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A Summation and Discussion
Being entirely unfamiliar with Chinese and Japanese gardens, beyond the small text Fung Suai For Your Garden that I purchased while visiting Kew Gardens outside London, I entered the Activity and Repose: Place, Memory and Sociality in Chinese and Japanese Gardens symposium at the Huntington expecting to learn what made a Chinese garden Chinese and a Japanese garden Japanese. I’m not sure I drove away having exactly ascertained that knowledge. In fact, I’m not sure I can logically articulate any of what I heard that day, for what I discovered within the first few moments of my attendance was that I was in a room of acclaimed scholars whose understandings of any and all topics linked to Japan, China and royal gardens far surpassed my own. I was lucky to understand seventy percent of the vocabulary of any paper read, and because I was forced to focus the majority of my comprehension efforts on deciphering what exactly was being discussed, let alone said (few of the scholars presenting were skilled in public speaking), I lost much of the content. However, in spite of these somewhat awkward and unfortunate circumstances, I will attempt to explain what I witnessed, and hopefully learned.
Designed and created by gardeners who apprenticed with a company for ten years before starting out on their own, or a few rare gardeners who set out unschooled in gardening, as was Kiomori whose ability to break the traditional mold of gardening came from years of studying painting, Chinese and Japanese gardens served as empirical retreats and recreation spaces (Tschumi). Commissioned by the emperor and utilized by highly ranked officials, members of court and their servants, Chinese and Japanese gardens began as city centers and expanded to the suburbs (Batchelor). The Chinese and Japanese garden imitated the emperor and his reign, acting as a royal portrait of his wealth, scholarship, and power. To an extent, emperors acted as curators, educating their people through their collections. These collections supplied much of the fuel for the intense competition that resided among gardens. The comparisons of these collections focused on how exquisite, various, and complete they were (the Chinese were notorious for cataloguing everything). The first emperor of the Summer Palace created replicas of all past palaces, which he placed within the palace gardens and used to house his great collections. This, according to Haun Saussy of Stanford University in his paper titled, “Gardens and Collections: The Installation Art of Kings”, symbolizes the Emperor’s power over all who ruled before.
While I assume emperors were not the only owners of gardens, theirs most certainly surpassed all others considering the immense power and wealth available to create them. These gardens held insatiable views, a large variety of exotic species and creatures, and covered vast amounts of land. While each garden strove toward exquisite perfection, the ultimate arena for competition lay not in what each garden offered, but in how long its owner could reside there. Most gardens had and continue to have absentee owners, as one scholar discusses in his paper, “Remembering Li Deyu Remembering His Pingquan Garden”. Li Deyu addresses this directly in his poem “A companion piece to Duke Minister Li’s poem ‘Written impromptu on my way back to Pingguan as I passed the Southern peak of Longman and saw my mountain villa in the distance,” stating, “You will have only a moment of leisure here.”
Of all the things I heard that day, I was struck most by that last quote. So much time and energy is put into the creation of a garden so fantastic that it puts all others to shame, and then no one really has the opportunity to enjoy it. Now I am sure there were some who upon caretaking spent much time there, but what a waste of such a marvel to leave it isolated from the common people, reserved for the entirely too wealthy, and ultimately, empty.
Much of this information on Chinese and Japanese gardens can serve as a point of comparison to non-Asian “exotic” places kept only for the wealthy and powerful. For an American example, Camp David might be the equivalent to the emperor’s garden villa. While the garden villa would certainly win the competition for most exquisite and exotic, I bet G.W. would take the cake for most time spent on “vacation.” 
There are many more possibilities for drawing comparisons, thus allowing students the opportunity to gain knowledge and understanding of Chinese and Japanese gardens through something familiar.
As well, the Huntington Gardens are open for fieldtrips and do have both a Chinese and Japanese garden with tea house. This might be an interesting afternoon spent walking, discussing, and writing.
Here is a list of materials referenced by speakers during the symposium that might be of interest for use in the classroom:
Thirty-Six Views of Summer Residence in Poems and Paintings
“Rhapsody in Red Cliff”
Hackney’s A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China (film)