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Abstract
It seems inconceivable for a garden in China (or a Chinese garden elsewhere) not to feature bamboo, serving a variety of aesthetic, practical, and metaphoric purposes. This paper offers both a translation of a set of some of the most famous celebrations of the bamboo, in prose and poetry, from the Book of Odes (Shijing 詩經) down to the late imperial period, and a discussion of the role of this particular plant in the design and life of the Chinese garden and the levels of symbolic meaning it brings to these gardens.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. This essay was originally intended for inclusion in a catalogue associated with an exhibition on the bamboo and its multifarious usages and representations to be curated in Hong Kong. Circumstances there prevented both the holding of the exhibition and, thus, the production of the catalogue. It was written at the height of the student protests against the brutal dismantling of a once unique way of life. It struck me powerfully as I worked on it that certain of the moral properties long associated with the bamboo were finding daily expression in the courage and integrity of the young people who had taken to the streets. An earlier version of this essay was published in the New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, and I thank the co-editors of this journal, Paola Voci and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, for their gracious permission to publish this revised version. I would also like to thank the two anonymous readers of that earlier version of my essay for the care with which they commented upon it; in their different ways, their reports served both (I trust) to sharpen the focus of my essay and (certainly) to demand of me a better understanding of what I had written. Belatedly, I was reminded of James Dyer Ball’s remarkable entry on the bamboo in his Things Chinese (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama, and Singapore: Kelly & Walsh, 1903); “China would not be the China we know, were the bamboo wanting. Existence would well-nigh seem impossible to the Chinese without it—‘a universal provider’ for the nation’s endless wants,” he begins (p. 72). Were I first to have turned to this invaluable reference work, as I should have, I suspect that I would not have persisted with what follows here.
2. “Qi ao” 淇奧 (Mao # 55), in the Shijing 詩經 [Book of Odes], for which, see James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics: Volume IV: The She King, or The Book of Poetry (1871; rpt. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), Vol. 4, p. 91. This poem is cited in both the “Great Learning” (“Daxue” 大學), one of the Four Books (Sishu 四書) of Confucianism, and during course of the naming of the various features of the most famous of literary gardens in China, Prospect Garden (Daguan yuan 大觀園) in the Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng 紅樓夢), for which, see Chapter 17, David Hawkes, trans., The Story of the Stone: Volume 1: The Golden Days (Penguin, 1973), p. 331. Hawkes’s translation of the first two lines of the poem reads: “See in the nook where bends the Qi,/The green bamboos, how graceful grown.” Please note that unless otherwise noted, all further translations of the Chinese sources cited in this essay are by the author.
3. Dated around 460, Dai Kaizhi’s 戴凱之, “Manual on the Bamboo” (Zhu pu 竹譜), a poetical treatment of the plant, with extensive authorial commentary, is the earliest Chinese botanical monograph. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 6: Biology and Biological Technology: Part 1: Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 377-394, provides an extensive treatment of this and subsequent Chinese treatments of the topic; Peter Valder, The Garden Plants of China (New South Wales: Florilegium, 1999), pp. 89-99 offers a brief and useful discussion of the place of bamboo in the gardens of China. Michael J. Hagerty, “Tai K’ai-chih’s Chu-p’u: A Fifth Century Monograph of Bamboos Written in Rhyme with Commentary,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 11 (1948): 372-440, presents a complete translation of the monograph and an extensive discussion of it.
4. “Rendan” 任誕, in Liu Yiqing 劉義慶 (403-444), Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982), Vol. 1, n. p.
5. “Rendan,” in Liu Yiqing, Shishuo xinyu, Vol. 1, n. p. For a complete translation of this work, including various tales about this group of men, both individually and collectively, see Richard B. Mather, trans., Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2002). Mather translates the chapter title as “The Free and Unrestrained.”
6. Du Fu 杜甫 (712-770), “Ku zhu” 苦竹, in Qian Qianyi 錢謙益 (1582-1664) ed., Qian zhu Du shi 錢注杜詩 [Poems of Du Fu Annotated by Qian Qianyi] (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2009), Vol. 1, p. 352. In the sixth line of the poem, I accept the suggested alternative of 亦 for the 欲 found in the standard editions of the poetry of Du Fu.
