Emulating and transcending literati gardens

Emulating and transcending literati gardens:

landscape design of the Plum Villa,

the garden of a literatus-merchant

作者：云嘉燕，金峻铉

音频：金峻铉

Introduction

Undoubtedly, the most important epoch of Chinese garden history occurred  during  the  late Ming dynasty (1573–1644). At this time, private garden culture prospered, especially in the city of Suzhou, located in the Jiangnan region. Suzhou’s dense canal networks facilitated economic growth and the rapid production of numerous gardens. Industrial development in Suzhou and adjacent cities prompted many of the nouveau riche—comprising mostly highly educated, wealthy merchants—to invest in the development of private gardens to obtain social and cultural prestige. An exemplar of this mercantile class is Xu Zichang (許自昌, ca.1578–1623), an entrepreneur, playwright, publisher, and art patron, who was born into a powerful Suzhou merchant family. His estate, Plum Villa (梅花墅, built in 1618), encapsulates the merchant-owned gardens that emerged during the late Ming period. The following in-depth examination of Xu’s Plum Villa, therefore, is important in unveiling its sociocultural, historical, and geographical significance in the context of Chinese garden studies.

Merchant ownership of gardens at that time was an unprecedented phenomenon. Until then, gardens had long been considered to have symbolic cachet that embodied the spirit, art, and social status of the ruling literati class. Throughout its history, Chinese social stratification was rooted in the Confucian demarcation between the ruling literati and the ruled commoners. This hierarchical society initially ranked merchants at the bottom level of the commoner class (Wortzel, 1987, pp. 15–19). However, intense commercialisation and rapid urbanisation beginning in the mid-sixteenth century weakened the fixed class system so that wealthy merchants gradually improved their social standing. This phenomenon eventually created a hybridised status combining ‘Shi’ (士: literatus) and ‘Shang’ (商: merchant): ‘Shishang’ (士商: the literatus-merchant). Xu Zichang was one of the Shishang who actively involved themselves in sociocultural  exchange between the classes.

Located in Fuli (甫里) Town in Changzhou (長洲) County, Xu’s Plum Villa became one of  the most vibrant intellectual and cultural loci in Suzhou during the late Ming period. Xu embarked  on building Plum Villa in 1607 and it took ten years to complete. The Villa’s full-scale garden was especially recognised among his literati cohorts for its magnificent views of plum flowers that blossomed on thousands of plum trees (Peng, 1992, p. 267) (Figure 1). Although no physical remains or illustrations have been unearthed (Figure 2), the existence of Plum Villa has been verified through essays and poems written by Xu’s acquaintances.

Figure 1. A map of Fuli Town in the early Qing dynasty (ca. 1765). This map illustrates the site of the Ocean Temple (海藏禪院, 1626) (see grey area), where the Plum Villa estate was situated. Source: Peng (1992, pp. 7–8).

Figure 2. Current geographic condition of the former Plum Villa site (the hatch-marked area). The area is now part of Luzhi in the Wuzhong District in Suzhou (蘇州市吳中區甪直鎮). Source: Google Earth (2023).

Despite its high profile in literary accounts, Plum Villa has seldom been the subject of scholarly study. This is partly because most Ming garden research has focussed primarily on the artistry of literati’s estates; consequently, merchant and civilian perspectives have been largely unexplored. Hence, examining Plum Villa can broaden the scope of our understanding of Ming period gardens while revealing facets that have been thus far neglected.

Recently, however, it has been suggested that examining civilian estates would expand the scope of discussions on Chinese gardens, since garden design in the late Ming period was likely influenced by a broad range of cross-cultural milieu characterised by interclass social exchange. Several studies have responded to this call and highlighted the Shishang-owned gardens of that time. For example, Zheng, Cao, and Huo (2021) investigated how private gardens transitioned  into public and functional gardens in the Jiangnan area during the Ming and Qing eras through  the lens of sociocultural interaction between the literati and merchants. Li (2018) demonstrated the spatial attributes of the Garden of the Sitting Hermit (坐隱園, built in 1600), a late Ming Shishang garden in Huizhou (徽州) prefecture, by analysing images of the garden depicted in printed scrolls. To the best of our knowledge, the only study to focus specifically on Plum Villa is that of Y. Qian (2019), which attempted to graphically reconstruct the arrangement of buildings and open spaces in the Villa by referencing historical accounts.

