CANARY IN THE CAGE - HISTORISKA INSTITUTIONEN - INTERACTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN AND GARDENS IN MING AND QING DYNASTIES - DIVA
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Canary in the Cage
Interactions between Women and Gardens in Ming and Qing Dynasties
Master’s thesis, 45 credits
Author’s name: Gu Yun
Name of supervisor: Gudrun Andersson
Semester: Spring 2020
HISTORISKA INSTITUTIONEN
Abstract:
This paper attempts to find out the relationship between women and gardens which has been
neglected in the past through the research on the historical materials related to women. Since the
middle and late Ming dynasty, the emergence of a large number of Jiangnan gardens have coincided
with the emergence of a large number of female poets in the late Ming and Qing dynasties in terms
of time and region. It is not difficult to find designs full of female colors in typical Ming and Qing
gardens, and the works of female poets always take the garden as the writing object, it seems that
garden and woman had influence each other in that period.
This paper tries to reproduce the interaction between women and gardens in Ming and Qing
dynasties from three aspects: the limitation of women's exploration of space outside the garden,
the possible influence of women on the garden, and the connection between the garden and the
emergence of poetess.
1
Contents:
1 Introduction: .......................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Sources and method: ................................................................................................................ 4
1.2 Previous research....................................................................................................................... 8
2 Restricted female space ......................................................................................................................11
2.1 Middle door as the separation of internal and external space: .........................................12
2.2 Rebellious Jiangnan woman ...................................................................................................14
2.2.1 Women need to hide themselves when going out: ................................................15
2.2.2 Only go to local and public spots: ............................................................................16
2.3 Beauty in painting: chaste woman in fantasy: .....................................................................17
Summary ..............................................................................................................................................24
3 Influence women could have on gardens: .......................................................................................26
3.1 Taoist gardens for women to enjoy: .....................................................................................26
3.1.1 The view of equality between men and women in Taoism helps women to
exert influence on gardens: ......................................................................................................27
3.1.2 Flowers planted in gardens for women:.......................................................................29
3.2 Gardens constructed at the rear of residences:...................................................................32
3.3 The trend of building gardens in Jiangnan: .........................................................................37
Summary: .............................................................................................................................................40
4 More gardens, more talented women:..............................................................................................42
4.1 The scenery of gardens stimulated women to write poems: ............................................42
4.1.1 Reason for men willing to educate women: ............................................................43
4.1.2 Women compare themselves to flowers in poetry:................................................44
4.2 Talented women had larger social circle and wider social space: ....................................46
4.2.1 Jiaoyuan poetry club....................................................................................................47
4.2.2 Yuan Mei’s female disciples: ......................................................................................49
4.3 Limitation of writing poetry based on garden scenery: .....................................................50
4.3.1 Confucian scholar’s criticism on the ethos of women writing poetry: ...............50
4.3.2 Talented women's works are of low literary value: ................................................51
4.4 Liberation or Burden ..............................................................................................................53
4.4.1 Beautiful ideal, cruel reality ........................................................................................54
4.4.2 Asking for high walls ..................................................................................................55
Summary: .............................................................................................................................................56
5 Conclusion............................................................................................................................................58
Appendix: .....................................................................................................................................................60
Bibliography: ................................................................................................................................................61
2
1 Introduction:
In Wei, Jin and the Southern and Northern Dynasties (220-589), private gardens started to emerge
in Jiangnan1, the richest region locates at lower Yangtze River of China. During the Tang (618-907)
and Song (960-1279) dynasties, with the initial economic development of Jiangnan, the quality and
quantity of private gardens were improved and began to surpass other areas in China. Due to the
suppression of Han nation’s culture by the Mongols in the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), and Ming
dynasty’s (1368-1644) founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s (1328-1398) forbidden on constructing
gardens, Jiangnan garden culture declined for a time. In the middle of Ming dynasty, extravagance
began to be in vogue, and the culture of private gardens became extremely rich. In the Qing dynasty
(1636-1912), although it was also under the control of the non-Han nationality, the garden culture
was not hit as much as in the Yuan dynasty. On the contrary, it was appreciated by the emperors
of the Qing dynasty and had an impact on the imperial garden style in Beijing.2
Garden is often regarded as a space designed for male scholars from the history materials about
it, or perhaps it is because people take it for granted that ancient women had no rights in all aspects
of their lives and could not enter gardens, so they could not have a direct impact on gardens and
gardens cannot be regarded as women's spaces. However, as most common form of the gardens
in this period were residential gardens,3 it was possible for women to enter gardens as long as the
garden of their residence belonged to inner space, and gardens can also be found some feminine
design, as if women had influenced the garden in a subtle way.
According to the theory of Linguistic Relativity, language has an effect on our thinking.4 The
space created by people can also be regarded as a kind of language.5 As a space, gardens could also
influence women as long as women can enter gardens. We can find that, coincidentally, the
emergence of a large number of female poets in the Ming and Qing dynasties, took place at almost
the same time and same region as the increase in the number of gardens. Landscapes and natural
scenes are the eternal theme of poems written by male poets, while female poets are more likely to
express their emotions through the scenery of gardens, perhaps because their passion for writing
poems is also ignited when women are more likely to enter gardens easily.
In this thesis, I hope to reproduce the interaction between women and gardens through the
study of historical data with women as the main characters.
1
In most cases, Jiangnan region includes Zhenjiang, Yingtian (Nanjing), Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou,
Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou.
2
Gu Kai, Jiangnan Sijia Yuanlin 江南私家园林 (Beijing, February 2016), pp. 3–8.
3
Zhang Jianyu, ‘Suzhou Zaoqi Zhaidi Yuanlin Guanxi Kao 苏州早期宅地园林之宅园关系’, in ‘Suzhou Zaoqi
Zhaidi Yuanlin Guanxi Kao 苏州早期宅地园林之宅园关系’ (Beijing, 2007), pp. 95–109.
4
Sapir, Edward., Language: An introduction to the study of speech. (Boston, 1955), sec. 1.
