Guest artist

Last Monday, Zhao Bing came to give us a speech on Suzhou gardens. He is a professor of Nanjing Forestry University and also a landscape architect. In his speech, he talked about the history of the Suzhou gardens, the sorts of the gardens, the characteristics of the gardens and the methods the designers used to build the gardens.
The garden started from Qin Dynasty. It is always formed with plants, stones and water. There are 4 sorts of gardens---Royal，Private, Temple and Scenic.
Most of the gardens in Suzhou were private gardens and they all have a history for centuries. They belonged to the wealthy in the past. The wealthy wanted somewhere to spend their holidays so they asked someone to design the gardens and hired someone to build it. They used many stones and piled them into a whole part----a fake mountain. A fake mountain always has bigger top than the bottom because it will make the whole ‘mountain’ looks more 3-D and mysterious.
The Suzhou gardens are the wonderful products of the history and the culture. They have all the characteristics that a Chinese style building should have. They are also a special part in a contemporary city. Outside, it is noisy and modern. However, when we come inside the garden, it is quiet and traditional. We can enjoy our relaxing time here, sitting on the bench, watching the beautiful scenes and enjoying the warm sunshine. The gardens are fantastic pictures. The scenes there are very attractive. They are also unbelievable artworks. We can hardly imagine how they made them, and who designed them.
I think the garden is a kind of artwork. The difference it has is that it is a huge project as the other artworks. Because of its particularity, it is hard to do it. We have to spend much more time on it than on other small project. Also, it has another kind of beauty. It is quiet, but not dead. It is traditional, but not stale. It has its own life, stands in the modern city, document our culture and history.