Whilst these studies represent significant contributions to the discussion of Shishang gardens, they focus less on linking Shishang proprietors’ hybrid identity with their garden design. Examining this connection is critical because the design of late Ming private gardens reflects the owners’ unique worldviews, which were shaped by their sociocultural standings. Unearthing distinctive design aspects in Shishang gardens would undoubtedly emphasise the importance of commoners’ gardens in Chinese garden history and Xu’s Plum Villa provides an excellent case study in this regard. Thus, this study aims to provide novel insights into Shishang gardens by analysing Plum Villa’s spatial attributes and their sociocultural implications in late Ming society. Our research is based on an analysis of historical accounts about the Villa found in essays and poems published in Xu’s era, expanding on research methodologies employed in the prior literature mentioned above.

The study first explores the sociocultural environment in which Xu Zichang’s Villa was  situated and then analyses the architectural spaces and garden landscapes which made the Villa such an iconic representation of Shishang gardens. We reveal how the Villa’s physical landscape emulated and transcended mainstream Suzhou literati gardens, and more importantly, how some  of its unique characteristics exposed the peculiar identity of the late Ming Shishang.

The Plum Villa as a means of

 social advancement

Xu Zichang was the eldest son of the wealthy Xu family in Suzhou. Although Xu’s father wanted his progeny to pursue careers as officials, Xu repeatedly failed the state examination and returned to his hometown, where he began to draw up plans for Plum Villa. To understand the sociocultural significance Plum Villa would have had for Xu, we must first examine how the development of private gardens by the Shishang facilitated the expression of their newly obtained social prestige.

Since the mid-sixteenth century in Jiangnan, local merchants expanded the scope of their private enterprises while establishing business networks across metropolitan areas. The weakening power of the court following the reign of the Wanli emperor (1572–1620) enabled merchants to control the production of specialised local goods and transportation logistics on the Yangzi Delta canal system, thereby developing extensive family business empires throughout China’s coastal regions (Glahn, 2016, pp. 295–312). While wealthy merchants aspired to join the government bureaucracy to increase their social status, passing the competitive civil examination was difficult. Two kinds of Shishang existed: those of literati origin and those of merchant origin. Xu Zichang belonged to the latter. As an alternative, various affluent merchants shifted their career goals to become professional culturati, such as art connoisseurs or patrons of distinguished literati artists. Contrary to merchants’ aspirations, numerous literati engaged in commercial activities because of their profit-making tendency. Over time, traders with literati origins and wealthy culturati rooted in merchant families merged to form the new in-between class called the Shishang (Chow, 2004, 2011).

As an educated and wealthy Shishang, Xu Zichang had chosen a career as a professional culturatus and enjoyed a concomitant lifestyle among the young literary elites in Suzhou. His elite milieu promoted authenticity of emotions and self-expression, notions that set them apart from dogmatic Neo-Confucianist ideas. The ideas and behaviours of these emerging groups were heavily influenced by the philosophies of Wang Yangming (王陽明, 1472–1529) and Li Zhi (李贄, 1527–1602), which emphasised the innate capacity of an individual to attain sagacity; accordingly, they adopted practices from both Buddhism and Daoism (Lee, 2012). Chen Jiru (陳繼儒, 1558–1639), Zhong Xing (鐘惺, 1574–1625), and Zhu Zhifan (朱之蕃, 1558–1624) represent the literati at the forefront of this movement. The private garden represented the spatial environment in which intellectual talents were cultivated; thus, these gardens laid the foundation for the cultural innovation propagated by these mixed-class elite groups (Clunas, 1996, p. 56).

However, the elitist discourse of the literati community seldom embraced the merchants’ cultural norms. Therefore, for an educated Shishang, developing private gardens was an essential avenue for moving into the elite intellectual circle and accumulating cultural cachet. Designing stylistically and visually up-to-date private gardens was a significant aspect of cultural obsessions among the late Ming elites; therefore, quite naturally, Shishang garden design consciously imitated this approach. Nonetheless, given that ‘eccentricity’ (奇) functioned as another key marker of an elite’s true connoisseurship, idiosyncratic self-expression in Shishang garden design was another important means of public recognition (McDowell, 2009, pp. 16–17).

Xu often invited acclaimed people to the ‘elegant gatherings’ (雅集) and various social events at Plum Villa. The poems and essays written by these renowned guests in praise of the picturesque surroundings of the Villa were then quickly published by Xu’s private publishing house and circulated among literary readers, helping Xu create social links to the larger elite community (Chow, 2004, pp. 126–128). Aside from these aspirational gatherings, Xu involved himself in prestigious Suzhou dramatic circles which played a significant formative role in the identity of the late Ming literati (Carlitz, 2005). As exemplified by Xu, the Shishang’s high-end publications and theatrical plays produced in their gardens were an effective means of demonstrating their qualifications as promising social elites.

