Graceful Chinese garden architecture

浙江 张 芬

The Chinese garden architecture is one of the four essential factors for garden landscaping. It's a kind of architecture used for providing a place for rest and sightseeing for people. The essential buildings of Chinese garden architecture include halls, pavilions（亭）, corridors （走廊）, bridges, etc. The garden architecture should satisfy the requirements both for practical and aesthetic（美学的） purposes.

One of the outstanding characteristics of Chinese garden architecture is taking advantage of the environment so that the natural scenes and human interest could be merged. The classic garden architecture is often decorated with calligraphy of poems and paintings.

The styles of garden architecture are different in North China and South China. Gardens in the south of China are mainly private gardens, while in the north of China are mainly imperial gardens.Besides, the scale and natural environment are different. The main difference is the architecture's form. Gardens in the north of China is magnificent and stress the intense colors of paintings, and the structure is much more official. Elaborate (精心制作的) gardens in the south of China, with green tiles and white walls are totally different from magnificent and colorful gardens in the north of China.And it's common to see that elaborate wood carvings are used to decorate the gardens in the south of China.

Suzhou gardens reflect the artistic characteristics of Chinese garden architecture. Suzhou gardens have a history of two thousand years. There are still some famous gardens in Suzhou. Suzhou gardens use all resources to express the beauty of garden landscaping, combining Chinese landscape and flowers and birds and adding the ideal condition in Tang and Song poems to increase the cultural connotation. The famous garden architecture in Suzhou includes Canglangting Garden, Shizilin Garden,Zhuozhengyuan Garden, Liuyuan Garden, etc.

Yuanmingyuan Garden is the most famous imperial garden in China. The garden combines different styles of garden art and use Western architecture style for reference. Unfortunately, Yuanmingyuan Garden was destroyed by British and French troops in 1860. People only have to imagine its beauty from the relics. At least, it's the most famous garden in China at that time. To some extent, the style of garden architecture in Europe was affected by Yuanmingyuan Garden in 18th century.

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