Hello, my name is Kristina Schröder, I'm a PhD researcher at the Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies in Zurich. Today, I will take you on an exciting journey through the world of traditional Chinese private gardens. Humans have long turned to gardens for a break from their hectic lives. Gardens are a powerful setting for human life, transcending time, place, and culture. If we walk to the end of the lakeside promenade in Zurich, there is a garden that evokes the idea of oriental splendor, exoticism, and fantastic foreignness: the Chinese Garden. This garden was offered to Zurich by the Chinese partner town Kunming as a symbol of gratitude, after Zurich had provided Kunming technical and scientific assistance in the development of its drinking water supply and drainage. It was constructed under the direction of the Zurich garden department, in cooperation with garden experts and craftsmen from Kunming and Zurich. The official opening took place in spring 1994. Obviously, this is not the only garden gifted to another country by the People’s Republic of China. In the year 2015 alone, more than fifty Chinese gardens were given to different partner cities all around the world. At least twenty Chinese gardens are located in Europe: two in Switzerland, in the cities of Zurich and Geneva, ten in Germany, and one each in Austria, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Malta. These gardens, however, were not the first Chinese gardens in Europe. In the 18th century, the expanding trade with China conducted by the East India Company fueled the growing enthusiasm for all things Chinese. There was an abundance of imitations of the Chinese style in European art, in architecture, fashion, and landscape gardening. At the first glance, Chinese and English landscape gardens seem surprisingly similar. Yet, they differ in an important way. Their celebration of naturalness rises from different motifs. Whereas the English Garden is born of the exaltation of the productive countryside, romantically representing nature lived in and transformed by humans, the Chinese garden represents the superior natural order, which humans belong to and to which humans are submitted. English landscape gardens utilized Chinese architectural motifs and Chinese garden elements, as for example the pagoda in this picture, but they did so without integrating Chinese natural philosophy. Original Chinese gardens serve more purposes than just the simple utilitarian and hedonistic necessity of housing and scenery appreciation. Chinese scholars were strongly influenced by both Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism set the highest principle guiding their lives and aesthetic standards, but it was the Taoist philosophy that had a more direct impact on the development of the Chinese private gardens. Taoists believed in the perfection of nature and the harmony of heaven and men. They were convinced that one should seek absolution in the embrace of nature, thereby forgetting success or failure, happiness or sorrow, and arrive at a complete merging of the self into nature. The main design principle of private gardens was keeping heaven and man in harmony. Of all Chinese classical gardens, those that belonged to literati possessed the greatest artistic accomplishments. The owner of the garden, the “literatus”, was either a civil official or a scholar bureaucrat. They built their gardens to please their mind and eyes, and to express their wish for a life in retreat. Such private gardens flourished especially in the early and high Qing periods between the 16th and the late 18th century. Traditionally, literati gardens are connected with hermit ideology. Ever persecuted by the corrupt and bloodthirsty ruling class, intellectuals often escaped into the mountains and lived alone in tree holes or caves. Later on, during the Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties, hermitage in a natural environment evolved into one in artificial surroundings. Garden owners were mostly intellectuals who adopted a disinterested attitude towards worldly affairs. Many of them relinquished their careers in favor of a philosophical encounter with a breeze, a blossom, the snow, or the moon in their private gardens. They wanted to merge with the pulse of the eternal cosmic life, and get infused with its perfect harmony. The most renowned garden owners were Ming and Qing literati residing in the Jiangnan region, such as Hu Rong, Jiang Yeding, Cheng Mengxing or Wu Tailai. Their gardens where popular meeting places for poetry gatherings, where scholars enjoyed the sights, admired the landscape, and drank wine. Some of these private literati gardens were so unique that even the emperors themselves reconstructed their imperial gardens according to their likeness. Should you wonder whether there are differences between Chinese and Japanese gardens, the answer is yes. Although they both share the intent of representing the natural environment in a miniaturized and metaphorical form, they differ in the manner of that representation. Japanese gardens do not strive for a regional division of space. Therefore, they seem more fluid in moving from one scene to another. On the contrary, Chinese gardens consist of largely separate parts that will be gradually discovered while on a stroll through them, very similar to the unrolling of a Chinese landscape painting. In Chinese gardens, the space, for example, is separated by dramatic moon gates, carefully contrived windows, walls, corridors, and bridges – all elements that create a landscape of continuous change and surprise. The best-known literati gardens are located in Suzhou. In the late 20th century, many touristic replicas were built according to their example. These replicas, however, were quickly shut down due to their lack of visitors and cultural meaning. The original gardens, after having seen a lot of neglect and destruction during the difficult decades of the past century, do now seem to profit from a refreshed public interest. The addition of some of Suzhou’s gardens to the World Heritage List in 1997 further fueled this interest. Chances are that the gardens will once again be valued places for a spiritual relaxation, but this time for a much larger audience than just a few literati. While earlier on, literati gardens were places reserved for highly educated and knowledgeable men, they are nowadays open to everyone. Their tranquil setting offer room for visitors to escape from the modern, hectic world. The concept of Chinese literati garden was simply unique. They fused art gallery, poetry club, botanical garden, ecology park, nature reserve, temple, and teahouse into one. Perhaps, we should also consider re-establishing the fundamental concepts of the Chinese literati gardens, and try to create their modern equivalents within our densely populated cities.