5
Lawson, Bryan, Language of Space (Jordan Hill, 2001).
3
Since the purpose of my research is to rediscover the relationship between women and gardens
during the Ming and Qing dynasties, I raise the following research questions: What kind of
influence women could have on gardens? Whether there is a relationship between gardens and the
rise of poetess in Ming and Qing dynasties？
My hypothesis is although gardens were mainly men’s space in Ming and Qing dynasties, women
could enter gardens under certain circumstances and influence the location and design of gardens,
making the gardens more possible for them to enter and enjoy; the space of gardens enriched the
emotion of women and encouraged them to write poems, the trend of constructing gardens during
this period contributes to the emergence of talented women.
1.1 Sources and method:
Although China's economy has developed enormously in recent years, the cost of such
development has been the demolition of a large number of ancient buildings, and the few that
remain have been ruined by the government's neglect of culture. With the gradual improvement of
people's material living standard in Jiangnan region, people's demand for culture is also increasing,
and governments of each city are rediscovering their local cultural characteristics. As a cultural
business card of the Jiangnan region, gardens can tell the past social life stories to this country and
the rest of the world. In the restoration of the garden, sources governments rely on are mostly male
scholars’ notes of their garden construction, which seldom refer to the influence of women, and
makes people believe that ancient gardens were male space. Researches about gardens are always
carried out under the perspective of male scholars’ activities,6 or according to Chinese culture and
philosophy,7 which systems were founded entirely by male scholars.
It is almost inevitable to study the garden as a male space if scholars' notes and theories of garden
construction, their paintings and poems are still used as the main research materials. In order to
ensure that their works are elegant and professional, serious literati try to avoid the appearance of
women in their works. Therefore, in order to reproduce the scenes of women's daily life in the
garden, it will be necessary to rely more on the works of those literati who were regarded as talented
and dissipated at the same time.
6
Xu Mei, ‘Mingqing Suzhou Wenren Yuanlin de Jiangou Yu Zhuanxing 明清苏州文人园林的建构与转型—
—以士大夫交友活动为视角’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, Fudan University, June 2013); Zhong Shujuan 钟
淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州园林图示中文人活
动空间研究’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation, Huazhong Agricultural University, June 2016).
7
Cao Lindi, Jingdu Yuanlin 静读园林 (Beijing, June 2006); Gao Jie, ‘Mingdai Zhongwanqi Suzhou Sijia
yuanlin Jianzhu Buju Yanjiu 明代中晚期苏州私家园林建筑布局研究’ (Master’s Degree Dissertation,
Huazhong Agricultural University, June 2011).
4
Talented men like Li Yu (1611-1680), Yuan Mei (1716-1797), Shen Fu (1763-1832) and so on
were degraded by their intimate relationship with women, and mention too much about women in
their works. But it is also because of this that their work can be a good study of women's history.
Li Yu was a famous writer in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, but his character was
criticized by other scholars because he was engaged in business in addition to being a scholar. His
most famous work is the Record of Leisure Feelings (Xianqing Ouji), in this book, he used eight chapters
to discusses all aspects of daily life, including opera, singing and dancing, women's appearance and
behavior, gardens and architecture, art, diet, flowers, and health. This book can be a very good
source to study aesthetic theory and people’s requirements of women and gardens at that time.
Yuan Mei’s book Notes on Poetry from Sui Garden (Suiyuan Shihua) provides more examples to
support the abstract aesthetic theory and the requirement of Li. Yuan Mei is famous for his talent
at writing poems and was regarded as the leader of poetry circle of that time. He praised women’s
talent at writing poems and even took many female poets as his disciples. In this book, he collected
many talented women's poems and recorded their life stories, his book made many women's voices
heard by people then and later, while a large number of female poems were lost because they were
not valued. In addition, his selection and evaluation of the poems written by talented women would
not change with the status of women. As women often recorded their daily lives in their poems, it
enabled people to have a more comprehensive understanding of the lives of women of different
ages and classes at that time.
Although Shen Fu's literary achievements were far from those of the two scholars mentioned
earlier, his book Six Records of a Floating Life (Fusheng Liuji) was not appreciated and was not
published in his lifetime, this autobiographical work had a profound impact on later generations,
all of whom were moved by the love he recorded with his wife. Shen Fu's works restore the real-
life scenes of husband and wife, recording many details of his wife's daily life. At that time, only
the life scenes of prostitutes were recorded, and recording the life of a gentlewoman was considered
a breach of Li. From his book, we can understand specifically the free boundary of women and the
interaction between women and gardens.
Although these authors are all supposed to be close to women, they are not women per se, and
they document women in the eyes of men. In addition to searching for female figures in the works
of male writers, the poetry collections of female poets can more objectively find out the inner
activities of women, how they view the restrictions on women by ethics, their expectations of their
own free boundaries, and their views on gardens. I mainly refer to Oriole’s Sing (Lichui Ji) by Shen
Yixiu (1590-1653), and The Collection of Polite Poems Written by Gentlewomen in Qing Dynasty (Guochao
Guixiu Zhengshiji) compiled by Wanyan Yunzhu (1771-1833) in the late Qing dynasty.
5
Oriole’s Sing was written by Shen Yixiu and compiled by her husband Ye Shaoyuan (1589-1648)
in 1636, and collected in the Collection of Wumeng Hall (Wumeng Tang Ji).8 This collection of poems is
a record of Shen Yixiu's daily life and her own feelings, it can reflect the life of talanted women in
the late Ming dynasty. Shen Yixiu was born in a scholarly family, and there were nine Jinshi9 in her
family, the family had a strong literary atmosphere. At the age of 16, she married Ye Shaoyuan, also
a member of a prominent local family, with seven Jinshi from his family.10 Ye Shaoyuan believes
that his wife's talent is even higher than his own. Although her early life was very happy, her life
since her marriage was full of sadness. Her mother-in-law forbade her to write poetry, and was very
strict with her, and in order to meet the needs of Li, she was very tolerant of her mother-in-law,
suffered a lot of anger. Although her husband encouraged her to write poetry and tried to protect
her, her life became less pleasant when he left home. In her middle age, two daughters and a son
died of illness, and made her devastating, so her poems are often tinged with sadness in this
period.11
Although Oriole's Sing is the representative work of a talented woman in Ming dynasty, it only
records the life of one poetess, single situation may not be enough to explain the overall situation.