Elegance as a key design principle

 of Shishang gardens

Before proceeding with the analysis of the unique and impressive features of the Villa, we must first examine several key underlying design principles that shaped garden styles in Xu’s time. In the late Ming era, the garden design tradition in Suzhou maintained and integrated two distinct influences:  an archaic tendency stemming from the familial garden legacy of Wen Zhengming (文徵明, 1470–1559), one of the most authoritative scholar-officials in the mid-Ming period, and an innovative garden style developed by Ji Cheng (計成, 1582–1642), a prominent garden designer. The Wen family’s garden style was characterised by a simple spatial arrangement and rustic aura that typified a lofty literatus spirit. Somewhat differently, Ji’s approach to garden design applied new engineering methods and skirted convention by highlighting the designer’s sensibility. His rather informal, spontaneous, and minimalistic design styles spurred a transition in the style of typical Suzhou gardens from grand farmstead landscapes in the countryside to small and secluded aesthetic landscapes in urban enclaves that aimed to evoke sensory delights (Hardie, 2000, pp. 314–345).

Indeed, the booming garden design trend that swept the Suzhou region during the late Ming period played a significant role in promoting both traditional and innovative styles in Suzhou gardens. Many late Ming orthodox literati reacted with downright revulsion to the merchants’ gaudy-looking, crude, and clamorous gardens (Yun and Kim, 2019). Several literati opposed ostentatious garden trends by publishing manuals to educate other literati in decorum. Wen Zhenheng (文震亨, 1585–1645), the great-grandson of Wen Zhengming, wrote Treatise on Superfluous Things (長物志, 1621) which describes the ‘true’ aesthetic tastes that a cultivated literatus ought to display. In the same era, Ji Cheng published The Craft of Gardens (園冶, 1634) in which he described the general principles and techniques of literati garden design. The core concept in both books is ‘elegance’ (雅), which represents the supreme ideological standard in the literati’s lofty social and artistic lifestyles. Literati garden life, which combined poetry, painting, calligraphy, and landscape design—thus constituting a whole ensemble of ‘literati garden arts’— aspired to achieve such a state of elegance (Hunt, 2012).

The ideology of elegance was embodied in the set of dispositions and construction techniques  in garden design practice, which was esteemed as a manner of demonstrating ‘naturalness’       (自然) and ‘simplicity’ (樸). As a premise of garden design, naturalness involves conforming to the inherent traits of the site and demonstrating appreciation for the classic image of the Chinese natural landscape. According to Ji Cheng’s The Craft (Ji, 2012), the master garden designer should ‘follow the natural cracks in the stone, imitating the brushwork of the old masters’ (p. 25); thus, while conserving the geological and ecological characteristics of the  site,  the garden landscape should amplify the forms and spirits of ‘Shanshui’ (山水: mountains and water) to some extent, especially those aspects that evoke an idealised Chinese natural landscape.

Complementing naturalness, simplicity refers to restraining adornment to conserve the essence of the garden. In Treatise, Wen Zhenheng repeatedly emphasises that luxurious or expensive garden elements that only reveal the proprietor’s obsession with materialism should  be avoided. Hence, simplicity was closely tied to ‘frugality’ (儉), which was represented by a reduction in garden size. In the final decades of the Ming dynasty, many Suzhou urban gardens were small, walled-off enclosures. As urbanisation reduced the number of plots available for constructing private gardens in Suzhou, garden sizes generally diminished to just a few mu (畝, 1 mu = 614.4 m2). The urban literati, however, considered limits as a virtue that could demonstrate a nobleman’s unpretentiousness and frugality (Smith, 1992, p. 69). Given that frugality testified to the spiritual integrity of a literatus, the grand size of Plum Villa (described below) suggests that it challenged the generally accepted garden design principles of the late Ming literati.

For educated, wealthy Shishang, owning a recently fashioned Suzhou-style private garden symbolised their prestige and newly achieved sociocultural power. Thus, even though most  Shishang gardens embraced the principal elements and pragmatic norms of literati gardens, they appeared to more consciously manifest their owners’ material self-sufficiency and social self-esteem. In this respect, the unique design elements in Shishang gardens, including those in Plum Villa, should be viewed in the context of social competition in the late Ming era.