7. Bo Juyi 白居易 (772-846), “Xin zai zhu” 新栽竹, in Gu Xuejie 顧學頡 ed., Bo Juyi ji 白居易集 [A Collection of the Writings of Bo Juyi] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988), Vol. 1, p. 168. Something of the expense and labour involved in the transplanting of bamboo is captured in a delightful scroll painting by the major Qing dynasty artist Wang Hui 王翬 (1632-1717). Entitled “Transporting Bamboo” (“Zai zhu tujuan” 載竹圖卷) and dated 1698, the painting depicts a small skiff fully laden with bamboo plants making its way towards an elegant complex of buildings surrounded by trees and bamboos, as reproduced in Peter C. Sturman and Susan S. Tai, eds., The Artful Recluse: Painting, Poetry, and Politics in Seventeenth-Century China (Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Munich: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2012), pp. 261-262. The painting commemorates the completion of the studio of the high-ranking Manchu Suo Fen 索芬 (zi Su’an 素庵; hao Qingyun zhuren 晴雲主人; d. 1708). Suo, a self-confessed “bamboo obsessive” (有竹癖者), had found the bamboos available to him in the capital aesthetically unpleasing of both colour and height, whereupon his friend Huang Ding 黃鼎 (zi Zungu 尊古; 1660-1730), an artist from Changshu, sources some Square (fangzhu 方竹), Purple (zizhu 紫竹), and Variegated Xiang Consort (xiangfeibanzhu 湘妃斑竹) varieties of bamboo for him in Jiangnan and has them transported to the north. In her discussion of the painting, Zhang Yunshuang 張蘊爽 suggests that reading the scroll from right to left constitutes also a temporal shift from when they are first transported to Suo’s garden to when they are fully grown. As Suo notes in a colophon he attached to the painting, as translated by Zhang Yunshuang, “By good fortune, when I planted [the bamboo] I encountered a steady rain. Thus, the bamboo shoots grew immediately. They were tall and grew into groves. This indeed satisfied my long-cherished ambition” (p. 303).
8. Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037-1101), “Yuqian seng lüyunxuan” 於潛僧綠筠軒, in Su Dongpo quanji 蘇東坡全集 [A Complete Collection of the Writings of Su Shi] (Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1986), Vol. 1, p. 83.
9. Ji Cheng 計成 (b. 1579), ‘Jie jing’ 借景 [Borrowing Scenery], Yuan ye 園冶 (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1981), p. 233.
10. Liu Rushi 柳如是 (1618-1664), “Yong zhu” 咏竹, in Liu Yanyuan 劉燕遠 ed., Liu Rushi shici pingzhu 柳如是詩詞評注 [Poems by Liu Rushi: Annotated] (Beijing: Beijing guji chubanshe, 2000), pp. 270-271. For a short English-language biography of Liu Rushi, see Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1644-1912) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943), pp. 529-530.
11. See Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 689.
12. For which, see Li Wancai 李萬才, Shitao 石濤 (Changchun: Jilin meishu chubanshe, 1996), p. 248.
13. See Marilyn Fu and Wen Fong, The Wilderness Colors of Tao-chi (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973), n.p. The full tile of the album appears to have been An Album of Mountains, Rivers, Vegetables, Fruits, Flowers and Plants (山水蔬果花卉册). Richard Strassberg, trans., Enlightening Remarks on Painting by Shih-T’ao (Pasadena: Pacific Asian Museum, 1989), pp. 52-53, offers an insightful discussion of this leaf from the album. On Shitao, see both Jonathan Spence, “A Painter’s Circle,” Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 992), pp. 109-123; and Jonathan Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
14. Perhaps the best evocation of the music of the bamboo in wind and rain is found in the early Ming scholar Zhang Yu’s 張羽 (1333-1385) “Record of the Pavilion Deep Among Bamboos” (“Zhu shen ting ji” 竹深亭記), as discussed (and in part, translated) in Stanislaus Fung, “Word and Garden in Chinese Essays of the Ming Dynasty: Notes on Matters of Approach,” Interfaces: Image, Texte Langage, No. 11-12 (1997): 77-90. For an annotated version of Zhang Yu’s original, see Yang Jiansheng 楊鑒生 and Zhao Houjun 趙厚均, eds., Zhongguo lidai yuanlin tu wen jingxuan 中國歷代園林圖文精選 [A Selection of Chinese Gardens Down Through the Ages in Text and Illustration] (Shanghai: Tongji daxue chubanshe, 2005), Vol. 3, pp. 220-221.
