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Literary and Museum Newsletter , Issue No. 28, December 1979
The mere mention of Suzhou gardens invariably brings to mind estates locked behind tall walls with few outlets available to the outside world—a garden-making phenomenon apparently born of geo-historical conditions. Nevertheless, the garden craftsmen of ancient times still managed to create one distinctive garden after another in such small spaces by segmenting cityscape from mountains and woods with walls. Were these walls torn down, these gardens would be changed beyond recognition in no time and robbed of their value thoroughly. However, there is such a garden—and a familiar one at that—that does not belong among the secluded gardens in Suzhou. This is none other than the Dark Blue Waves Pavilion. The Fengxi Stream makes quite a few twists and turns around the South Garden before flowing past the Thatched Nunnery—where Suzhou's tallest lacebark pine tree is found—to become an eddying blue belt that forms the garden's northern boundary. The stretch from the Anglers' Platform to the Lotus Root Flower Gazebo, graced with ancient terraces, beautiful gazebos and a winding roofed walkway amid tall trees, is already beckoning on passers-by and giving free rein to imagination before they set foot in the garden.
The Dark Blue Waves Pavilion is a water-fronted garden, but its interior is dominated by artificial mountains separated categorically from water. As the saying goes:
Water keeps people at a distance
Rocks impart serenity to people.
Upon entering the garden through the level bridge over the Fengxi Stream, one sees forbidding mountains and awe-inspiring woods whose hushed quietude changes one's mood at the blink of an eye. The garden is encircled entirely with a roofed walkway divided in two lanes with a wall in the middle; what delights the visitors most are this wall's latticed windows, through which they can take in the views outside of the garden. Because of this wall, the garden's internal and external worlds seem to be at once separable and inseparable, and the knolls and ravines within and the river without look both attached and detached. This is exactly what the conception of the garden of the Dark Blue Waves Pavilion is focused upon. Without the belt of water in front of the garden, all its rockeries and ravines would be mediocre and not worth seeing. It is this finishing touch added to the scene through the creator's ingenious hand that the Dark Blue Waves Pavilion stands a winning chance against other gardens in the same city. Indeed, the contrast between vistas within and without is exactly captured in the following line,
Without putting down a single word,
All charms under heaven are attained.
A garden cannot look venerated without bristling trees and rugged rocks, and the garden of the Dark Blue Waves Pavilion is a most pertinent case in point. Its halls and verandahs are free from gaudy ornamentation. Its stone-paved footpaths and diagonal walkway thread through bamboo groves and plantain foliage in a stately and immaculate fashion, without the least trace of vulgarity gilded or rouged. Its central structure, the Hall to Understand the Way, opens itself in four directions. To the north, an artificial mountain spreads out like a mammoth screen; rising above an arbour grove is the garden's namesake, the renowned Dark Blue Waves Pavilion per se , which offers a panoramic view of the whole garden. As a roofed walkway meanders up and down the slope of the artificial mountain, it provides balustrades that people can lean upon to look afar or take a rest. A verandah to the hall's west forms a courtyard of its own with a number of windows, whose gateways come in versatile shapes, and the best latticed windows of all Suzhou gardens are found right here.
The Mountain-Watcher's Loft in the southwest corner sits upon a tortuous cave and overlooks the South Garden and country homes on a level field that has given way to new buildings today and brings the shimmering views of the Lankavatara Mountain and the Seven-Peak Mountain in the distance right before its balustrades. The stream running in the front and the scenery borrowed from the mountains in the distance become part and parcel of the garden's own landscape.
The garden abounds in tall trees. There are lots of bamboos as well, whose swaying slim trunks keep throwing droplets of verdure into the air to refresh people's hearts and boost their spirits. With orchid aroma infiltrating visitors' sleeves, and bamboos tossing their shadows onto whitewashed walls, this little garden offers captivating pictures worth all the scrutiny and rambling, and provides natural themes for painting or poetry. Celebrated writers and painters through the ages, ranging from Su Shunqin (1008-1048), Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) 1 and Mei Yaochen (1002-1060) 2 , to Wu Changshuo (1844-1927) 3 , not to mention so many celebrities of modern and contemporary times, have come up with voluminous works in eulogy of this very garden. None of them, however, describe its serenity and elegance better than its earliest owner Su Shunqin in this seven-character truncated quatrain, "Touring the Dark Blue Waves Pavilion Right after Rain":
Night to dawn it rains upon a vernal river,
Sly clouds makes it now overcast, now fine;
Faint behind curtains are sun, bamboo, flower,
Squab doves sing to each other now and then.
The Dark Blue Waves Pavilion is the oldest extant garden in Suzhou. It began as the mansion of Qian Yuanliao (886-942), Prince of Guangling of the Wu-Yue Kingdom of the Five Dynasties (907-960). Another theory, however, attributes it to Sun Chengyou ( fl . 10th century), a military commissioner and close relative of the royal family. Under the Qingli reign (1041-1048) of the Northern Song, the poet Su Shunqin bought the property, built a pavilion on it, and named it "Dark Blue Waves Pavilion." During the Xining reign (1068-1077) of the Northern Song, it was acquired by Grand Councillor Zhang Dun (1035-1105) 4 . After it was destroyed during the Jianyan reign (1127-1130) of the Southern Song, Han Shizhong (1089-1151) came into possession of it. During the Yuan-Ming period it had assumed different identities—the Wonderful Temple to Hide In, a Buddhist dormitory, and the Memorial Shrine of King of Qi 5 during the Jiajing reign of the Ming. Shi Wenying ( fl . 16th century) restored the property from its ruins. During the Kangxi reign (1661-1722) of the Qing, the Memorial Shrine of Su Shunqin was built in 1684, and Song Luo (1634-1713), a governor of Jiangsu, had the pavilion rebuilt. When it was rebuilt once again in 1827, the seventh year of the Daoguang reign (1821-1851), the Shrine of Five Hundred Sages 6 was added west of today's Hall to Understand the Way. After being rebuilt again in 1873, or the twelfth year of the Tongzhi reign, the garden has remained to this day. A picture of a full view of the garden under Qing Emperor Guangxu's reign (1875-1908) engraved on a stone tablet in front of the garden provide valuable reference to its history. The Dark Blue Waves Pavilion differs from its counterparts in that it has long been treated as a public facility, where local officials and gentries throw banquets, and men of letters gather for literary functions—all of which is attributed to the garden's one-of-a-kind design and layout.