In order to show a more comprehensive life and ideological world of talented women, I will also
refer to The Collection of Polite Poems Written by Gentlewomen in Qing Dynasty. It contains more than
1,700 poems from over 900 female poets, the volume is huge and comprehensive. The
disadvantage is that this high-born editor deleted most of the excellent works written by such
people as courtesans and nuns, because the editor believed these people did not deserve to be
called gentlewomen and their works were not classy.12
Whether it is the work of Shen Yixiu alone or the collection of 900 female poets compiled by
Yunzhu, they all have one shortcoming in common: their poetry is easy to be stereotypical, the
objects described and the emotions expressed are very similar, full of melancholy. If you hide the
women's names, you sometimes can't tell the difference between the poems written by different
poetesses. This may be because women are required to conform to the same rule of Li, receiving
same education and having similar living environment, but such similarity also allows us to better
depict the image of women in the past. In order to avoid a lot of repetition, I will try to choose the
representative poems as the analysis object.
Another kind of material I turn to is painting: paintings of beauty and painting of city. Before
Tang and Song dynasties, female paintings had a transformation. Before Seventh century, women
in paintings always appeared as goddesses, and these paintings were endowed with high value.
8
The collection of Wumeng Hall not just include Shen Yixiu’s work, but also her three daughters’ poem
collections.
9
Jinshi is a successful candidate in the highest imperial examinations.
10
Ye Shaoyuan was also a Jinshi.
11
Ye Shaoyuan, WuMeng Tang Ji 午梦堂集 (Beijing, January 2015).
12
Yun Zhu, Guochao Guixiu zhengshi Ji 国朝闺秀正始集 (20+1+1+1 vols, 1831) preface 5a.
6
However, since the Tang dynasty, landscape painting had replaced beauty painting as a medium for
literati to express their noble moral character, and the painting of ladies had gradually changed
from a work of art to a commodity.13
Since the Ming dynasty, the beauty painting became a popular visual object of consumption. The
commodity status greatly increased the number of beauty paintings, and they appeared in different
lengths and subjects, with the background of beauty painting always been the garden.14 Through
the beauty paintings painted by the most famous painters in the Ming and Qing dynasties, we can
have a more intuitive understanding of the activities of women in the garden, and how men, as
creators, imagine the relationship between women and gardens. The second kind of painting
material I use is city painting, and the main reference object is Suzhou’s Golden Age (Suzhou Fanhua
Tu) in Liaoning Provincial Museum. It was painted in 1759 by Xu Yang, a court painter in the Qing
dynasty, he used 24 years to finish this work. It is a long scroll depicting life in Suzhou city. The
scroll is more than 12 meters long, with more than 12,000 people and 2,000 houses in it. By
analyzing the characteristics of gardens and buildings and the distribution of women, we can see
the relationship between the residences and the gardens and the free boundary of women.
I will divide the thesis into three parts. I will build a cultural background frame in the first part.
I need first explain the question that under what circumstances could women enter gardens. I will
discuss the restrictions of Li15 on women in space and the relationship between gardens and women
when their freedom was restricted. I will take the mainstream Li books of the society at that time,
the works of male literati and the beauty paintings as the source of cultural background for context
analysis. Chinese society is run on the basis of Li and morality rather than law, and the Li that must
be followed constitute the framework of people's thinking and action. When we have a better
understanding of the social norms at that time, we can better understand the value orientation of
the male literati's description of the interaction between the garden and women in their works, and
the emotional attitude of women in their poem sentences. By comparing the actual behaviors of
women with the requirements of Li, we can find the influence of Li on women in reality.
The second part will discuss how the women as the actual users of the garden influence the
garden from the position, decoration and quantity. In the second part, I will make a qualitative
analysis of the notes of the literati and the paintings with the theme of gardens. Through the
content research on the part of literati's notes about women and gardens, this paper analyzes the
attitudes of men who hold the right of speech towards the relationship between gardens and
women, and how women passively influence gardens through men.
13
Wu Hong 巫鸿, Zhongguo Huihua Zhong De Nvxing Kongjian 中国绘画中的“女性空间” (Beijing, January
2019), pp. 235–236.
14
Wu Hong 巫鸿, Zhongguo Huihua Zhong De Nvxing Kongjian 中国绘画中的“女性空间”, pp. 331–333.
15
Li 礼 can be understood as ritual or rite, it is a series of codes of conduct formulated according to the
requirements of morality and rationality. It is used by the rulers to maintain their own rule and social stability,
and makes strict regulations on various aspects of social life such as hierarchy, family ethics and so on.
7
In the third part, I will discuss the influence of gardens on women's spiritual world and real life.
By analyzing the description of talented women in male literati works, we can find out their
comments on the group of female poets. Through the poetesses' own works to analyze how they
view the meaning of gardens.
The period I focus on is from Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty. The Ming dynasty was an era of
great economic, social and cultural changes in China. Although the Qing dynasty underwent a
dynastic change, the culture of the Qing dynasty basically inherited the Han culture of the Ming
dynasty and further developed the economy. There was no obvious fracture between the two
dynasties and it was suitable to study them as a whole.
1.2 Previous research
Researches about gardens are always focus on male scholars’ activities in the gardens and their
relationship with it.16 The study of the relationship between women and landscape architecture has
been neglected by scholars until recent years. Most of the research focused on this issue has been
short and shallow, with similar results. Scholars basically believe that although women had no right
to the garden, garden owners would arrange many places for women to spend their time in the
garden in order to make the female family happy, so women would still have a certain degree of
influence on the garden.
