Shi Chong’s Jingu Garden and Its Historical Imagination: Conceptual Reconstruction of Man-Made Nature

Abstract

: [Objective] Jingu Garden, or the Golden Valley Garden, is a representative of Chinese private gardens in Wei and Jin dynasties. Current works on Chinese garden history mostly discuss the objects in Jingu Garden by using relevant historical documents. The garden disappeared in AD 300 due to the execution of its owner Shi Chong (249−300). But for over 1,500 years thereafter, the image of Jingu Garden continued to appear in poetry and paintings in the form of conceptual reconstruction. The transformation of the image of Jingu Garden reflects temporal changes in the view of nature. It also helps evoke the rethinking on historical documents and narratives of Chinese gardens. The case Jingu Garden guides us to think about how those disappeared gardens are reconstructed through perception and memory, and how nature as a concept interacts with the present beyond physical time. This research aims to further explore the possible path of understanding Chinese garden history beyond linear narrative. [Methods] This research is essentially a case study focusing on the in-depth exploration and analysis of the particular case Jingu Garden. By sorting out and distinguishing first-hand literature of Western Jin Dynasty and second-hand literature in later dynasties, the research examines the descriptions of Jingu Garden in various periods and finds out the common features of the understanding and evaluation of the garden. The research also analyzes paintings of Jingu Garden spanning the period from Tang Dynasty to Qing Dynasty, in order to provide a further proof for changes in the understanding of the garden.