15. For which, see Zheng Banqiao ji 鄭板橋集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1962), pp. 168-169. The internal quotations come from the beginning of Zhu Xi’s 朱熹 (1130-1200) commentary to the “Doctrine of the Mean” (“Zhongyong” 中庸), for which, see Sishu zhangju jizhu 四書章句集注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1983), p. 17. As Daniel Gardner points out, later traditions read Zhu Xi’s commentary as constituting part of the classic itself, for which, see his The Four Book: The Basic Teachings of the Later Confucian Tradition (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 2007), p. 107. In another colophon, Zheng Banqiao details his method as a painter of bamboo. “My home includes a two-bayed thatched studio, to the south of which I had bamboos planted. When the first thickets of the summer months begin to cast their green shadow, I have a small bed placed in the studio, affording me the most pleasing manner of staying cool. During the autumn and winter, I have a bamboo trellis built surrounding the studio, but leaving the two ends of the trellis empty, into which space I install horizontal window frames. These frames are then papered over evenly with thin, pure white paper. As the room heats up, as a result of the gentle zephyr and the warm sun, the freezing flies beat drum-like on the paper windows as they try to make their way inside. Every now and then, I catch sight of the disorderly shadow cast by a branch or other of the bamboo, this approximating in my mind, surely, a ‘Natural Painting.’ Whenever I paint bamboo, I follow no master, but obtain my images from their shadows cast on my whitewashed walls or paper windows in the light of the day or under the rays of the moon (余家有茅屋二間南面種竹夏日新篁初放綠陰照人置一小榻其中甚涼適也秋冬之際取圍屏骨子斷去兩頭橫安以為窗櫺用勻薄潔白之紙糊之風和日暖凍蠅觸窗紙上冬冬作小鼓聲於時一片竹影零亂豈非天然畫乎凡吾畫竹無所師承多得於紙窗粉壁日光月影中耳), for which, see Zheng Banqiao ji, p. 154.
16. See Zhou Jiyin 周積寅, Zheng Banqiao 鄭板橋 (Changchun: Jilin meishu chubanshe), p. 160. In a short essay entitled “Jin Qiutian Asks Me for a Painting” (“Jin Qiutian suo hua” 靳秋田索畫), Zheng Banqiao offers the following comparison between himself and Shitao in terms of the art of painting bamboos: “Shitao was a master of painting, in a myriad of genres, orchids and bamboos being only supernumerary to his art. I, by contrast, specialise in painting orchids and bamboo, and for more than fifty years now I have painted nothing apart from orchids and bamboo. He devotes himself to broadness, whereas I devote myself to specialisation, and yet how could it be thought that specialisation is inferior to broadness?” (石濤善畫蓋有萬種蘭竹其餘事也板橋專畫蘭竹五十餘年不畫他物彼務博我務專安見專之不如博乎), for which, see Zheng Banqiao ji, p. 165.
17. Shitao, for instance, pays Wen Tong a somewhat back-handed complement when he entitles a long horizontal scroll depicting bamboo “Surpassing Yuke” (“Gaohu Yuke” 高呼輿可), for which see Richard Strassberg, trans., Enlightening Remarks on Painting by Shih-T’ao, pp. 43-44 (and Fig. 6), whilst Zheng Xie’s colophons to his bamboo paintings make frequent mention of Wen Tong, and in a letter discussing the history of bamboo painting (“In Reply to My Brother Wen, From the Guesthouse in Yizhen” 儀真客邸覆文弟) he labels Wen Tong the “Sagely Master” (Shengshou 聖手) of the genre, for which, see Zhou Jiyin, Zheng Banqiao, p. 158.
18. Su Dongpo quanji, Vol. 1, p. 381. For a complete translation of this essay, see Ronald C. Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 287.
19. There existed also a tradition of red bamboo (zhuzhu 朱竹) that has been variously attributed. In his book Anecdotes About Painting from the Studio of Bitter Practice (Xikuzhai huaxu 習苦齋畫絮), the Qing painter Dai Xi 戴熙 (1801-1860) relates a story about an occasion when, after having painted a red bamboo, Su Shi is taxed with the question: “How could the world possibly contain red bamboos?”, to which his reply was: “And how could the world possibly contain ink bamboos?” For this anecdote, and the reproduction of red bamboo painted in 1945 by Ye Congqi 葉怱奇 (b. 1904), see Ye Yang 葉揚, Splendours of Brush and Ink (Hanmo fengliu 翰墨風流) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2014), Illustration 29.