  The design of Plum Villa: Emulation and transcendence of literati gardens

Analysis of the Villa requires studying the written records, mostly essays and poems, that describe the physical appearance of and activities on the estate. Many extant records indicate that Plum Villa’s design was unique compared to that of other late Ming gardens. For example, it encompassed more than 100 mu (Peng, 1992, p. 268), which was immense considering the general size of late Ming gardens ranged from a few mu to over 60 (Chang & Chang, 1992, p. 155). Furthermore, Zhong Xing and Zhu Zhifan, Xu’s close elite acquaintances, described the prevailing image of the Villa’s landscape by saying that the shape of the rocks was ‘eccentric’ (奇) (Peng, 1992, p. 266) and that the design of its water feature was ‘different’ ( 異 ) from that of other gardens (Chen, 2011, p. 186).

Figure 3. Conceptual diagram of Plum Villa’s spatial organisation created by the authors. The diagram is based on Chen Jiru’s description in The Garden Record as well as from details found in Y. Qian’s (2019) article.

Despite the range of historical materials, the primary text behind this study’s investigation is Chen Jiru’s essay, The Garden Record on Secretary Xu’s Plum Villa (許秘書園記, 1619) (Chen, 2011, pp. 186–189). This is because it is written in a ‘garden essay’ ( 園 記 ) format; the author guides readers through various key places along the garden’s routes and  space-dividing  thresholds, thus, helping them envision the overall layout of the garden (all main quotes below are taken from The Garden Record) (Figure 3).

Viewed from the small westward entrance, the whole of Plum Villa looks as though it were  built on an island made of rocks imported from a remote place. The rocky peaks of the high artificial hills and grottos are clustered together, standing mutely on the water.

  Passing through the Studio of Medlar and Chrysanthemum (杞菊齋) and walking round the ascending stone stairway, the Reflecting Belvedere (暎閣) emerges … Here, a rocky slope splits off from a bifurcation point, one direction of which travels down to the stream. Stepping stones  emerge and submerge on the surface of the water as if they are being swallowed up and spat out by the flow …

Threading through the stream, you see the inlet of the Grotto of Fragrant Washing (浣香洞). Inside, the grotto is rugged, but the water flows freely … Exiting the grotto and walking along the winding path, you cross a small pond with stepping stones that lead to the entrance of the Small Pond Grotto (小酉洞). On an upper slope of the grotto perches the Cooling Pavilion (招爽亭) where you can sit and rest for a while.

In the first paragraph of the above quote, Chen Jiru describes how the image of exquisite- looking rock hills behind a large body of water encapsulates his overall impression of Plum Villa. Convoluted pathways pass through an ensemble of artificial rock hills, and watercourses penetrate the grottos. The Villa’s elevated vantage point at Reflecting Belvedere allows its viewers to grasp the entire garden scene, comprising various types of pavilions, bridges, and plants, all of which are placed across and around the water. Like Chen, Zhong Xing responded evocatively to the Villa’s impressive image, describing the Villa as resting ‘entirely on the water’ (Chen, 2011, p. 186).

These descriptions suggest that the visual qualities of the Villa’s scenery must have been very distinct compared to other late Ming Suzhou gardens. Chen Jiru wrote that the landscape of the Villa was like a ‘painting that is not painted on paper’; he equated its calibre to the renowned styles of two legendary Song (宋) dynasty landscape painters, Guo Zhongshu (郭忠恕, ?–977) and Zhao Boju (趙伯駒) (Chen, 2011, p. 189). As discussed earlier, the ideal of naturalness calls for creating landscapes that evoke Shanshui forms inspired by the images in Chinese classical landscape paintings. According to Xiao and Xue (2015), this link between the forms of garden landscape and imagery of Shanshui painting did not strengthen until the late Ming period. This connection was not centred on their visual resemblance; rather, it derived from a realisation that the garden designers had managed to assimilate the sensory imagination of the literati’s ideological world into the materiality of garden landscapes. Through this integration, Plum Villa presumably aimed to incorporate the principle of naturalness such that its rock and water landscape evoked the artistic styles of Shanshui masterpieces. The two artists Chen referenced, Guo and Zhao, are often cited as exemplars of the Chinese academic landscape painting style, which was distinct compared to the literati’s monochromatic and expressive painting mode. In summary, Chen’s reference to the classical painters alluded to the delicate, structural, colourful, and sensitive ambiance of the Villa’s landscape.