The influence of gardens on women was that they have relatively free activity space when they
are restricted in the internal space, and the landscape in the gardens became the material for women
to write poems. One of the more noteworthy articles is Discussion of The Effect That Classical Gardens
Act on Chinese Feminine Literature Li Guilian published in 2008. Through the analysis of the female
poets' lives and the historical materials about them, he found that before the Tang dynasty,
women's thoughts were severely oppressed, and the relatively open atmosphere of the Tang
dynasty led to the emergence of a small number of female poets. However, the code of Li in the
Song dynasty was further strict, so that female poets in the Song dynasty were rare. Although the
requirement of Li in Ming dynasty was stricter than that in Song dynasty, female poets began to
appear in large numbers due to the trend of ideological liberation in late Ming dynasty. The author
finds that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the free space for women's activities was basically limited
to their own gardens, which became the space for women's spiritual activities, as well as the space
for female poets to write poems and exchange works.17
16
Xu Mei, ‘Mingqing Suzhou Wenren Yuanlin de Jiangou Yu Zhuanxing 明清苏州文人园林的建构与转型—
—以士大夫交友活动为视角’; Zhong Shujuan 钟淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren
Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州园林图示中文人活动空间研究’.
17
Li Guilian, ‘Shilun Yuanlin Dui Zhongguo Gudai Nvxing Wenxue De Yingxiang 试论园林对中国古代女性
文学的影响’, Mudanjiang Shifan Xueyuan Xuebao (August 2008), pp. 34–37.
8More research has focused on the influence of women on landscape design. Through beauty
painting and poetry study, the authors of Spatial Research Based on Women's Psychology and Behavior in
Chinese Ancient Private Gardens found that the deep and tortuous characteristics of Chinese gardens
came from the requirement that women should not be seen by others, which was different from
the previous research on gardens, which believed that the tortuous paths in gardens were to make
the space of gardens appear larger. They boldly put forward the idea that the spatial arrangement
of gardens is to constrain and discipline women, but the length of the article prevented the author
from making a thorough demonstration of this idea.18 More scholars believe that women have a
greater influence on the location and interior layout of Chinese gardens than they do on the fact
that women are responsible for the unique tortuous character of Chinese gardens.
Qiu Qiaoling and Li Haoyang conducted field inspection of the gardens and found that because
women were oppressed by the regulation of Li and could not go out, they became the main users
of their own gardens, which passively had an impact on the garden design. The main influence is
reflected in the location and entrance of the garden, they are designed in the living area of the
women's family. Many gardens have built a stage for women to enjoy the drama at home. The
benches everywhere in the garden are convenient for women with bounded feet.19
James Cahill, Huang Xiao and Liu Shanshan may have the opposite view of women's passive
influence on garden space. In their book Garden Paintings in Old China, authors try to recreate old
Chinese gardens that had disappeared in the long history with garden paintings, In chapter 3,
authors analyze women in gardens in detail, they try to find the relationship between women and
garden through many pictures of beauty in gardens. They believe that the garden at the back of the
house is dominated by women and is a feminine space. In consider of the location, these gardens
were mainly built for women rather than for men, thus they naturally have power over this space,
women who have the highest status at home are likely to have power to direct the design of the
garden.20
As for the activities of women in the garden, Research on The Activity Space of Suzhou Garden in
Ming Dynasty Based on The Garden Diagrams has a comprehensive analysis. Through the analysis of a
large number of garden paintings, Zhong Shujuan found that the garden paintings in the Ming
dynasty were more life-like than those in the previous generation, and the garden paintings with
female as the leading role were more common. In contrast to previous paintings in which women
were disciplined, women in the Ming dynasty often appeared in garden paintings in a similar
18
Wu Ruobing 吴若冰 and Du Yan 杜雁, ‘Zhongguo Gudai Sijia Yuanlin Nvxing XInli Ji Xingwei Kongjian
Tanxi 中国古代私家园林女性心理及行为空间探析’, Zhongguo Yuanlin, 34 (March 2018), pp. 81–86.
19
Qiu Qiaoling 邱巧玲 and Li Haoyang 李昊洋, ‘Shi Tan Zhongguo Gudai Nvxing Dui Sijia Yuanlin De
Yingxiang 试探中国古代女性对私家园林的影响’, Zhongguo Yuanlin, 29 (August 2013), pp. 40–44.
20
James Cahill, Huang Xiao 黄晓, and Liu Shanshan 刘珊珊, Buxiu De Linquan : Zhongguo Gudai Yuanlin
Huihua 不朽的林泉：中国古代园林绘画 (August 2012), sec. 3.
9manner to men. They sometimes read books, sometimes play the Guqin21, and appear in the garden
with an elegant attitude. On the one hand, it reflects that women became the masters of the garden
space. On the other hand, it also shows that the education of women in the Ming dynasty was
valued and women's artistic cultivation was constantly improved.22
Garden Gatherings and Women Groups focuses on elegant gathering in the garden and talented
women group. Huang Yiguan believes that the garden provided talented women with the creation
space to express their feelings towards nature, which promoted the development of the female
literature in the Qing dynasty. Gardens located in the corner of the private residences but had the
nature of public space, the duality of the garden allows women to interact with the outside world,
thus they could hold elegant gathering in the garden, expanded their social circle, even interacted
with male scholars directly. The author takes Yuan Mei and his female students as the main object
of analysis, and studies the creation space and social scope of female poets at that time by
combining their poems and articles. The author believes that in the Qing dynasty, women were
actively encouraged by male poets to receive education and create works, and they also
communicated with the outside world through male poets.23
21
Guqin is a popular stringed instrument in ancient China.
22
Zhong Shujuan 钟淑娟, ‘Mingdai Suzhou Yuanlin Tushi Zhong Wenren Huodong Kongjian Yanjiu 明代苏州
园林图示中文人活动空间研究’.
23
Huang Yiguan, ‘Yuanlin yaji yu guige shequn 园林雅集与闺阁社群’, Journal of Anhui
University(Philosophy and Social Sciences), 38 (March 2014), pp. 58–68.