20. Su Dongpo quanji, Vol. 1, p. 229. For an alternative translation of this poem, and an extensive discussion of Su Shi’s understanding of the nature of the “Literati Painting” (wenren hua 文人畫) tradition that he was developing, see Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555-1636) (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), p. 41. As one of the anonymous reviewers of this essay has pointed out, “afflatus” is a rather forced translation for Su Shi’s ningshen 凝神. The locus classicus for the expression, in the “Mastering Life” chapter of the Book of Master Zhuang, suggests a concentration of the spirit rather than an externally generated inspiration. It occurs in a conversation between Confucius and a hunchback catching cicadas. When asked how he is able to do so with such ease, he replies (in Burton Watson’s translation: “I have a way … For the first five or six months I practice balancing two balls on top of each other on the end of a pole and, if they don’t fall off, I know I will lose very few cicadas. Then I balance three balls and, if they don’t fall off, I know I’ll lose only one cicada in ten. Then I balance five balls and, if they don’t fall off, I know it will be as easy as grabbing them with my hand. I hold my body like a stiff tree trunk and use my arm like an old dry limb. No matter how huge heaven and earth, or how numerous the ten thousand things, I’m aware of nothing but cicada wings. Not wavering, not tipping, not letting any of the other ten thousand things take the place of those cicada wings—how can I help but succeed?” At this point, Confucius turns to his disciples to say: “He keeps his will undivided and concentrates his spirit—that would serve to describe our hunchback gentleman here, would it not?” See Burton Watson, trans., The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 199-200. This anonymous reviewer was particularly insightful about the essential ambivalence of the bamboo; if it represents steadfastness of the self in the face of adversity, it also offers extinction of that self through (as with Wen Tong) total identification with it, and just as it both nourishes the body and offers tools for other forms of nourishment, so too does it both rustle and resound as wind passes through it, whilst it can also be fashioned in a variety of manmade instruments.
21. For a translation of this essay, see Susan Bush, The Chinese Literati on Painting: Su Shih (1037-1101) to Tung Ch’i-ch’ang (1555-1636), p. 37. Verisimilitude was not always the desideratum when depicting bamboo. We are told that on one occasion late at night, when working under candlelight, the Yuan dynasty artist Ni Zan 倪瓚 (1301-1374), another man obsessed with the plant, was very pleased with a painting of a bamboo that he had completed. Upon awaking the next morning and viewing his painting, he discovered that it “doesn’t look at all like a bamboo” (全不似竹). With a laugh, he declared: “No easy task, achieving something that doesn’t look at all like the subject depicted!” (全不似處不容易到耳), for which, see Shen Hao 沈顥, Notes on Painters (Huazhu 畫麈), in Huang Binhong 黃賓虹 and Deng Shi 鄧實, eds., Meishu congshu 美術叢書 (Yangzhou: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1986), Vol. 1, p. 318.
22. On the tortuous process whereby Yuan Hongdao managed to extract himself from office, see Duncan Campbell, “The Epistolary World of a Reluctant 17th Century Chinese Magistrate: Yuan Hongdao in Suzhou,” New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 4.1 (June, 2002): 159-193.
23. “Yundang gu ji” 篔簹谷記, in Qian Bocheng 錢伯城, ed., Kexuezhai ji 珂雪齋集 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1989), Vol. 2, p. 546. This variety of bamboo is thin skinned, has long internodes, and grows up to thirty feet tall. It is commonly found growing along waterways. My friend Pania Yanjie Mu alerts me to the use of the Water Bamboo (shuizhu 水竹) (Phyllostachys heteroclada Oliver) for hydrological purposes in southern China, planted in valleys and along embankments as a way of protecting the topsoil and helping to turn wetlands into cultivable fields. When pressed, the Water Bamboo also produced a fragrant oil that was used in certain cosmetics, whilst, when ground, it was used for medicinal purposes.