Although the aesthetics of rock mountains had become consciously associated with Shanshui painting imagery, their experiential qualities—such as the hill structure, paths, and tracks—had to follow the topographic forms that the natural features of the garden site suggested. In an effort to find balance between ideal and natural forms of beauty, Plum Villa craftsmen likely applied highly skilled masonry moulding techniques using precious rocks. The fact that many accounts of the Villa frequently remark on the gaudy appearance of the rockeries suggests that the rocks were either odd-shaped Taihu rocks (太湖石) or completely foreign ones quarried and brought from far away. Hardie (2000) demonstrated that the beginning of the sixteenth century witnessed a distinctive miniaturisation of garden landscapes; magnificent rock mountains were transformed into space-saving groupings of rocky outcrops (pp.  314–345). Indeed, towards the end of the Ming dynasty,  unassuming and ponderous rock mountains made of a composite of soil and rock fell out of favour in exchange for simpler, more isolated, and more exquisite-looking hills made entirely of rocks (Keswick, 1986, p.125). However, considering its complicated structure comprising interlocking  passages and grottoes, the Villa’s rock mountain was most likely massive and elaborate, marking another contrast to other late Ming gardens.

The path gets flatter as you proceed. More sparkling lights that are reflected on the water’s surface become visible as you get closer to the pond named Ford of the Brocade-Like Flowing Sound (錦淙灘). Moss-covered rocks are piled up on the shoreline and the waves swallow them  layer upon layer. The owner of the garden directed me toward a gallery that meanders along the shoreline from the other side of the lake.

Continue north along the winding path and you spot a triple-angled pavilion called Pavilion on the Brook (在澗亭). Ascending from the pavilion through a stone stairway reveals a deep forest. Inside the forest is an artfully arranged pavilion called Pavilion of Transmitting Verdure (轉翠亭). Beneath this pavilion is located the Reflecting Belvedere that you have already visited on the way. East of this pavilion is the garden gate, and the winding covered walkway on the other side of the lake starts from here. I named this walkway the Flowing Shadow Walkway (流影廊).

As the above quote illustrates, in contrast to the rocky hills on the high ground, the low ground included a central pond area. The long and winding covered walkway began in the forest and descended around the pond. Chen’s description of movement through Plum Villa reveals that the pathway was neither predetermined nor directional, thus allowing visitors to roam freely. An erratic and meandering pathway along a curvilinear-shaped pond was an iconic design scheme in late Ming Suzhou literati gardens. For the literati, this ‘roaming’ (遊) experience implied a Daoist transcendental spirit unbounded by corporeal reality. Such an experience was often associated with the unattainable lofty ideals represented in paintings and poetry; it formed a shared mental ideal among the literati (Han, 2012). Therefore, the design of the Villa’s circulatory paths demonstrates that Xu embraced this latest design trend of embodying the demands  for spiritual freedom of a noble literatus.

The immense central pond and intricate waterways of the Plum Villa strongly distinguished it from other Suzhou literati gardens. Zhu Zhifan described the Villa’s bodies of water as follows: ‘While the guests are at the pavilion, belvedere, winding walkway, or chapel, they cannot distinguish whether they are on the water or in the garden’ (Chen, 2011, p. 186). Consistent with Zhu’s impression, Zhuang Yan’s (莊嚴) poem describes the water features as so spectacular that guests could tour the garden by boat: ‘Many guests from Suzhou and other places enjoy a boat trip [on the pond]. As soon as the boat passes under a beautiful stone bridge, elegant and wondrous scenes of the islands unveil from the mist’ (Peng, 1992, p. 268). Accordingly, Zhuang’s description implies that many garden components, such as bridges and artificial islands, were interconnected with the pond and watercourses. Visual comparison of the early Qing dynasty map (Figure 1) and current aerial photo (Figure 4) indicates that the canals surrounding the Villa marked its boundaries. Farmland currently occupies what was probably the main area of the Villa where the immense bodies of water stood.

Figure 1. A map of Fuli Town in the early Qing dynasty (ca. 1765). 

Figure 4. Aerial view of the former site of Plum Villa in 2018. The focal point is indicated in Figure 2. Source: photo taken in October 2018 by the authors.

Figure 5. A segment of Changgong Lake (昌公湖) in Illustrations of the Gardens of the Hall  Encircled by Jade (環翠堂園景圖) (detail). Source: G. Qian and Huang (2014).

