In August, I took a garden tour of Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. One of important gardens on the tour was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver.
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| pond and willow, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden |
Classical Chinese gardens date back to at least the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1279). They were best developed as the retirement retreats of government bureaucrats. The owner set rocks, plants, and water around his home, to have pleasing and different views in all directions. In southern and coastal China, the house could be quite open, the garden and the indoors linked most of the year.
Vancouver had a long relationship with Chinese immigrants and its mild climate facilitated imitating the great classical gardens of China here in North America, for the most part using American plants. I'll give you a very brief look at it, from August, 2024.
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| Ahead, a moon gate |
Here a moon gate beckons you to see what is beyond it. The moon gate also cuts off your view; the retired administrators were wealthy for their time but had relatively small parcels of land, so restricting what you could see at one time enhanced the apparent size of the garden.
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| The extended roof makes a dry path beside the buildings. |
A turning path under the roof is a common feature of these gardens. The climate, in both southern China and Vancouver, is rainy; the path lets people go between buildings of a home that housed several generations without getting wet. It also let the contemplative owner walk through--well, beside--his garden on rainy days.
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| Path made of small rounded stones |
The walkways of traditional Chinese gardens are for me one of the highlights. Stones set in regular patterns were characteristic. The pattern in this path is particularly complicated. Paving paths that people walked frequently was very practical, and the garden designers made it into art that enhanced the garden.
Slowly moving through the garden is a stream. Typically the streams had koi, as this one does. Keeping a stream healthy and not overgrown with algae was a challenge in ancient China and remains a challenge today. The fish are part of the solution, as is having moving water is another. The green color was desirable, "like jade."
Here, having come quite a way around the garden, you can look back at the building and the water.
Below, we are looking across the pond at one of the main buildings (the orange is the railing of the passage I'm standing in.) Buildings or outbuildngs are all around the garden and the whole compound is surrounded by a white-washed wall. You can see, over the building and over-exposed, the big Vancouver buildings of the garden's neigborhood. This was typical in China, too, that the idylic space ended suddenly at the wall. If they could, the garden design incorporated neighbors' trees or distant mountains in their views, another way of making a small space seem bigger. Here, the skyscraper enhances the pocket paradise feeling of the garden.
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| another view, and a glimpse of the surrounding city |
This garden, the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, was the first classical Chinese garden built in North America. Teams from China and Canada collaborated on the planning and building, and finished in time for it to open for the Vancouver Exposition in 1985. That seems very recent, but in fact Chinese were heavily discriminated against throughout the founding and colonization of North America. They came in large numbers anyway, since there was demand for them as workers and the wages were high compared to China. Canadian and American prejudices were codified in the early 20th century as Chinese Exclusion Acts, the Canadian one preventing Chinese from living and working in Canada starting in 1923. The United States' Chinese Exclusion act was older, passed in 1882. Change, especially the Chinese support of the Allies in the Second World War, finally ended the Exclusion Acts: in 1947 in Canada and in 1943 in the United States. After that, collaborations could grow. This was the first classical Chinese Garden in North America, today there are other at least 10 gardens of this style in North America.
The garden was named for Dr, Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925) a Chinese physician, revolutionary, and statesman. Educated in Hawaii and Hong Kong, he returned to China to lead anti-Qing Dynasty revolutionaries. He is given credit for overthowng the dynasty in 1912. He was the first president of the Republic of China. His political philosophy featured democracy, nationalism, and economic growth. He was forced into exile by warlords, but returned to relaunch the revolutionary government in 1916. He put together the first government combining Communists and Nationalists, but in 1925 died of gall bladder cancer. After his death the coalition fell apart. A remarkable man, both the Communitists that conquered mainland China and the Nationalists who retreated to Taiwan hold him in high esteem. Sun came to Vancouver on three occasions; at the time many Chinese living in Vancouver were anti Qing Dynasty revolutionaries. Thus naming it for Dr. Sun, recalls Canada's links to the overthrow of the last Chinese dynasty and the great man who led that effort.
The garden is a wonderful place to wander, to think of more than a thousands years of garden history, and reflect on ever-changing national governments and the relations between them.
Comments and corrections welcome.
Where to see Classical Chinese Gardens in North America.
Montreal as well as Vancouver in Canada.
New York, Norfolk, Virginia, St. Louis, Des Moines Iowa, and Portland Oregon.
There are certainly more.
See Wikipedia: List of Chinese Gardens
link
The internet has competing claims about which gardens are genuine or authentic. Some use mainly Chinese plants, some use Chinese design with North American plants, some try to repeat a particular garden in China, some take elements of serveral classic gardens, and so on. Thus, several claim "oldest" or "only." Read the small print and enjoy the competition.
I have visited the major classic gardens in China. Like art, garden styles evolved, and, of course, gardens are living things, so the plants necessarily grow, die and are replaced. Lots of different details can be built into a garden, still holding to creating a viewing garden featuring rock, water and plants. I never miss an opportunity to see another Chinese garden.
References
More on the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden
Places that Matter. Vancouver Heritage Foundation.
linkLou, Q. 2016. Chinese Gardens. In Search of Landscape Paradise. China International Press. Shanghai.
Wang, J. C. 1998. The Chinese Garden. Oxford University Press, London.
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