Jiawen:
Opening the long handscroll “Along the River during the Qingming Festival” by Qiu Ying, it is fascinating to compare the urban space and its associated scenarios in the Ming dynasty with those of current Suzhou, as one can find similarities and differences across history. In ancient Chinese tradition, the city wall normally indicates the boundary of the city, dividing the inside and outside of the city both physically and symbolically. The painting clearly depicts a considerable market space outside the city wall as lively as that on the inside. However, it should be noted that these spaces are generated under different mechanisms. The painting portrays clear contrasts between the places inside and outside the city: the market space outside the city wall contains denser crowds and is formed and defined by various activities in relation to transportation, commerce, and entertainment, which shows more spontaneity compared to the space inside the city wall. Insider the city, the architecture and streets are more regular, planned, and designed with purpose.
If we continue to make comparisons across history, Suzhou’s Industry Park, which is a new district located outside the old city wall, could be regarded as a modern equivalent of the urban space inside the city wall during the Ming dynasty in terms of the relationship between people’s activities and space, although the Industry Park exhibits much greater regularity than its historic counterpart. The Old Town of Suzhou, which has largely inherited its morphology from history, accommodates more spontaneous activities today. Temporary events occupy spaces flexibly and naturally in the current Old Town, which corresponds to the use of the main bridge and riverbank outside of the city wall in the painting. The spontaneous track of urbanization outside the city played an important role in linking urban and rural areas during the Ming dynasty in Suzhou, and such areas have played an important role in linking urban and new districts as well as rural areas in many other contemporary cities across China. However, there was no spontaneous urbanism outside the city wall after the 1990s in Suzhou. The new development zones, including Suzhou Industrial Park and Suzhou New District, were purposefully established next to the Old Town as two wings, with the aim of preventing squatter settlements, illegal markets, and informal work. Today we generally see tradition and modernity as exemplified by Suzhou’s Old Town and the city’s new districts, respectively. Therefore I am compelled to ask: does the dislocation of spontaneous and regulated spaces indicate the dislocation of the modern and the traditional inside and outside the boundary of the city from the past to the present?
Glen:
Reflecting on the seams.
At this point, emphasizing that China is currently undertaking the biggest and fastest urbanization process in history has become a statement that does not necessarily bring lights to some issues which might be more meaningful and complex to elucidate than the scale of the urbanization process itself. While China is still within the ongoing plan of reaching an urban population of 70% by 2035, we can argue that we are currently witnessing is not the continuation of the urbanization process, but a moment of post-urbanization in which, while the “before" and "after" are more or less defined, the in-between seems to be missing from the discussion. We can all see the magnitude of the urbanization process, yet the gaps generated by such jump are more difficult to define. For instance, the separation between urban and rural is often cited, yet the boundary between urban and rural in China has become diffused; a duality that disintegrates and does not hold much meaning anymore. Yet, this duality seems to be artificially maintained in many narratives, preventing us from looking at the gap.
The same can be said about concepts like traditional and modern. They are often used for categorizing and grouping together extremely vast and complex periods. Everything that happened before the establishment of the PCR seems to be labelled "traditional". The term "modern" becomes even more diffused, and it could comprise everything after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992. Also, we could argue that modernity is not a way of looking but a way of being: it is not found in appearances. China looks incredibly modern, yet how would one define a Chinese form of modernity? Again, the gap between these terms is often absent from the architectural debate.
Suzhou can greatly exemplify this absence of in-between. We seem to focus on the uniqueness and tradition of the old town (even though just a few canal streets remain), or the new developments like SIP or SND, which are far greater and perhaps more visited than the old town. Once again, the half-demolished in-between is ignored; a gap in the space that becomes unavoidable when we go through it, yet we completely forget once we reach the idealized tradition or the promising modernity.
The invitation then is to look at the seams. These seams are the ones holding these different parts together, quietly shaping them and defining them. If the seems are not well resolved, what can happen to the whole outfit?
Siti:
The reach of a person can go beyond an individual’s imagination, that imagination permeates into reality, that reality is experienced and shared with others knowingly and unknowingly. What more a reach of a group of people with defined and intricate forms of cultural practices and application.
A small group of people, hailing from the Northern coastal provinces of China made their journey to a South-East Asian peninsular, Malaysia. The term Sanjiang-ren was collectively used to describe these people of ancestry hailing from Shanghai, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei and Jiangsu which includes Suzhou. Compared to other Malaysian Chinese subgroups, this is by far the smallest. Despite the number of this community, the first association was formed in Penang in 1897, named San Jiang Clansmen Association to preserve their heritage and identity in what was then a new environment. Slowly over the years, the influence of the Sanjiang-ren transcended and amalgamated into a mixture of Malaysian Culture.