The boat trips occasionally hosted by Plum Villa links it to the cultural norms of that era, when boat trips provided a special activity at various Ming gardens. For example, illustrations of Wang Tingna’s (汪廷訥, 1573–1619) Garden of the Sitting Hermit (坐隱園, built in 1600) show guests and courtesans enjoying a joyous moment at an extravagant banquet held on sailboats (Figure 5). The convivial atmosphere involving drinking, eating, and listening to a musical group contrasts with the serene ambiance of the literati’s boat trips that generally involved poetry soirees with few guests. Like Xu, Wang was a Shishang culturati from a wealthy salt merchant family in Huizhou. For both Wang and Xu, boat trips may have been a notable way to strengthen inter-class social relationships with invited guests. Xu’s Shishang status infers that boating at the Plum Villa was a festive experience, similar to the images in Wang’s garden illustrations. Thus, the Villa’s large and complex water bodies would probably have served both aesthetic and utilitarian purposes.

Although Suzhou’s geological features ensured abundant Taihu rocks and a proper depth of the water table for dredging a large pond, not all Suzhou gardens had such features. Moulding spectacular rock hills in a garden required the procurement of valuable rocks from distant sites, and excavating the earth for a large and intricate waterbody involved extensive labour. Applying Ji  Cheng’s principle of naturalness to a garden construction therefore apparently required substantial economic resources (Hardie, 2000, p. 244). The exquisite rock hills and sizable bodies of water at Plum Villa are a testament to Xu’s substantial wealth. While the late Ming literati capitalised on the virtues of simplicity and frugality to reduce financial outflow, Xu, a prosperous Shishang unhindered by economic constraints, experimented with innovative garden aesthetics.

The Blue-Sky Pavilion (碧落亭 ) is located on the west side of the gallery. The shadow of the trees on the slope of a western rock hill hangs over the eaves of the pavilion … Walking round a few steps to the south from the pavilion, there is the Vimalakīrti Chapel (維摩庵) devoted to Vimalakīrti. Walking 40 to 50 steps out of the Chapel, you can glimpse the Bridge of Passing Moon (渡月梁). A gazebo from which people appreciate the moon is located in the middle of the bridge.

The Bridge connects to the Leisure Hall (得閑堂). The doors of the Hall are very tall and large,  and the space inside is wide and airy. Outside the stone balustrade that surrounds the Hall is a spacious terrace made of carved stones with a clear white hue. The size of the terrace is more than one mu… Guests enjoy songs and dances, drink with courtesans, and write poems and calligraphy  there. The guests are delighted with the courtesans’ music and dance. These elated feasts always last until daybreak.

The Buddha Chamber (竟觀居) is on the northwest side of the Leisure Hall. In the front bay of the Chamber are images of Buddha which were brought from India. The Chamber is located near the watercourse, which can be crossed via the Floating Red Bridge (浮紅渡) … If you go a little bit  further, there are the Crane Garden (鶴篽) and the Butterfly Dormancy (蝶寢) that are only accessible to the garden owner.

As described in the second paragraph of the above quote, a guest encounters the Leisure Hall after leaving the meandering gallery and crossing the bridge. The Hall was the central building at the Plum Villa where banquet receptions or theatre performances were held. The terrace in front of the Hall encompassed more than one mu, with enough room to hold a large crowd. Generally, a main hall was often paired with a central pond to form the pivotal component of Ming gardens. At Plum Villa, the ‘terrace’ (臺)—a high, flat, stone-paved architectural structure supporting the building—provided a platform for open-air viewing and a space behind the main hall. Terrace size would usually be proportional to other garden components to keep its reflection from dominating the small pond (Tsu, 1988, pp. 65, 78). However, the terrace in front of the Leisure Hall was a conspicuously oversized structure compared to the accepted architectural conventions of Ming gardens.

Such an incongruously installed terrace was likely designed for special communal events. Records indicate that all-night outdoor dramatic performances and banquets enticed crowds to the Plum Villa. Zhong Xing noted that ‘the terrace was large enough for one hundred people to be seated, and songs were performed there for the guests, (Chen, 2011, p. 186). Chen Jiru also wrote, ‘The sound of a sonorous song and music played by the courtesan performers continued ceaselessly from evening till daybreak’. Given Xu was a theatre and drama aficionado, the terrace space would surely have served to accommodate his passion for holding theatrical dramas for a wide range of audiences.

For the Ming literati, private gardens were ideal for theatrical performances; both gardens and drama embodied the literati’s dream-like fantasies. When political corruption was rife amid the decline of the Ming empire, the literati’s passion for drama became more ardent as they tried to escape from reality. Both indoor and outdoor spaces in private gardens were used as venues for theatrical performances. Shows were performed at pavilions or courtyards, taking advantage of the poetically imbued garden landscape (Shen, 2005, pp. 129–143). Apparently, Plum Villa’s designation of including a spacious outdoor terrace specifically for dramatic performances for large audiences was unprecedented in Ming gardens.