102 Restricted female space
When communicating with other civilizations, Chinese always pride themselves on coming from a
state of Li. It can be said that the code of Li makes strict regulations on every aspect of social life.
If people’s behavior violates Li's requirements, they will receive moral condemnation, which will
seriously affect their future development and family harmony, it inevitably sets the mind and action
frame for the people who receive the education of Li.
The Book of Rites (Li Ji) can be regarded as a textbook of Li. According to this book, men should
stay outside while women should stay inside. In order to meet the requirement of separation of
men and women, it is necessary to distinguish between inside and outside when building a house.
In the house, middle door (Zhongmen) is the boundary dividing the internal and external, public
and private fields. The space division inside the building entity is relatively clear, but the garden
outside the building is more like a semi-public and semi-private space. Here, the boundary between
inside and outside begins to become blurred, which also gives women more possibilities to have
access to the outside world.
In imperial China, women's rights were restricted, one of which was reflected in their limited
living space. Although the saying "never go outside the house but stay at home all day"24 was used
to describe the ancient women who obey the rule of Li, in literary works, the figure of women
seems to be found in other places besides the home.
If we want to study the extent to which women can be influenced by garden space, we first need
to understand the question: can they often leave home and go outside? This determines how much
time they would spend in the garden. If their actual living space did not fully comply with the
requirements of Li, then the influence of limited garden space on them may not be noticeable,
because they would not devote enough time to the garden to cause an influence on it, and they
would not have the opportunity to let the garden space have an impact on them.
I will discuss this question in three parts in this chapter. The first part is about the middle door.
The limitation of social norms on women's space is viewed through the study of requirement of
Li. By discussing the orientation of the garden relative to the middle door to see whether women
can enter the garden. In the second part, I will look at the active space of women in real life through
the figures of women found in folklore ethnography, men's notes and poems. The third part looks
at the spatial boundary of female activities in social imagination through the beauty paintings
created by male painters.
24
Original text: “大门不出，二门不迈。”
112.1 Middle door as the separation of internal and external space:
The tradition to separate man and women can firstly be found in the Li book of the Eastern Han
Dynasty (25-220) called The Book of Rites (Li Ji):
Men don't talk about inner affairs, women don't talk about outer affairs…When a woman goes
out, she must cover her face and light a candle if it is night; otherwise she should not go out……A
strict distinction should be made between inside and outside when building a palace. The man
lives outside and the woman lives inside. There should have many gates and each guarded by
gatekeepers. Men do not enter the inner room, women do not enter the outside.25
In this explanation of Li’s rule on the relationship of men and women, we can find that men and
women in a family are required to avoid contact with each other as much as possible. In order to
achieve this goal, when building a residence, it is necessary to separate the inside and outside in
terms of space. Women need to be inside, and men need to be outside.
Although a woman is discouraged from going out of the door, she can still do so if she meets
certain conditions, such as covering her face and lighting a candle. The door is not the door to the
space outside the home, but the middle door that separates the inside from the outside inside their
residences.
The internal and external boundaries of the residences were known as middle door. The location
of middle door was not fixed, but in most cases, it located behind the main gate and front yard.
After the middle door is the central yard or the central hall, and then the back yard and east and
west yard.26 Women who strictly followed the rule of Li seldom came to the middle door.
The Book of Rites, considered one of the five classics, was the subject of imperial examinations
throughout the dynasties, and the influence of the separation requirements nominally continued
for more than a thousand years. But we can see that from the Song dynasty to the Ming dynasty,
there was some change in the social practice of Li. In the Song dynasty, gardens were considered
as external space, while from the Ming dynasty, gardens became an internal space that women
could enter.
Guo Tuan (lived around 1165) of Song dynasty recorded a supernatural event in his literary
sketch A Car Full of Ghosts (Kui Che Zhi), it is easy to find out how the structure of the residence
was in his story:
Wang Gai……has many maidservants and concubines, so in the evening, they always sleep with
their hall door locked. One night, an old maid seemed frightened in a nightmare, her voice was
weak at first, yelled for a long time. The other maidservants were roused, they looked around in
25
Original text: 《礼记·内则》“男不言内，女不言外…… 女子出门，必拥蔽其面，夜行以烛，无烛则
止。……礼，始于谨夫妇，为宫室，辨外内。男子居外，女子居内，深宫固门，阍寺守之。男不入，女
不出。”
26
Li Zhisheng, ‘Zhongmen He Zhongtang: Tangdai Zhuzhai Jianzhu Zhong De Funv Shenghuo Kongjian 中门
和中堂：唐代住宅建筑中的妇女生活空间’, Zhongguo Shehui Lishi Pinglun, 14 (2013), pp. 198–223.
12bed but couldn’t see her. The whole family was terrified and light the candle to find her around,
but they still couldn’t find her, so they unlocked the middle door and tried to find her outside. The
old nurse was found by the pool pavilion in the western of garden......there residence was
surrounded by walls and the middle gate was locked, so the inside and outside was separate, no
one knows how she got out.27
From this story, we can find that the garden in the Song dynasty should be regarded as the outer
space in the residence. Only when the middle door was opened, was it possible to enter the garden,
indicating that the location of the garden should be in the front of the residence. At first, they never
thought of opening the middle door to find the old maid, which meant that in the minds of the
people of the time, women were not allowed to leave the middle gate and enter the garden in
general. The story of the old maid being found in the garden was recorded in the author's book as
a mystery novel, it seems that it was widely believed that it was a strange thing and that women
should not and could not enter the garden without permission.