24. Of bamboo, Hobson-Jobson says: “This word, one of the commonest in Anglo-Indian daily use, and thoroughly naturalised in English, is of exceedingly obscure origin,” for which, see Henry Yule and A.C Burnell, Hobson-Jobson (1886; rept. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 75. As a radical (bushou 部首) (No. 118 in the listing established in the Kangxi Dictionary (Kangxi zidian 康熙字典) of 1716), apart from occurring as part of the range of objects mentioned below, delightfully, it is also a component part of the Chinese character for “laughter” or “smile” (xiao 笑), explained etymologically as depicting a person doubled over in laughter. Does the character also capture something of the joyful rustle of bamboo in a breeze? Describing Tao Qian 陶潛 (ca. 365-427) in his “Matching Tao Yuanming’s ‘Drinking Wine’: Third of Twenty Poems” (“He Tao Yuanming yin jiu ershishou qi san” 和陶淵明飲酒二十首其三), Su Shi writes: “Only Yuanming remained pure and authentic,/Chatting and chortling his way through life./Like bamboo buffeted by the wind,/His every leaf set aquiver as it brushes by./With equanimity he faced all his ups and downs.,/And his poems wrote themselves whenever he had a cup in hand” (淵明獨清真談笑得此生身如受風竹掩冉眾葉驚俯仰個有態得酒詩自成).
25. Bamboo Garden (Zhuyuan 竹園) in Peking, once owned by the prominent Ming official Zhou Jing 周經 (1440-1510), is an example. A party held in this garden in 1499, on the occasion of Zhou’s sixtieth birthday and at which he was joined by nine equally prominent friends, was immortalised in a series of woodblock illustrations of the event produced by the calligrapher Wu Kuan 吳寬 (1436-1504) and entitled “Scenes of a Birthday Gathering in Bamboo Garden” (“Zhuyuan shouji tu” 竹園壽集圖), with the birds drawn by Lü Ji 呂紀 and the human figures by Lü Wenying 呂文英. This title was later reproduced in the 1560s under the title Gatherings in Two Gardens (Er yuan ji 二園集), a copy of which is held in the Library on Congress, Washington D.C. and an electronic version of which is available online at the World Digital Library (https://www.wdl.org/en/item/296/). The Bamboo Garden hotel in present-day Peking, not far from the Drum Tower (鼓樓), was said to have once belonged to the important late-Qing dynasty reformer Sheng Xuanhuai 盛宣懷 (1844-1916); later on, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), it became the residence of Kang Sheng 康生 (ca. 1898-1975), sometime chief of internal Communist Party intelligence and security and a man who, over the course of his post-49 career, amassed (through appropriation) an extraordinary collection of paintings, calligraphy, and antiques, especially inkstones. He was posthumously disgraced. The important Ming dynasty scholar Fang Xiaoru 方孝孺 (1357-1402), for instance, executed by the Yongle emperor (1360-1424; r. 1402-1424) for refusing to draft a rescript legitimising the emperor’s usurpation of the throne, named his studio the “Studio for Forming Friendships with the Green Culms” (Youyunxuan 友筠軒).
26. Joseph Needham, Science & Civilisation in China: Volume 6: Biology and Biological Technology: Part I: Botany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 377. Needham also discusses an important later Chinese monograph on the bamboo, Li Kan’s 李衎 (1245-1320) Detailed Manual of the Bamboo (Zhu pu xianglu 竹譜詳錄), in which the distinction between the two types of rhizomes (zhugen erzhong 竹根二種), the spreading (san 散) and the clumping (cong 叢), is both established and depicted, for which, see, pp. 387-388.
27. On which, see Jung Woo-Jin, “Changes in the uses and meanings of the bamboo screen (zhuping: 竹屏) in traditional Chinese gardens,” Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes: An International Quarterly, 35.1 (2014): 1-19. Making use of some available pictorial evidence, Jung suggests that by the late Ming period the use and meaning of the bamboo screen had shifted from function to focus, from being a means to screen off a section of one’s garden and create a sense of aloofness, to an object of conspicuous display and attention.
