Page 220 - The Arts of China, By Michael Sullivan Good Book

24 > The Liu-yUin Garden Soochow, —
Kungsu.
dent literati of the Yuan Dynasty. If the history of later Chinese
painting is to be told in the lives and work of the scholar-gentry
and there are many in China today who would dispute this—then
we must focus our attention from now on almost exclusively on
the corner of southeastern China that embraces southern Kiangsu
and northern Chckiang, a region rich in agriculture, silk, and
thriving cities where most of the material and cultural wealth was
now created and enjoyed. Here, chiefly in Soochow, the landed
gentry of the fifteenth century cultivated their estates, digging
pools and heaping up artificial hills to create those famous gardens
in which scholars, poets, and painters could enjoy the fruits of the
good life. Several of these gardens in Soochow and Wuhsi, with
their pavilions and winding paths, their fancy rocks dredged out
of the bed of Lake T'ai (and often "improved" by rock special-
ists), have been restored for the pleasure of the modern visitor,
among them the Garden to Linger In (Liu Yuan) and the Garden
of the Clumsy Politician (Cho-cheng Yuan). One of the court-
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