By the Ming dynasty, the middle gate was still regarded as the boundary of the inner space, but
some gardens were started to be regarded as inner space. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, a
talented woman surnamed Song wrote her thoughts on the wall of the postal kiosk: “Looking back
on the past life in the inner hall, my trip would not go out of the middle door. The warm sun shone
on the railings, the flowers fell and the birds sang in the garden.”28 The woman, surnamed Song, is
not a well-known figure, but it also means that the content of her poem can show more details of
ordinary people's daily life. In the poem, which is more than 800 words long, she tells the story of
her life. Her husband offended his colleagues because of his integrity, he was framed and convicted
by his colleagues, and starved to death in prison, then his wife Song was sent to the frontier as his
family. In the poem sentence listed above, she recalled the happy life in the past during the long
and painful journey. She could enjoy the sunshine, appreciate the flowers and listen to the birds in
the garden without leaving the middle door. In the poem, it can be seen that the women had no
resistance to not being able to go out of the middle door, but consider it as a symbol of a happy
life, because she can enjoy the garden space behind the middle gate.
The above example seems to show that from the Ming dynasty onwards, the garden was built
behind the middle gate. But such examples were not very common, and in the early Ming dynasty
there was still controversy over whether the garden belonged to the internal space or the external
space.
In the early Ming dynasty, Xu Yikui (1315-1400), a teacher from Hangzhou recorded a story of
a mother in the epitaph he wrote for her. The mother, surnamed Zou, move from Dengzhou (now
27
Original text: “王陔……其家婢妾颇众，夜则扃锁堂门而寝。一夕，有老乳婢梦中若惊魇，其声初甚
微，叫呼不醒者久之。婢辈惊起，就榻视之，则无见矣。举家惊骇，明烛四索，无所得，乃开扃，偏索
于外，得之西圃池亭之侧……其宅墙垣四周而中门扃锁，则不通内外，不知何从而出也。”Guo Tuan,
Kui Che Zhi 睽车志 (1985), p. 28.
28
Original text: ‘翻思昔日深闺内，远行不出中门外。融融日影上栏干，花落庭前鸟声碎。’Song Jinhua,
‘Ti Youting Bi Ge 题邮亭壁歌’ (Ming dynasty),.
13belongs to Shandong) in the north to Hangzhou in the south with her family. Hangzhou has
beautiful sceneries with mountains and lakes. In spring, both men and women liked to travel. Her
two sons wanted their mother to enjoy the same pleasure and they invited her to travel around the
city. Such invitation violated the internal and external rule she had always followed, so she lessened
them: “you are my sons, but you do not treat me with Li. I heard that women should not even visit
gardens in the daytime, how can I enjoy lakes and mountains in the distance?”29 Although garden
was a part of their house, she treat their garden as an external space, and believed women were not
allowed to enter. This might because in the early Ming period, the trend of constructing gardens
was not as popular as later on, the forms of garden were relatively simple, there was not many
gardens constructed behind the middle gate. But as we will see in next chapter, from the middle
and late Ming dynasty until the end of the Qing dynasty, gardens were not only in front of the
middle door of the home, but in many cases were built at the back of the home to facilitate the
access and use of female family members.
2.2 Rebellious Jiangnan woman
Compared with the previous dynasties, the requirements of Li in Ming and Qing dynasties were
also strict. However, in practice, especially among the more developed Jiangnan region, many
women do not follow such a code of Li, the phenomenon of going out was not uncommon. Before
quoting the mother’s criticism of her sons, the author mentioned the background that, both men
and women liked to travel in Spring.30 In recording her words that women should not go out to
enjoy the outer natural environment, and even should not enter the garden in her epitaph as the
highlight of her life, Xu was actually using the mother's words as a critique of every unruly young
daughter, it can be seen that the trend of women entering the gardens and going out for sightseeing
had arouse the vigilant of scholars.
The old lady’s view might not be consistent with people's thoughts in reality, but it should be in
line with the official requirements of Li. The author of the epitaph Xu Yikui participated in the
compilation of ritual books at the command of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming
dynasty, Xu’s views should be consistent with those of the court.31
This mother came from Dengzhou, Shandong, as the hometown of Confucius, the influence of
Confucianism is much greater in Shandong than in Hangzhou. In fact, since the Qin and Han
29
Original text: “尔为我子，乃独不能以礼事我。吾闻妇人昼不游庭，而可远适湖山，适逸乐耶？”Xu
Yikui, Qinding Siku Quanshu-Shi Feng Gao 钦定四库全书-始豐稿 9.
30
Original text: “方春時邦人士女競事游衍以為樂”Xu Yikui, Qinding Siku Quanshu-Shi Feng Gao 钦定四库
全书-始豐稿.
31
At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, emperor Zhu Yuanzhang paid great attention to the establishment of the
Li system. When the Han nation regained its dominant position, the Li system of the Han people needed to be re-
established to maintain his rule.
14dynasties, northern Chinese’s behavior had always been considered more correspond to the
requirement of Li than people from the south. Strictly observant northerners who come to the
more open south will naturally be impacted by different customs and ideas.
Not just Hangzhou, but the whole region of lower Yangtze river had a more open social climate.
In the folklore ethnography of Suzhou, in some solar terms, especially those in Spring and Autumn,
and other traditional festivals, both man and women would go out and get close to nature. 32
However, it is important to notice that such openness was only relative to other regions and periods,
and based on two premises: women keep themselves hidden, and the location needs to be public
and close to home.
2.2.1 Women need to hide themselves when going out:
Although it can be inferred from Zou's epitaph that it was not uncommon for women to go out in
Jiangnan region in the early Ming dynasty, which caused criticism from conservative people, there
were still restrictions on women's going out. The first point was to hide themselves and not let men
know the real identity of the uncivil girl.
Therefore, in the outer space, men and women needed to act separately and not have close
contact with each other. In order to practice the requirements of Li, a woman needed to be
accompanied by female elders or men to go out, which was on the one hand a kind of protection,
to protect her from being molested by the loafer man, on the other hand, was also a kind of
surveillance, to prevent the woman from any improper behavior.
We can see from the poems of male poets how cautious women were when they went out. Yuan
Mei (1716-1797) included the poems of Yang Ciye about the view Yang Ciye saw when he traveled
in the West Lake in Yuan Mei’s work Notes on Poetry from Sui Garden (Suiyuan Shihua):
The old maidservant took the lead, her mother walked last, and the young lady was in the
middle…Keep her own trail hidden and alert, the sedan chair made of wisteria has green eaves.