28. “The sound of the bamboo overflows like water,” states the “Record of Music” (“Yue ji” 樂記) chapter of the Book of Rites (Li ji 禮記), “overflowing it establishes assembly, and assembly in turn serves to bring together the multitudes” (竹聲濫濫以立會會以聚眾). Famously, when the calligrapher and musician Cai Yong 蔡邕 (132-192) was fleeing the chaos of the collapse of the Han dynasty, he happened to look up at the bamboo rafters of the inn that he was putting up in and spotted a piece of bamboo that he had fashioned into a transverse flute (di 笛), the sound of which was unparalleled. In an item in the “Contempt and Insults” (輕詆) chapter of the Shishuo xinyu, we are told that this flute, then in the possession of Sun Chuo 孫綽 (fl. 330-365), was broken when he allowed one of his female dancers to use it as a prop, to the very great consternation of the calligrapher (and father of Wang Huizhi) Wang Xizhi 王羲之 (309-ca. 365), for which, see Richard B. Mather, trans., Shih-shuo Hsin-yü: A New Account of Tales of the World, p. 471. When questioning Ziqi of Southwall about the “Piping of Heaven” (tianlai 天籟) in the “Discussion on Making All Things Equal” (“Qiwu lun” 齊物論) chapter of the Book of Master Zhuang, Yancheng Ziyou suggests that the “ … piping of man is merely the sound of bamboo bound together” (人籟則比竹是已), for which, see Daode zhen jing: Nanhua zhen jing 道德真經南華真經 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1993), p. 33. In his commentary, Guo Xiang 郭象 (252-312) suggests that this refers to the sound of “ … panpipes and flutes and suchlike things” (簫管之類).
29. Such objects were often of exquisite design. In his Dream Memories, the late-Ming essayist and historian Zhang Dai 張岱 (1597-?1684) tells of one particular fashioner of such things: “Pu Zhongqian of Nanjing is a man both ancient of appearance and ancient of heart; ‘deferential and seemingly with no ability,’ the ingenuity of his workmanship is such however as to partake of the genius of nature itself. Of his bamboo objects, his brooms or his brushes, it may be said that in his hands, with a slice or two of his knife, the smallest piece of bamboo immediately commands a price of a tael or so of silver. And yet, what brings him most pleasure is when he can produce some marvellous object from a twisted and contorted piece of bamboo without a single slice of his knife—it is hard to understand why it is that having passed through his hands, with a scrape here or a polish there, his products become worth so very much. His reputation spread and any object carrying his name became immediately extremely expensive, the livelihoods of several dozen of the shopkeepers along Three Mountains Street 三山街 almost entirely dependent upon his art. Meanwhile, Pu Zhongqian himself remained, quite contentedly, dirt poor. Sitting in the house of a friend, if a fine piece of bamboo or rhinoceros horn happened to catch his eye, he would grab it and set to work upon it. If the product of his labours happened not to please him overmuch however, he would refuse to allow it to fall into the hands of another, however important they might be and however much he was offered for it,” for which, see “Pu Zhongqian’s Carvings” (“Pu Zhongqian diaoke” 濮仲謙雕刻) in Xia Xianchun 夏咸淳 and Cheng Weirong 程維榮, eds., Taoan mengyi: Xihu mengxun 陶庵夢憶: 西湖夢尋 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2001), p. 20.
30. Both the classical (zhu 箸 and zhu 筯) and modern (kuaizi 筷子) Chinese words for chopsticks contain the bamboo radical. On the chopstick, see Q. Edward Wang, Chopsticks: A Cultural and Culinary History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
31. Occasional Notes of Idle Emotions (Xianqing ouji 閒情偶寄) (Taipei: Chang’an chubanshe, 1979), p. 255. The early Jesuit missionaries to China made note of the prevalence of bamboo in Chinese gardens (and its “very pleasant aspect”), as well as the variety of its usage (“ … mats, cabinets, little vases, combs”). In his Novus atlas Sinensis (1655), Martino Martini remarks on the culinary use of the shoots which: “ … are eaten with meat, like turnips or cardoons and cooked artichokes; when marinated in vinegar, they can be preserved throughout the year as a condiment or companion for foods that are tasty and refined,” for which, see Bianca Maria Rinaldi, The “Chinese Garden in Good Taste: Jesuits and Europe’s Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in the 17th and 18th Centuries (München: Martin Meidenbauer, 2006), p. 110. The Yuan brothers’ associate Jiang Yingke 江盈科 (1553-1605) named the garden that he established in Chang’an in 1599 the “Pavilion of the Two Gentlemen” (Liang junzi ting 兩君子亭). In his account of this garden, he lists the varieties of both bamboo and lotus that it contains, these two plants (of the “innumerable categories of plants and trees” [fu caomu zhi bu bu ke shuji 夫草木之部不可數計]) being the only ones worthy of being accorded the epithet “gentlemen,” making note of both the various physical usages to which the plants can be put, and the extent to which “ … their virtues can be compared to those of the gentleman” (qi bi de yu junzi er 其比德於君子爾), for which, see his “Record of the Pavilion of the Two Gentlemen” (“Liang junzi ting ji” 兩君子亭記), in Huang Rensheng 黃仁生 ed., Jiang Yingke ji 江盈科集 (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 1997), Vol. 1, pp.368-370.
