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Zhao Liewen’s Gardening Practices and Activities in His Diary Li & Yin

Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism

2022 Volume 4 Issue 1: 1-16 Secondary Publication

Zhao Liewen’s Gardening Practices and Activities as Reflected in
His Diary Nengjingju Riji – A Secondary Publication

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Xiao Li , Shuaike Yin
1 School of Architecture, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China
2 School of Horticulture and Forestry, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, Hubei, China

Corresponding author: Shuaike Yin, School of Horticulture and Forestry, Huazhong Agricultural
University, Wuhan, Hubei, China. Email: falongsi@foxmail.com

Citation: Li X, Yin S, 2022, Zhao Liewen’s Gardening Practices and Activities as Reflected in His
Diary Nengjingju Riji – A Secondary Publication. Journal of Chinese Architecture and Urbanism, 4(1):
175. http://dx.doi.org/10.36922/jcau.v4i1.175

ABSTRACT

Zhao Liewen, a late-Qing-dynasty scholar, wrote more than a million characters in his diary titled
Nengjingju Riji. Through analysis of Zhao’s text, the author of this paper reconstructs the daily life in
the Tranquil Garden (Jing Pu) and brings light to the site selection, house construction, garden planning,
as well as the‘elegant gatherings’of literati that took place in the garden. More specifically, in the 7th
and 8th lunar months of 1865, the 4th reign year of Emperor Tongzhi, Zhao traveled to the south of the
Yangtze River. After considering the prices of houses and fengshui of the sites in different cities, he
finally chose a place in Jiuwanwei, Changshu. As his family was growing, the house and garden became
more clearly divided according to their functions. Especially, the library space of Tiangfanglou, and the
garden area along the Tranquil Stream (Jing Xi) were rebuilt on several occasions. Zhao often invited
relatives and friends to gather here. The creative work inspired by his life at the Tranquil Garden was
modeled after the Wangchuan poetry collection of Tang poets and born from the gatherings held in the
garden between 1876 and 1877, the 3rd and 4th reign years of Emperor Guangxu (r. 1875‒1908).

Keywords: Jing Pu; siting and garden planning; Nengjingju Riji; elegant gatherings; Changshu Garden

This article belongs to Secondary Publication Section translated from an article published in Journal of
Architectural History 《建筑史学刊》. Citation of primary version: Li X, Yin S, 2020, Zhao Liewen’s Gardening
Practices and Activities as Reflected in His Nengjingju Riji. Journal of Architectural History, 2022(1): 135-141.
http://dx.doi.org/10.12329/20969368.2022.01012

Copyright: © 2022 Journal of Architectural History. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits all
non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction, in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

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