But the breeze was hard to guard against, and it always lifted the curtains of sedan chairs in
crowded places.33
In this poem, the poet describes a young girl who goes out in a sedan chair. Her figure is covered
by curtain of the chair, and her mother and old maid try to prevent others from coming into contact
with her. It can be seen that women take this matter very seriously, because the lady is likely to be
criticized on if she is recognized and thought to be indecorum. But Yang thinks that no matter
32
Gu Lu, Qingjia Lu 清嘉录 (1986); Yuan Jinglan, wujun Suihua Jili 吴郡岁华纪丽 (Nanjing, 1998); Zhang
Dai, Taoan Mengyi 陶庵梦忆 (Beijing, 2017).
33
Original text: 《西湖竹枝》“老婢当头娘押尾，垂髫娇女在中间”“悄密行踪自戒严，朱藤轿子绿垂檐。
轻风毕竟南防备，故拣人丛揭轿帘。”Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话 (December 2009), pp. 86–87.
15how careful you are, as long as you young women come out, there will always be times when you
can't take precautions, even the naughty wind may make the preparation of women fall short.
Another poet, Chen Mengxing, who wrote a poem while visiting a scenery spot in Yangzhou
called Hongqiao, said that not only the body could not be seen, but more importantly, the name
could not be known: “Please do not whisper the name of the flowers, the person behind the curtain
will not let others know her nickname.”34 At that time, the name of the woman was often the same
as the name of the flower, if the woman misunderstood others was to call themselves and promised,
then her real identity would be known. It can be speculated that women at that time would not let
each other call their real names when they went out. These two poems show how much attention
it needs to be taken for a woman to go out.
For women, traveling could be a dangerous behavior, there were many places to pay attention
to, an oversight could cause irreparable damage to their reputation, but the desire for natural
scenery and freedom made them willing to venture out.
2.2.2 Only go to local and public spots:
In addition, women could only go to public scenic spots close to home. In the semi-public and
semi-private space like others’ gardens, there were more aspects to consider and more restrictions.
When the garden was predominantly male, women were not allowed to enter the garden,
whether it was private or public. Shen Fu (1763-1832) once attended a very interesting gathering.
He and some friends arranged flowers, sang songs, and played musical instruments in the garden.
When he went back home and told his wife Yun about the experience, Yun sighed: "It's a pity I'm
not a man, so I can't go."35 This was not because Yun as a woman could not enter gardens, for
many times, her husband visited gardens with her: In Spring, after they visited the grave, they visited
a public garden called Ge garden with her husband sister; in Mid-Autumn Festival, they and another
sister of Shen Fu visited their neighbour garden called Canglang Pavilion and asked the guard to
keep other guests out.36 Yun said she couldn't go because when the garden was used by men to
hold the gathering, it became a space belonging to men. According to the requirements of Li,
women should not enter such a male space.
Aside from the requirement for the nature of space, the distance was also important. Although
women's long-distance travel cannot be said to be completely non-existent, they must have proper
excuses and be accompanied by a male family member, such as a male family member who travelled
for business or went to be an official in another place. No matter how much men loved their female
34
Original Text: 《虹桥竹枝》"梨红杏白休轻唤，帘底防人认小名。" Yuan Mei, Suiyuan Shihua 随园诗话,
pp. 86–87.
35
Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记 (Renming Wenxue Chubanshe, 2010), 16.
36
Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记 (April 2010), pp. 10–12.
16family members, and were willing to challenge the rule of Li for them, men needed to consider the
inconvenience women had when they went out. On the one hand, they cannot be seen by outsiders,
on the other hand their bounded feet make them difficult to walk or ride a horse, so can only sit in
the sedan chair, which greatly slow down the speed of a journey.
Besides his talent of writing, Shen Fu was also famous for loving his wife. They lived in Suzhou,
When Shen Fu was going to pay homage to his deceased friend in their neighbour city Wujiang,
Yun asked if she could go together because she wanted to view the Taihu Lake on the way. Shen
Fu agreed, and Yun pretended that she was going back to her parents’ home in order to go with
her husband. After visiting Taihu, Yun sighed: “Is this what people call Taihu? I see the vastness
of the world today, then my life is not meaningless! Think how many ladies in the inner hall can
never see such view throughout their lives!”37 She was lucky to have a husband who was willing to
accompany his wife on a tour of the garden, and also willing to take his wife on a long trip to visit
the great rivers and mountains, but how many women's misfortunes were implied by her fortune?
2.3 Beauty in painting: chaste woman in fantasy:
Their high demand for keeping oneself hidden, rather than just not interacting with men, may
because it prevented women from being confused with courtesans who don’t usually care about
internal or external separation.
Courtesans were more common in gardens than gentle women. When scholars held activities
in the gardens, they always invited courtesans to join them. From a record of local chronicles of
Jiangnan during the Qianlong period (1736-1795) “Jiangnan people like to travel…because they
like to travel, their landscape gardens and pavilions are more than other regions…when they travel,
they choose to go with courtesans, who can sing and dance and are beautiful.”38 Many literati
choose to go with courtesans because they believe that the talent of courtesans was much higher
than that of ignorant gentle women who seldom leave their residence, so it was an interesting and
elegant thing to bring courtesans to join their elegant gatherings.39
37
Shen Fu, Fusheng Liuji 浮生六记, p. 18.
38
Original text: ‘吴人好游……游地则山水园亭多于他郡……游伴则选伎声歌，尽态极妍。’Wu renshu,
Shechi De Nvren 奢侈的女人 (August 2016), p. 98.
39
In Zhang Xuecheng’s famous article The Study of Women (Fu Xue), after belittling the works of good women
for their lack of substance and these women had limited talent, he expressed his belief that the truly talented
women of today were the courtesans who spend their days with the literati exchanging ideas and reciting poems,
they were both intellectual and emotional.