32. In life, of course, the jumble of one’s memory serves to scramble the chronology of text recalled to mind and to fuse the meaning of these texts to personal memories of person and place.
33. Jonathan Hay, Shitao: Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China, p. 182. Hay makes the point that for all Shitao’s inventiveness in other ways as a painter, with respect to this plant-based symbolic system, his practice proved consistent throughout his life. An early treatment of the topic is Alfred Koehn, “Chinese Flower Symbolism,” Monumenta Nipponica, 8 (1952): 121-146. In a review of Jessica Rawson, The Lotus and the Dragon, David L. McMullen talks about how “remarkably small” the repertory was in the Chinese case: “To the lotus, peony, bamboo, pine, and prunus should be added the peach, the chrysanthemum, and the orchid. In the literary tradition, these flowers provided the topics for countless compositions in many genres over many centuries. They were indeed symbols; their appeal was many sided, and not, like typical flower symbols in the Western tradition, based on a simple one to one correlation with a single virtue or moral value. Meaning was read into their habitats, their shape, and from the season of the year in which they flowered or were most conspicuous. Their ability to withstand the weather, their medicinal properties, and the meaning of characters homophonous with their names were also given significance. Their appeal as auspicious symbols was reaffirmed time and again by their use in given names … ,” for which, see Modern Asian Studies, 21 (1987): 198-200. In the chapter on the gardens of China, “The Chinese Garden and the collaboration of the Arts,” in his A World of Gardens (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), pp. 202-220, John Dixon Hunt discusses the extent to which “ … gardens, both real and ‘on the ground’ and imaginary in poem or painting, were always mediated: texts were fundamental in designing and understanding gardens, and mediatisation of cultural traditions was essential” (pp. 202-203). This applies equally to the plants growing within these gardens. For a melancholic view of the extent to which this symbolic system is still at play (or not) in contemporary China, see John Minford, “The Chinese Garden: Death of a Symbol,” in Stanislaus Fung and John Makeham, eds., Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 18.3 (1998): 257-268.
34. In his Mirror of Flowers (Huajing 花鏡), preface dated 1688, Chen Haozi 陳淏子 says of the bamboo that: “The attribution of meaning to this plant on the part of the ancients proved uniquely detailed and one notes that the excellence of the bamboo is be found in its modesty and its profound sense of integrity, in the extent to which, in both character and physical form, it is both tough and resolute, such that it does not wilt whenever it encounters either dew or snow but rather remains luxuriant throughout all four seasons, never wanton in its beauty but appreciated alike by both common and refined” (古人取義獨詳按竹之妙虛心密節性體堅剛值霜雪而不凋歷四時而常茂頗無夭艷雅俗共賞), for which, see Huajing (Beijing: Nongye chubanshe, 1985), p. 239. Here, Chen Haozi perhaps has the Tang poet Bo Juyi in mind; in his “Record of Raising Bamboo” (“Yang zhu ji” 養竹記), Bo provides the following enumeration of the virtues of the bamboo: “The bamboo appears wise and worthy. How so? Its roots are firm, and being firm it establishes its virtue, such that, upon seeing such roots, the gentleman thinks immediately of establishing some good that is permanent; its nature is staunch, and being staunch it takes its stand, such that seeing that its nature is such, the gentleman thinks immediately of being impartial and above bias; its heart is hollow, and being hollow it may embody the Way, such that seeing that its heart is thus, the gentleman thinks immediately that he should be modest and receptive; its joints are steadfast, and being steadfast it can maintain its will, such that, upon seeing its joints, the gentleman thinks immediately of striving valiantly to be moral and correct. Such is the case, whatever are the vicissitudes