In the canal-laced Jiangnan region in the lower reaches of the Chang Jiang or Yangzi River, many towns and cities are renowned for their literati gardens, sites for contemplation, study, and the cultivation of plants. As later chapters will show, bridges in these gardens provide passage but also offer invitations to tarry and ponder the meaning of poetic allusions embodied in buildings and natural vistas. Lined with low balustrades, simple stone beam bridges seem to rest on the water so that one can enjoy the lotus plants and the swimming fish. Zigzag bridges help extend the appreciation of a compact space by augmenting the distance between two points. Arch bridges have a scale and charm that invites one to pause and enjoy a view from above. In Yangzhou, the Wuting Bridge, also called the Five Pavilions Bridge and the Lotus Flower Bridge because of its resemblance to the open petals of the flower, is as much a pavilion as it is a bridge, a magnificent structure of substantial scale.
Taken just outside Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden, this late nineteenth century photograph shows the fabled zigzag bridge and teahouse with its upturned eaves, which is said to have been the inspiration for the blue-and-white willow pattern porcelain exported from China to England during the last half of the eighteenth century.
Looking back from the tea-house across a wooden version of the zigzag bridge, the viewer sees the low-rise buildings and narrow lanes of the old walled city of Shanghai.
These contemporary views of the teahouse and zigzag bridge reveal in the distance the futuristic skyline of modern Pudong. In pools such as this one, teeming goldfish are believed to keep the water from stagnating, thus promoting the movement of positive qi, the life-giving force.
While the imperial gardens, hunting preserves, and parks in and around capitals such as Chang’an and Kaifeng have all been destroyed, existing only in literary texts, paintings, and memory, Beijing, which served as the imperial capital of the Ming and Qing dynasties for more than 500 years, is enriched with many fine examples. These include what came to be known as the “Western Seas,” the linked southern, middle, and northern lakes along the western side of the walled Purple Forbidden City. Although these interconnected bodies of water have few bridges, several are distinctive and can be contrasted with smaller spaces with bridges within the walls of the palace complex. Today, in the northwestern suburbs of Beijing, it is possible to visit and appreciate some of the imperial garden complexes that developed especially in the eighteenth century but suffered grievously during the middle to late nineteenth century, only to be reborn in the century that followed.
Known as “Garden of Gardens,” this area includes not only the vestigial remains of the once glorious Yuanming Yuan but also the grand Yihe Yuan, known to Westerners as the Summer Palace, a late nineteenth-century reconstruction reborn through the efforts of the Empress Dowager Cixi. The disposition of hills, causeways, canals, and islands connected to Kunming Lake made possible the creation of some thirty bridges, some imposingly grand and others quietly simple. Imitating the famed Su Causeway along the western side of West Lake in Hangzhou, is a causeway along the west side of Kunming Lake replete with six bridges, four of which are capped with pavilions. “Borrowing” scenes from the surrounding hills and sky beyond, just as with much smaller gardens in southern China, bridges were sited to capture the vistas and serve as a component of a panoramic scene as well. Perhaps the most elegant is the Yudai (Jade Belt) Bridge, a humpbacked feature that rises high like a breaking wave. On the opposite side of the lake is the magnificent Seventeen Arches Bridge that reposes like a symmetrical 150-meter-long rainbow as it rises slowly to a crescendo before diminishing. Hundreds of carved lion figures sit atop the balusters of the bridge. Clearly examples of human ingenuity and artistic sensitivity, these bridges continue to inspire the poetic imaginations of visitors, stirring images and reminiscences that link them to the interwoven fabric of China’s enduring civilization.
In integrating the rational and functional with the romantic and aesthetic, the anonymous builders of most of China’s bridges created tangible links across voids that, to poets, speak of “rainbows lying on the waves” and “turtles’ backs reaching the clouds.” Joseph Needham was hardly exaggerating when he suggested that “No Chinese bridge lacked beauty and many were remarkably beautiful” (1971: 145). Viewing Chinese bridges as architectural structures provides opportunities to comment on Chinese technology, connections with Western engineering developments, and aesthetic traditions.
Viewed by many as China’s most glorious bridge, the Shiqigong (Seventeen Arches) Bridge in the Yihe Yuan or Summer Palace in Beijing, rises like a rainbow in a gentle 150-meter-long arc.
The Bridge of the Twenty-four in Yangzhou was sited so that it is one element in a composition that not only includes nearby water and a pavilion but also “borrowed” scenery beyond, with trees and a pagoda.
At the end of the nineteenth century when this photograph of the Bridge of Nine Bends at the heart of West Lake in Hangzhou was taken, the complex known as Lesser Yingzhou Isle was much as it was in 1607 when it was created—a lake within a lake and an island within an island—using mud dredged from the bottom. Substantial expansion took place beginning in 1982 to reach its current extent.
Rising like a camel’s back or a surging wave, the white marble Yudai (Jade Belt) Bridge in Beijing’s Yihe Yuan or Summer Palace, is one of China’s most beautiful structures.
Sichuan Garden Parks
Unlike the compact metropolitan gardens of the Jiangnan region, characterized by cleverly dense yet elegant compositions of specific elements and an internal focus, the gardens in the Chengdu Plain of western Sichuan tend to sprawl loosely, with rugged, even primitive, elements. Reminiscent of what is known of the evolution of ancient imperial parks and gardens, which Jerome Silbergeld characterizes as vast zoological, botanical, and geological “theme parks” (2004: 208), to later expansive imperial estates, Sichuan gardens preserve an open-style design of loose and fluid components, with an emphasis on water and relatively flat terrain. Rockery, unlike in Jiangnan gardens, is essentially absent, with hills and mountains only glimpsed from afar. Dense bamboo groves, overarching trees, and dark surfaces together project a rustic primitiveness. It is within this natural context that bridges of many types are situated, a good many of which appear as if deposited there by nature—logs fallen across a rivulet, cobblestones deposited after a flood. Good examples are found in the park-like setting for the thatched cottage of Du Fu, the renowned seventh-century poet, where the sculpting and shaping of the overall site and the assembled placement of bridges, water, and associated buildings evoke the naturalism of earlier times in China and an aesthetic that some see even as Japanese. Once-private gardens in Sichuan have evolved into public parks that memorialize the region’s noted historical figures.