17Figure 1: Portrait of Kou Mei. Figure 2: Red Landscape Self Portrait
Painter: Fan Qi, Wu Hong. Painter: Xiang Shengmo
1651. 1644
Nanjing Museum, Nanjing.
Courtesans would even take the initiative to build gardens to attract literati to associate with
them, and they would write poems and draw pictures in the gardens. For instance, in late Ming and
early Qing dynasties, Kou Mei (1624-?), who used to be the most famous courtesan of Nanjing,
“built gardens, invited guests, and interacted with the literati every day.”40 Courtesans did not care
about the nature of the space and the internal and external boundaries. Kou Mei once asked two
painters to paint a portrait of herself in her garden (Figure 1). From this painting, we can see that
Kou Mei is located in the natural landscape, and the boundary of the private garden cannot be seen
in the picture. This arrangement is very rare in female garden paintings, and are usually seen in the
paintings with male scholars as the main characters, such as the self-portrait made by Xiang
Shengmo (1579-1658) for himself (Figure 2). Xiang Shengmo's self-portrait is a very typical literati
painting. The literati were supposed to indulge in the landscape, so unless the subject was a male
figure painting in a private garden, there was usually no railing to symbolize the private garden.
The two are very similar. The most obvious difference is that in Kou Mei's portraits, the
characters' subjects are painted in a very ethereal manner, contrasting with the surrounding trees
and stones. The figure of Kou Mei is depicted with traditional Chinese line drawing method to
40
From the preface of Portrait of Kou Mei.
18show that she is thin and quiet. she raised one hand as if to hide her face. The background of the
painting was a tall, inky tree, against which the figures looked very small, highlighting the weakness
of the woman. In Xiang Shengmo's self-portraits, the characters are depicted in black, which is
different from the red background, highlighting the characters themselves rather than the
surrounding environment. This is because men have always been the masters of space. According
to Zhan Zhenpeng's research, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, male painters often placed
courtesans in an open space without railings in the paintings.41
In the beauty paintings, we can find that the women of good character are tacitly located in the
private garden rather than outside, and the women who can care as less about the internal and
external boundaries as the men are courtesans. Gentle women may worry that they might be
mistaken for a courtesan if they want to visit an external space like a garden. After all, such examples
were not non-existent. In Notes of Lv Gardens (Lvyuan Conghua), Qian Yong recorded a
misunderstanding happened in Yongzheng period (1723-1735). There was a salt merchant in
Guangling (now belongs to Yangzhou, Jiangsu province) who had a very beautiful daughter. Once,
while visiting Pingshan Hall (belongs to Daming Temple), she met a local official, who was drunk,
mistaking this lady for a courtesan, and beat her indiscriminately. 42 The official made such a
ridiculous mistake because he was drunk, but at the same time, this beautiful woman did not do
anything out of line, just because she was in a temple garden43, she was mistaken for a courtesan,
so it can be seen that the association between courtesans and the garden is a subconscious reaction
of people at that time. Since women couldn’t resist the temptation to go out and play, in order to
protect themselves, they at least needed to hide themselves and shape themselves as polite women
to avoid misunderstandings.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, beauty painting had become a best seller, the most common
form was to paint a lady in the garden and surrounded with flowers, trees and other natural
elements. From plenty of beauty paintings, we can see that when depicting gentle women in the
garden, painters usually explicitly place a railing in the painting to show that the women have not
crossed the border. If the railing is not placed in the painting, stones, trees and flowers are likely to
appear in the external natural environment, which may mislead the viewer into thinking that the
woman is not staying politely in the private garden.
41
Zhan Zhenpeng, ‘Fan Qi, Wu Hong Hezuo Taolun 樊圻、吴宏合作《寇湄像》讨论’,
Gugong Bowuyuan Yuankan (2017), pp. 56–70.
42
Qian yong, Lvyuan Conghua 履园丛话 (December 1997), p. 466.
43
The main forms of Chinese gardens are royal gardens, private gardens and temple gardens. Royal gardens are
mainly seen in Beijing. As royal gardens need to reflect the royal power and class order, the structure of royal
gardens is relatively single compared with other two kinds of gardens. Private gardens and temple gardens are
often interchangeable. The root of their similarity comes from the suppression of the royal power on religion.
Religion can never surpass the position of the royal power in the hearts of the common people. Buddhism and
Taoism are secularized, and integrate with Confucianism. In this case, religious architecture is not very different
from folk architecture. When a garden is used by Buddhism or Taoism, it is a temple garden, when it is bought
by a scholar or businessman, it is a private garden.
19Lv Tong’s most famous painting called Read in the Shadow of the Banana Tree (Jiaoyin Dushu Tu)
(Figure 3) depicts a lady reading a book outside. The artificial hill and banana tree often appear in
Figure 3: Read in the Shadow Figure 4: Beautiful Woman Figure 5: Beautiful Woman
of the Banana Tree Under a Banana Tree Painter: Under a Banana Tree Painter:
Painter: Lv Tong Gai Qi Sha Fu
Qing dynasty 1819 1894
Academy of Arts & Design, Tokyo National Museum, The Palace Museum, Beijing.
Tsinghua University, Beijing. Tokyo.
the garden, and these two sceneries are restricted by the railing in a space, we can infer that the
woman is in the private garden in her house. She leans on the rockery, is reading a book. Perhaps
it is because she is reading something miserable, or because she is thinking of something uneasy,
that she looks sad. In this painting, we can easily distinguish the boundary of the garden. The
painter frames the boundary of the garden almost in the middle of the painting with a railing. It
cuts the picture into two parts in the middle of the painting, and the upper part is the endless
outside world. The tall and vigorous banana tree fills the empty feeling of the picture and also make
the two parts connected.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, beauty painting became a commodity rather than a work of art.
Whether it is the female posture, appearance or landscape as the background of the painting, all
show similar characteristics. For example, the painting of beautiful women created by Gai Qi and
20You can also read