of life. It is for reasons such as these that very many gentlemen plant bamboos, as adornments for their courtyards” (竹似賢何哉竹本固固以樹德君子見其本則思善建不拔者竹性直直以立身君子見其性則思中立不倚者竹心空空以體道君子見其心則思應用虛受者竹節貞貞以立志君子見其節則思砥礪名行夷險一致者夫如是故君子大多樹之為庭實焉), for which, see Gu Xuejie ed., Bo Juyi ji, Vol. 3, pp. 936-937. Later, in his “Record of the Hall of the Ink Gentleman,” Su Shi was to write of his friend Wen Tong that like the bamboo: “He flourishes in propitious circumstances without ever becoming arrogant, whereas in less than propitious circumstances he withers away without ever losing his dignity; when in a group, he never leans on those sitting beside him, but when standing alone he is never fretful” (得志遂茂而不驕不得志瘁瘠而不辱群居不倚獨立不懼), for which, see Su Dongpo quanji, Vol. 1, p. 381. When she entered into the male domain of painting bamboos, the Yuan dynasty artist Guan Daosheng 管道昇 (1262-1319) seems to have been aware of the extent to which she was transgressing, for which, see Marsha Weidner et al eds., Views from Jade Terrace: Chinese Women Artists, 1300-1912 (New York: Indianapolis Museum of Art and Rizzoli, 1988), p. 67. She is sometimes traditionally attributed with the development of painting bamboos with red ink (朱筆畫竹), although this is elsewhere attributed to Su Shi, for which, see Yu Jianhua 俞劍華 ed., Zhongguo hualun leibian 中國畫論類編 (Beijing: Renmin meishu chubanshe, 1986), Vol. 2, p. 1189. In a poem discussing the techniques required of an artist seeking to depict the bamboo, Guan’s husband Zhao Mengfu 趙孟頫 (1254-1322) writes: “They need to understand that painting and calligraphy are actually one and the same thing” (須知書畫本來同), for which, see Yu Jianhua, ed., Zhongguo hualun leibian, Vol. 2, p. 1063.
35. If it is the paratext that “ … enables a text to become a book,” as Gerard Genette has argued, then one could say that the various paratexts, both present and recalled, enable a plot of land to become a garden. On paratexts, see Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Jane E. Lewin, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). “More than a boundary or a sealed border,” Genette suggests, “the paratext is, rather, a threshold, or—a word Borges used apropos of a preface—a ‘vestibule’ that offers the world at large the possibility of either stepping inside or turning back” (pp. 1-2). The architectural metaphor is significant; Genette’s discussion of the various functions of the epigraph (pp. 156-160) seem particularly useful in thinking about the role of text (and remembered text) in the manner in which in China gardens sought to generate legible meaning.
36. David Hawkes, trans., The Story of the Stone: Volume 1: The Golden Days, pp. 324-325; Hongloumeng (sanjia pingben) 紅樓夢（三家評本） (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1988), Vol. 1, p. 249. Working on his translation of Chapter 17 (“The inspection of the new garden becomes a test of talent/And Rong-guo House makes itself ready for an important visitor”) during the spring of 1971, David Hawkes appears to have recourse to Osvald Sirén’s Gardens of China, Andrew Boyd’s Chinese Architecture, and Gin Djih Sü’s Chinese Architecture, Past and Contemporary, for which, see David Hawkes, The Story of the Stone: A Translator’s Notebooks (Hong Kong: Centre for Literature and Translation, Lingnan University, 2000) p. 15. On the role of the garden in the novel, see Dore J. Levy, “The Garden and Garden Culture in The Story of the Stone,” in Andrew Schonebaum and Tina Lu, eds., Approaches to Teaching The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber) (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2012), pp. 115-132; in the same volume, pp. 91-94, see also Charlotte Furth’s discussion of the nature of this fictional garden. For an illustrated catalogue of the role of plants in the novel, see Pan Fujun 潘富俊, Hongloumeng zhiwu tujian 紅樓夢植物圖鑑 (Taipei: Maotouying chubanshe, 2004).
37. Stanislaus Fung, “The Language of Cultural Memory in Chinese Gardens,” in Tony Atkin and Joseph Rykwert, eds., Structure & Meaning in Human Settlements (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2005), pp. 123-134.