The gathering of massive audiences on the large terrace at the Plum Villa means that it often  served as an essential venue for local cultural services. During the late Ming period, most urban Suzhou elites prohibited the public from their gardens due to their loathing of the public’s vulgar culture. However, various elites with private gardens in suburban areas turned them into public venues to engage local people. For example, the famous mid-Ming scholar-official and critic Wang Shizhen (王世貞, 1526–1590), who owned Yanshan Garden (弇山園, built in 1560), occasionally opened his property to large groups of the general public for sightseeing (Hammond, 1999, p. 283). Since the Plum Villa was also situated in a semi-suburban area, public visitors from diverse social ranks could have gathered there for festive or philanthropic events. For example, Xu hosted the Lantern Festival (元宵節), a traditional event open to the general public, to celebrate the first full moon of the New Year (Peng, 1992, p.269). Seasonal events held in the Villa’s attractive garden might have enticed locals from diverse social backgrounds, thus contributing to local solidarity. Xu’s embrace of the locals might have originated from familial traditions. As Brook (1993) posited, merchants’ charitable projects and conspicuous displays of wealth legitimated their domination over the locals (p.19). Hence, many successful merchants were cherished for their public beneficence, such as providing entertainment. Use of the Villa as a semi-public venue implies that Xu continued this legacy.

Consistent with the presence of theatrical facilities in Plum Villa, the Vimalakīrti Chapel and  Buddha Chamber indicate Xu Zichang’s conscious assimilation of literati culture into his merchant lineage. In the Ming era, Buddhism had close ties to both merchant and literati cultures. For Shishang of merchant origin, Buddhist practice was part of their familial traditions. They  developed markets and commercial sectors near Buddhist monasteries, where local merchants had their fortunes blessed and received various social services (Brook, 1993, pp. 54–126). Quite distinctly, the religious traditions of the Ming literati embraced Buddhist practices as a vehicle for expressing individual spiritual freedom. As discussed earlier, many late Ming intellectuals tried to reconcile Neo-Confucianist world views with those of other doctrines. Naturally, the conglomeration of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism was unobtrusively absorbed into the life of the literati so that Buddhist chapels (佛堂) were prevalent in late Ming Suzhou gardens (e.g. Wen, 1984: volumes 1, 6, and 10). Therefore, aside from being a symbol of ancestral traditions, Buddhist spaces at the Plum Villa were bound up in Xu’s self-identification with the distinct culture of the new elite generations.

On the east side of the Leisure Hall was placed a small pavilion called the Pavilion of Washing Inkstone (滌硯亭). Walk past the pavilion and wander further east and you can observe the Belvedere of Clear Brilliance (湛華閣). A forest comprising tall trees is around there, and the Lotus Pond is placed in the middle of the forest … If you go a little further, you will heed the landscape with clean and deep water, in which a melancholy sentiment of the autumn season in Jiangnan is recreated, thus it is called the Hermitage of Dripping Autumn (滴秋庵).

The gate of Suzhou city wall is seen at a distance from the pavilion on high ground. The water is silky and the mountains look as though they were eyebrows … From here, the crowds in the  marketplace are seen and their noise is heard. That is the way the garden owner knows of such layers of scenery without leaving his Villa. He arranged hills and water in his enclosure with fine skill.  The sound of instruments playing, songs of girls, and Xu’s sons reading books are heard every  morning and evening. [In the pond] I take a boat trip with a glass of wine, a line of poetry, and a dance… Visitors ceaselessly enter the Villa.

Chen ends his essay by evocatively describing the overall atmosphere of the Villa, the aesthetics of which were epitomised by an ensemble of ‘Jiejing’ (借景: borrowed landscapes) and wafting music. Generally, Jiejing is known as a design method that aims to expand the conceived  horizon of an estate across its boundary to overcome the garden’s size constraints; it is therefore closely tied to the concept of frugality. This technique helped garden owners to perceptually unite near and distant scenes, overcoming territorial limits while staying true to frugality. However, in this instance, considering the grand scale of the Plum Villa, the Jiejing technique seems to have functioned as a means of constructing varied viewing experiences—even incorporating a view of a bustling marketplace—rather than a means of declaring a Confucian scholar’s frugal integrity.

