The City of SuZhou

 I’ve spent three days in the city of Suzhou, located an hour NW(?) of Shanghai by train. I should clarify, that this is not any train. This train goes approximately 175 miles/hour from one giant and new train station to another.

There is a saying; ‘Heaven above, Hangzhou & SuZhou below.’ In SuZhou we visited a few ancient gardens & became immersed in their aesthetic.

Lion’s Grove

This garden dated back to the 1300’s, when it was built by a Buddhist Monk & his disciples as a memorial for their master. It is named for it’s giant rock formations, resembling packs of lions. This rock, found in all the gardens, comes from Tai Hu Lake and is appreciated for its transparency, its shape formed by water, its fragility, and its ability to be permeated with water.

The Three Philosophers: Wealth, Luck and Longevity

Kunqu Opera Museum

An ancient opera practice dating back a half-century. It’s still practiced & confirms opera’s ability to completely warp the human voice. They still perform on the stage.

Humble Administrators Garden

A decidedly un-humble private estate with many different gardens and pavilions. On all traditional gardens I’ve seen, there are paths meant to ward off superstitions. It was thought that ghosts can not turn strange corners so many paths and bridges in the garden have a zig-zag form, making them fun to walk through too. 

The pavilions in all the gardens take on a sort of poetry with the landscape. With names like ‘With Whom Shall I Sit?’ and the ‘Think Deep & Aim High’ there is a thorough symbolism to each. There were a variety of shapes & forms; shaped like a boat near water, on top of a hill for viewing, large guest pavilions, pavilions for different plants, seasons etc. The concept of ‘borrowed landscape’ was also beautifully represented with open windows into other parts of the garden

The Lingering Garden

A personal favorite, this garden had a little bit of everything. Its entirety was broken up by an opening then closing of space, a sort of pinch then release as you went from corridors to plazas & gardens, then back again. It also had an amazing bonsai garden. These little landscapes were very meditative.

The Master-of-Nets Garden

The City of SuZhou, being in the floodbasin of the Yangze River, has a high water table which allowed water to be incorporated into the landscape. Instead of lawns, most of the residences we saw had water bodies, skirted by stone as their central outdoor feature. Reflection in so many ways.

To avoid giving the wrong impression, there is another face to the city. We spent some time in a giant-mega outdoor mall with more lights than Times Square & an incredible affinity for KFC. I also got to see the Waterfront Industrial Center at night & experienced an entirely new landscape that was built within the last two years, ferris wheel, towers, neon light display cinema, boardwalk, stores, & all.  

Grounding in Shanghai

Apologies for the slow update. Blogspot is blocked on Chinese Internet so opportunities to post are limited.

We made it to Shanghai and were picked up by a graduate student from Shanghai Jiaotong University. They hosted us at a Super 8 Hotel (much nicer than the US version) in Qibao, a suburb of Shanghai. We had dinner with graduate students of Landscape Architecture the first night, then went on the next morning to give a presentation to graduate and undergraduate students of LA at their University. Interesting discussion. Here are a few things I’ve learned:

1.     Chinese LA students study Landscape Architecture for both their undergraduate and graduate studies

2.     They also struggle to balance theory and practice, art and science

3.   There is an emphasis on artistic rendering 

4.     The quality of their work is very detailed & well presented very early into their program

5.     Ecological design is not as popular as aesthetic green-space

6.     The Chinese government is funding the development of lots of garden and architecture projects

7.     Every new development in Shanghai must have 40% green space

We went on to have lunch with the director and sat in on their History of Chinese Architecture class during which I didn’t understand a word, but doodled very impressively. That evening we walked around People’s Park and People’s Square, admiring the plant selection. It seems Shanghai is planted primarily with six species; London Plane Tree, Buxus microphylla, Rhododendron, Pear, Japanese acuba, & Campher. The street trees are almost 100% overly trimmed down Plane Trees with some Campher. I saw many trees commemorated for being 100 years old in the city, an indication of how new many of the planting are.

"Green Roof"

On Friday the 13^th we visited Tongji University, the best architecture school in China. We were showed around the College of Architecture and Urban Planning by a group of LA students. They’ve done some spectacular work.

Morning rush hour in Shanghai is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. At any given point in Shanghai there is a bus, scooter, bike, person or car trying to get where you are. Add that to traffic rules that resemble the way you decide which side to walk on in a hallway when one person is walking at you, and you have some sense of what an organic traffic pattern is like.

Shanghai has a population of 22 million Chinese. Now to give some comparison to work with, New York City has 8-9 million people living in it and the area of Shanghai is approximately the same as the area of NYC. Unlike NYC, there are only 100,000 foreigners.

My short experience with the districts of Shanghai was Qibao, Xintiandi to Tianzifang.

Qibao

Xintiandi

Tianzifang