Yan Liu

The enormous diversity between the Chinese and Western cultures led to two different visual principles. Western visuality followed the perspective based on the retina, while the Chinese painters used the “far and near method” (yuanjin fa 遠近法). Before the twentieth century, the representation and dissemination of Chinese gardens at the visual level were dominated by traditional landscape painting. However, the Chinese gardens’ visual representation gradually shifted from traditional landscape painting to Western cartographic techniques (site survey and photography) after the Opium War (1840–1860). When studying the history of Chinese gardens, images provide a symbolic reference for interpreting the past of these gardens as crucial visual evidence. This article uses the visual evidence of classical Chinese gardens as a medium to reveal the influence and role of Western-centric theories on Chinese culture. Fundamentally, this paper attempts to analyse the impact of these changes on the inheritance of cultural memory from an intercultural and interdisciplinary perspective.

The subject of specialized history is a concept introduced from the West to China. During the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese historians consciously attempted a paradigm shift in historiography. The emergence of specialized histories means that the writing of histories is no longer decided by traditional historians but planned by scholars in their fields. In this context, the history of architecture quickly arose, as well as the history of gardens. This article focuses on the development of Chinese garden history in the past century. Reviewing the establishment, advancement, and increasingly interdisciplinary and intercultural direction of Chinese garden history, this paper attempts to explore the future of the discipline and its more diverse possibilities.