The Birth and Growth of Chinese Modern Gardens
3 min readIn Chinese history，the year1840 was a watershed for China transforming from a feudal society into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.This year was also a turning point for Chinese garden making history from ancient time to modern period，the evident symbol was park.Gardens built before 1840 were usually called classical gardens and those after the year modern gardens.Classical gardens are mainly imperial gardens and private gardens owned by the nobles；what grassroots could get admitted were public gardens and temple gardens.Comparatively speaking，modern gardens are public，and，at same time，gradually perfect in its layout and design.
The Birth and Growth of Chinese Modern Gardens
Classical Chinese gardens，either imperial ones or private ones，were privately owned and appreiciated.Most of them were for the royal families，nobles and literati to avoid summer heat，to deal with political affaires，to live，entertain and rest.However，after the Opium War，the western powers began to constantly build European-styled parks in China to meet their own needs for pleasure and recreation.
These parks stimulated the birth and the growth of Chinese modern gardens.At the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China，Shanghai was the city boasting the largest number of early parks in China.The Bund Garden（Huangpu Garden），the Hongkou Garden，the French Garden（Fuxing Garden），and the Sun-Yet-san Park were good examples.These gardens，different from classical Chinese gardens in layout and style，were mixed with French and English landscape and had garden lawn and quite few buildings
At that time，most gardens in Shanghai were designed by foreigners and had obvious European style.Though parks with Chinese style were hardly to be seen in the downtown area，there were still some examples in the surrounding counties，including Wuxi Public Garden built in 1906 by local wealthy people Qiu Liangting，Yu Zhonghuan，and Wu Zhihui.This park had more buildings and less grassland.With arranged rockeries and ponds，its layout and design absorbed the traditional features of classical Chinese garden.
Around the Revolution of 1911，a group of progressive public figures represented by Dr Sun Yat-sen advocated the construction of parks.Under their influence，a large number of parks were built in some big cities，such as the Yuexiu Park，the Central Park，and the Yonghan Park in Guangzhou，the Cuihu Park in Kunming，and the Central Park in Beijing，the Xuanwu Park in Nanjing，the Central Park in Amoy，and the Tianxin Park in Wuhan.Furthermore，some national capitalists also built parks open to public，such as Huishan Park in Wuxi.
Most of the parks mentioned above were usually built on some old famous scenic spots and sites.A few of them were constructed on either empty or arable land by imitating some European parks.In general，the modern Chinese gardens were mainly occupied by green scenery attached with a few buildings.More importantly，they became public places for ordinary people to enjoy life，and laid a good foundation for the park development in future.