The second paragraph in the quote, as well as many other essays on the Villa, describe its  prevailing musical environment: Xu Qian (徐汧, ?–1645) wrote that ‘In Plum Villa, musical melodies are played and ballads of singers are ceaselessly heard’ (Peng, 1992, p. 268). The prevalence of euphonious songs and music in the garden space indicates the permanent presence  of a theatre troupe in the Villa. Accordingly, most theatrical events in the Villa were performed by  singing girls and courtesans in Xu’s private troupe whose members were trained at his estate (Wu, 2017). Indeed, the Ming literati’s passionate devotion to drama often culminated in running a private theatre troupe. Owning a highly reputable troupe testified to the level of the owner’s cultural refinement and financial status, thereby securing his social position among the rich and powerful (Shen, 2005, pp. 22–35). Coming from a wealthy mercantile family, Xu could sustain a high-quality private troupe. Considering that the literati’s tranquil, solitary, and rustic life in the context of withdrawal from secular matters defined the archaic tradition of Suzhou gardens, Xu’s life in the Villa seems to have retained a convivial, communal, and celebratory pleasure that many orthodox Ming Confucian scholars precluded from their garden culture. Through this enjoyment, Xu’s ownership of a private troupe reflects not only his deep affection for theatrical drama, but also the transition from stoic Ming garden traditions to a more hedonic culture.

In sum, Chen Jiru’s written record of Plum Villa indicates that a plethora of iconic late Ming garden leitmotifs, such as exquisite rock mountains, convoluted water channels, and twisting and turning walkway corridors, were arranged throughout the garden property to create a magnificently virtuoso garden landscape. As such, the Villa’s garden design fully embodied the late Ming conception of elegance. Naturalness was perfected in the rock hills and watercourses by reinvigorating the pictorial idea of Shanshui. Elegance was elaborated further through meandering pathways intertwined with the landscape, Buddhist chapels that signalled elite syncretism, and the Jiejing technique. Nonetheless, some of the design conventions predicated on literati elegance were distinctively amplified to communicate Xu Zichang’s Shishang identity. The theatrical and communal space exemplified by the large terrace was a pivotal element of the Villa, proving that entertaining and entertainment dominated Xu’s garden life. Moreover, perhaps his cultural interests and liberal lifestyle impelled the Villa’s design towards an exuberance uncompromised by Confucian ideals of simplicity. Overall, although the Villa overtly promoted the perfection of the late Ming literati’s reflective scheme of naturalness, Xu’s materialistic and communal spirit  undermined the values of simplicity and frugality, which represent the Confucian scholar’s virtue of noble abstinence. It is, however, misleading to view the adaptation of commercial taste and public engagement in the Villa’s design as a reflection of cultural decadence (a common criticism by the  literati in the late Ming period); rather, it is to be interpreted as the Shishang’s proclamation of self-identity as well as a sign of the growing importance of Ming gardens as public meeting places.

Conclusion

This study sought to address the literature gaps by examining how the specific characteristics of the Shishang in late Ming Suzhou influenced their approach to garden design. For the wealthy Shishang, owning a Suzhou-style private garden not only meant displaying the latest architectural fashion but also acquiring the literati’s sociocultural capital. Hence, the Shishang built private gardens as authentic imitations of Suzhou literati gardens, prevailing on aesthetic principles of elegance. At the Plum Villa, which has thus far received little research attention, many late Ming ‘mannerist’ garden elements that capitalised on the principle of naturalness were fully employed and even amplified to some extent.

While Xu Zichang participated in the literati’s culture, he also maintained the merchants’ communal spirit by exploiting the potential of theatrical entertainment and public involvement in the garden space. Xu’s interest in performance art and public festivity outweighed the ideals of abstinence imposed by Confucian ethics, and his garden thereby served utilitarian and functional purposes. Through its grandeur, theatrical events, and public engagement, the Villa’s embodiment of elegance transcended the literati’s canonical garden design principles. In this respect, this study demonstrated that Plum Villa, which represents late Ming Suzhou Shishang gardens, challenged the mainstream literati garden aesthetics by incorporating Shishang’s sociocultural identity into its design. Furthermore, the Villa marks the transition of the pre-modern notion of a garden from ‘private’ and ‘exclusive’ to its modern conception of ‘public’ and ‘open’. Thus, we propose that the Villa epitomises the emergence of urban public garden landscapes in China.

In sum, the Plum Villa exemplifies sociocultural changes in Chinese history that started in the late Ming period. The Villa can be viewed as an example of unique cultural expression among     the Shishang, whose rising social status undermined the established Confucian class system. It represents a microcosm of the urban sociocultural environment in the late Ming period, during which hegemonic ideals began to disintegrate. For this reason, the significance of Plum Villa in  the context of the emergence of Chinese modernity cannot be understated. Thus, we recommend that future studies pay more attention to the unique cultural expressions of the late Ming Shishang.