The architecture of the Sanjiang-ren has transcended through perilous journeys and have intercepted into many forms of the collective Malaysian architecture, settling into the tropical region surprisingly well. A space that has integrated seamlessly, adapted into the Straits Eclectic style came during the prosperous era of Georgetown, Penang between the 1840s to 1910s, is the courtyard. Upon entering escaping the sweltering tropical heat into a quiet space that adeptly and gently opens to a courtyard that embodies multiple functionalities. Acting as a communal space, skylight and ventilation, this component is embraced by the local culture and society.
Beyond these practical functions, it almost acts as a conduit to an unknown, unnamed, unseen, paradise. These courtyards create an ethereal boundary between the inside and outside, taking the form of miniature imitations of the natural world, connecting and celebrating the ephemeral. The space surrounded by a bouquet of tropical plants and a modest body of water creates a fissure in space to another unattainable dimension, yet it is intangibly experienced. A remnant of Suzhou’s architectural past, given new meaning and life in a new context in the Peninsular of Malaysia.
Lawrence J. Howell, in Etymological Dictionary of Han/Chinese Characters:
院 (yuàn, courtyard, garden): As per 完# (surround completely) + 阜 piled earth → surrounding earthen wall → mansion; building; garden (← structure/place surrounded by a wall).
/ courtyard, yard, compound
園 (yuán): 囗 circular enclosure + a variant of 袁# (wrap about/enclose) → fields and gardens enclosed by a fence → garden →villa; country house.
/ garden, plot, plantation
Both characters match the etymology of the English word Paradise.
From the Avestan (old Persian) word pairidaeza, a compound of pairi- (around, cognate of greek peri-) and daeza (to form out of clay).
/ Greek paradeisos, ‘royal (enclosed) park’ [ODoE]
/ Avestan pairidaēza, ‘enclosure, park’ [ODoE]
Paradise [in this light] is an earthly, rather than celestial construction. Its meaning is closer to the Chinese definition of paradise as 乐园, lèyuán, rather than 天堂, tiāntáng.
/ 乐园, lèyuán, paradise, playground
/ 天堂, tiāntáng, paradise, heaven, perfect place
I have a question about the “piled earth”. I do not know how it enters the picture. I thought the characters might be phononyms but Fu and Wan do not sound the same.
Any explanation? Here is a screenshot from SmartHanzi:
The famous proverb says:
上有天堂,下有蘇杭
Shàng yǒu tiāntáng, xià yǒu sū hang
Literally: Above Have Heaven(Paradise), Below Have Su Hang
This is a typical translation: In heaven there is paradise, on earth Suzhou and Hangzhou
However, if one wanted to be precise, the idea of “earth” is not included in the second part of the proverb. It is included in the first part of the proverb as the character 堂 refers to earth.
Quite typically, this reflects ancient philosophical thinking that thinks heaven and earth always together even if the slider in 天堂 tiāntáng sits closer to heaven . 天堂 puts a focus on heaven, but the earth is not forgotten.
/ along the local (wedding) silk route
/ from within a courtyard, house, garden
/ …
Each of us embodies a real/virtual pandemic position in relation to Suzhou. At the same time there, not there, never there, no longer there. While speaking from a position there, in the real/virtual city, that is Suzhou past/present/future.
From our individual positions, we connect with each other when the narratives we write weave and set stories of Suzhou in new directions. Histories of the city in the form of dreams of a paradise on earth – a ‘Suzhou paradise’ imaginary – based on memories of being (t)here.
For example, I [Tordis] might write my dialogue entries from the imagined position of being inside a Suzhou courtyard (house). A (for me lost) ‘paradise on earth’ specific to the city. A space with a certain relation to the wider place, to time, to the pandemic (in light of the conference theme, the courtyard-house-garden as a ‘paradise on earth’ refuge).
Our individual narratives can be inhabited by other group members. Narratives can overlap. Perhaps a wedding planned to take place in a courtyard did not happen because of the pandemic.
Or maybe we do not want to address the pandemic explicitly but approach other suggested conference themes. If we embody our method in the sense that we are the needles directing the threads in the overall narrative fabric, so to speak, then the pandemic positions we embody might reflect the theme implicitly. In any case, just thoughts…
Tiger Hill, Prosperous Suzhou, or Burgeoning Life in a Resplendent Age, scroll painting, 1759 by Xu Yang. 35.8 cm × 1225 cm, ink and colour on silk.
Marriage Scene, Prosperous Suzhou, or Burgeoning Life in a Resplendent Age, scroll painting, 1759 by Xu Yang. 35.8 cm × 1225 cm, ink and colour on silk.
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