JINGSHAN 景山公园

Dagaoxuan

It's no secret that Beijing's well-intentioned plans for preserving traditional culture sometimes fall down in the execution. What is a little more surprising is how ambiguous these failures can be: it's not simply a matter of the municipal government setting lofty goals and then blithely ignoring them. There seem to be battles going on between various powers within the city, and those battles can become semi-public.

The Dagaoxuan Temple (大高玄殿), outside the east gate of Beihai park, is a notorious example. The temple itself, built in 1542, was a Daoist institution for the use of the imperial family during the Ming and Qing. Technically it's part of the Forbidden City and should be part of that administration, but the courtyard is occupied by a military unit, and you can see where this is going. The Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage is pissed because this site, designated as a preservation target of the first order in 1996, is being slowly ruined. The military couldn't care less. The fight has been made public, to some extent, with articles in state media mentioning how shameful this is. Apparently the sticking point now is that the military unit wants a newer, nicer place to live – preferably somewhere centrally located – and the costs are prohibitive. The CHP has some nice background.

In a way, it's nice to see these fights surfacing: it gives you some confidence that there actually are people out there, in high places, who have the city's interests at heart.

May 29, 4:33a.m.

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Icy Reception

Among the many esteemed industries once located on the eastern edge of Beihai (Dàshízuò Hutong (大石作胡同) was where most of the imperial stonework was created), was the refrigeration industry: Xuěchí Hutong (雪池胡同, Snow-Reservoir Alley) is just north of Beihai Park's east gate, and this was where the imperial ice-cellars were located, so that the emperor could have cold soft-drinks in July.

Oddly enough, there are no ice cellars (at least none that I could find) on Xuechi Hutong, but there is one just a hop north: get on Beihai Beijiadao (北海北夹道), take the first left onto a teeny spur street, and there it is at the end. And it's a beaut: Magnificent red doors, big gold door knockers, and a sign proudly proclaiming, "Imperial Ice Cellars!!" And can you go in? Of course you can't. What you can do is wait until the guy inside wanders off to the men's room, then stick your camera most of the way into the door and take a picture, and then get yelled at when the guy suddenly comes back from the men's room. Because really, what a disaster it would be if people could just wander in and see the imperial ice cellars any time they wanted…

May 22, 9:08p.m.

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Half-Acre Garden

The following article, by Jesse Watson, ran in the April issue of Urbane Magazine. I wanted to reprint it here, because it's cool, and they said I could.

In 1687, Jia Jiao engaged the famous playwright and aesthete Li Yu to design the garden of his Beijing mansion. The association was more than a little scandalous. Jia was a Confucian gentleman, a former governor, and a high official at the Qing court. Li was a failed scholar, a Ming sympathizer, and was rumored to have penned the notorious pornographic novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat. He was also a superb garden designer.

The garden was remarkable for what it lacked: no central axis, no symmetrical buildings, no straight paths, and no clear entrance. This deliberate effect of disorientation belied an underlying order, which led subtly from the lower and more densely built southwest corner, to the higher and more open northern half.

Upon first entering the garden, one was confronted by Li's magnificent stone outcroppings. A little further on, one could rest atop a grotesque hardwood root known as the Flowing Cloud Bed (now on display in the Palace Museum) and admire the Tinkling Jade Pool. To the west, a small curving stream was a reference to the rivers Xiao and Xiang, poetic symbols of wilderness and exile. Beyond this, one might continue to a small library, or climb up to the Approaching Brilliance Belvedere.

The overall feeling was of gradual spatial expansion, leading ultimately to an incredible view that took in "the great gates of the Forbidden City, the summits of Coal Hill [Jingshan], Qiong Island and the White Dagoba [of Beihai]." This was masterful sighting, adhering to the classic principle that "although the garden is divided from the outside world, a well-chosen view makes the near continuous with the distant."

Nowadays, Li's work is long forgotten. I happened across what remains of the Half-Acre Garden after taking a wrong turn down a hutong on a late Januaryday. Despite its name, the complex is bigger than a half-acre – indeed, far larger than most siheyuan – and the false modesty of the name is manifest. A commoner's ruyi gate now conceals the older, much grander guangliang gate reserved for high officials. Through this gate and to the east are a very old poplar tree and an "embroidered" two-story xiulou, with a moon-like circular window and ornamental stones around the entrance. Deeper in still is the main hall, which contains a whole wall of hardwood paneling and fantastic beasts in carved-brick relief.

As I was nosing about, I was lucky to run into Grandma Jia, a stout and energetic woman in the midst of her laundry. She moved into the house 50 years ago, and remembered the garden quite well.

"It was always locked, but we'd sneak in anyhow," she laughed. "There were lots of trees –crabapples, jujubes and apples – and mountains and streams, like a little park." Princes and wealthy visitors used to "take girls in there and wan'r," she said with a knowing wink.

It turns out Grandma Jia is not far off, if we can believe an account by a contemporary of Li's: "Li Yu is fond of writing drama and fiction, all of which is exceedingly obscene and indecent. He likes to make friends with the official gentry, and when he meets young men from rich official families he often brings three or four young prostitutes with him. He tells the girls to entertain them by singing behind a hanging screen, or to serve them with wine while he talks to them with great relish on the arts of the bedchamber. In this way, he makes large amounts of money."

Li may well have cultivated this reputation as an aesthete and hedonist; it no doubt helped his business. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the scholar garden slowly lost all vestiges ofhorticultural production and became a purely aesthetic affair, a trend of which the Half-Acre Garden is clearly a part. As Oxford professor and renowned Sinologist Craig Clunas has observed, this process was a social one; it became socially unacceptable to be a "mere vegetable grower"among the literati. A corollary to this is that the garden was not solely, or even primarily, a place of scholarly seclusion. The scale and showiness of the Half-Acre Garden makes this apparent – this was conspicuous consumption.

After having survived three centuries and the "cultural revolution,"the Half-Acre Garden was almost completely demolished in 1982 and replaced by a few office buildings. Grandma Jia only knows it was a nameless government agency, while the articles I've read decline to mention the culprit. It's a sad and seemingly thoughtless ending to a pleasing garden with a colorful history – one much bigger than its current state and name can ever suggest.

To find the mansion, look for pink Greco-Roman pediment on Meishuguan Houjie, to the rear of the National Art Gallery. Turn here on to Huangmi Hutong; the mansion is at Nos. 5-9. Relics of the garden are exhibited at the Cao Xueqin Memorial in the Beijing Botanical Gardens.

May 22, 10:29a.m.

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