Gardening in China

By Anne Cavalier, Ed. D.

VP of Institutional Advancement and Research—WVU Tech

Through my work at Tech, I was the guest of several universities in China for the month of May, 2001.  I was able to travel and stay for a week at a time in Shanghai, Chongqing, Chengdu, Beijing, and at Ocean University, a new university on the coast of the East China Sea.  I had the very good fortune of not being a tourist, and thus of seeing the China behind the post card pictures.

While the weekdays were packed full from 7:00 a.m. to 8 or 9:00 p.m. with meetings, ceremonies, and formal meals with university and government personnel, the weekends were spent being the guest of some of the most gracious and giving people I have ever met.  At each new university, my hosts always wanted to know early in the week what I would like to do on the upcoming weekend so they would have time to plan.  At each university my request was the same, to show me as many public and private gardens as could be packed into each weekend.....and they did.

First, let me tell you that we have no idea what the term "over-population" means.  In China, there are so many people to feed that all of the countryside was deforested years ago to make room for farming.  When I was taken into the really remote areas, gardening meant farming, so they took me to areas where all the flat ground was covered in flooded rice paddies, with small houses, barns, and walking paths sitting on dirt platforms in the middle of these fields.  The hills and mountains were terraced in   layers to provide "shelves" of flat land on which to grow vegetables.  It was a visual step back into the centuries when there were no conveniences we take for granted: no electricity, running water, or machines....not to mention cell phones and microwave ovens.  So great was the deforestation, that one university president told me that it is an offense punishable by imprisonment to cut down or to harm a tree.  The cities have had beautification programs in place for several years, so if a university is going to build a new building, they have to consider how to preserve the existing trees, either by transplanting them or by going through an expensive and very bureaucratic process to be allowed to cut down a tree.

In the cities, every square inch it seems is used for living and making a living, so what we think of as yards-front and back-simply do not exist.  When the communists took over the country, the estates of the rich were subdivided into apartments and the decorative gardens were divided into vegetable garden space for each resident household.  You can still see the "bones" of what must have been some incredible gardens surrounding what must have at one time been incredible mansions.  All, unfortunately, are very sad looking now....but in each place I traveled there were one or two miraculously surviving gardens, especially in Beijing and at the Ocean University.  The country's leaders, under all of the governments over the last one to two hundred years have lived in Beijing and seem to have been able to carve out and maintain incredible gardens.  I was very lucky to get to tour a couple of these.  They are the gardens we think of, I think, as we imagine a traditional Chinese garden.

It struck me that in each of the private gardens I toured rocks, water, and man-made structures were much more prominent than the plant life.  Interest came from the various ways water could be made to move...in languid "moats" around the edges of the garden, or in mirror smooth ponds, or spouting out of rocks that had gravity driven fountains, or splashing over water wheels similar to our old grain mills (but much smaller).  There is a unique kind of rock there (sorry I've forgotten the name) that is just riddled with naturally occurring air tunnels and they force water from the bottom out through the many openings in the rock to make a very fascinating fountain.  It seemed that every plant grouping integrated various sizes, textures, and colors of rocks.                                    

The garden structures were of stone and wood and always very colorful, with most of the color in these gardens coming from these structures rather than from blooms.  Chinese gardeners have a wonderful and artistic way of planning out garden areas to get double the viewing pleasure by making sure that there is an expanse of still water between you and the garden scene to reflect the views.

In public areas, like Tiananmen Square, Buddha Mountain, the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City, all gardening is done in containers.  Here the riot of colors from blooms and foliage is spectacular, especially when viewed against centuries-old, gray stone.  These containers were usually of such grand scale that it’s rare to see counterparts in America.

The Chinese people, at least those who hosted me, are very proud of the new buildings, businesses, and technology advances they are making, and like people everywhere, they are used to and often unappreciative of the unique beauty around them.  I'm grateful that they took the time and effort to let me indulge my passion for gardening.  One of the most gracious things they did at each location was to adopt American names for themselves to save us the embarrassment of trying to say their names--which we do poorly.  At the first university, they became so enamored with my love of gardens that they reversed the naming   process and they gave me a Chinese name: May-quee.  I never saw it written, so I'm sharing it with you phonetically.  It means Rose, and the name stuck with me for the entire month.  It was an incredible opportunity professionally, made all the more special because of the great kindness of the people and the beauty of their country.