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Unnatural experiences
By Anna Greenspan and Nick Land
Shanghai Star. 2004-04-08
The ancient Chinese town of Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province, draws millions
of visitors every year. They flock particularly to its famous West Lake (Xihu),
which is widely praised as one of China's foremost sites of "natural beauty".
As with fellow "heaven on earth" Suzhou, in neighbouring Jiangsu Province,
Western visitors to Hangzhou tend to mix appreciation with concerns about
the threat posed by development. Superficially, such apprehensions are
directed at the encroaching cranes, skyscrapers and traffic, but closer
attention to Xihu reveals an unsettling infusion of culture into nature that goes
far deeper and wider than this.
One quite surreal example is encountered in the area where the downtown
core meets the lake. Walking by the waterfront, visitors realize that their
strolls have acquired musical accompaniment. Suddenly, they are
surrounded by ambient "muzak" or "elevator music" - typically consisting of
tunes once popular in the West, now stripped of vocals and instrumental
specificity (and interrupted by the occasional public announcement). This is
produced by a complex sound system distributed throughout the park. It
seems that every tree has been wired with speakers, lights and other
multimedia devices. Depending upon cultural expectations, immersion in this
artificial acoustic space is experienced either as a soothing environmental
enhancement or a horrifying psychic intrusion.
After leaving the urban fringe by boat, to visit the lake's many renowned
scenic spots, the encounter with "natural beauty" becomes even more
ambiguous. For instance, on the island site of the "Three Pools Mirroring the
Moon" even a casual observer may notice something slightly odd about some
of the trees. It takes careful inspection, however, to expose the fact that those
trunks which have begun to age in an unacceptable way have been repaired
with cement, painstakingly sculpted into a simulation of bark. Foreign visitors
are likely to be baffled by this degree of illusionism, finding it both pointless
and bizarre.
Sacred domain
Westerners seeking to overcome such feelings of incomprehension and
cultural vertigo would do well to question some of their own deeply rooted
assumptions about nature. In particular, the notion that nature is in its ideal
state wild, "unspoilt", or opposed to cultural manipulation, is no less worthy of
close attention than the artificial trees it disdains. While the conceptual
opposition of nature to culture has long held a profound importance in the
West, it is the influence of Romanticism that has most dramatically
consolidated such thinking. Narrowly conceived, Romanticism was a
predominantly European artistic movement of limited duration (from roughly
the late-18th to mid-19th century) arising in reaction to Enlightenment
rationalism and "artificiality". The romantics idealized nature as a sublime
power dwarfing human efforts and aspirations, embodying a moral and
spiritual purity associated with religious feeling. When the human world
intruded in this sacred domain it was only as a solitary awe-struck wanderer,
a lonely hero encountering nothing crafted by his fellows - except
depopulated edifices devastated into ruins.
Poetic apprehension
Beyond the wilder fringes of the environmental movement, such ideas might
seem excessive today, but the broader romantic myth of nature - as
something properly outside the realm of human influences - has deeply
ingrained itself into the unconscious of the West. Among Chinese, however,
this "myth of nature" - although echoing certain Taoist themes - scarcely
exists. After all, it makes little sense in China's densely populated landscape,
where every patch of earth has been intensely worked-over during 5,000
years of history.
The extent to which culture and nature are seen as "naturally" interwoven is
indicated by the commonly heard cry of appreciation: "It looks just like a
scene from a traditional Chinese painting!" Westerners might understand
such an exclamation as implying a largely one-way process, with the painter
drawing inspiration from a natural scene, leaving it essentially unchanged.
But in China the relationship between artist and landscape is far more
reciprocal. A history of artistic attention is perceived as enhancing the scene
itself, rather than merely reporting it. Especially treasured views are allotted
poetic names, often bearing carefully placed literary inscriptions. Poetic
apprehension has been sedimented into the very fabric of each place, with
the names of famous sights typically specifying perspectives, times of day or
seasons, even weather conditions, for instance: "Autumn Moon on Calm
Lake", "Spring Dawn at Sudi Causeway", "Evening Bell at Nanping Hill" or
"Lotus in the Breeze at Crooked Courtyard".
In the Chinese cultural context, the proper "capturing" of an experience is
intrinsic to the experience itself. This helps to account for the remarkable
popularity of photography in the country, with the typical picture composed so
as to place the visitor firmly and unapologetically in the landscape. Where
Western photographs quite often depict the scene itself, with minimal human
presence, their Chinese equivalents are far more likely to emphasize the fact
that the site in question has been visited, inhabited and enjoyed.
Cultivated environment
For Chinese, as for pre-romantic Europeans, the perfected state of nature is
not a desolate wilderness, but rather a garden. Nature is improved and
enhanced by cultivation, not contaminated or degraded by it.
The Chinese garden is built by guiding nature, bringing out its hidden powers
by dramatizing the tensions and harmonies of yin and yang, flow and
structure, water and stone. The elements contributing to the garden are
evaluated not only according to their intrinsic aesthetic merit, but also with
regard to principles of resemblance and symbolism, evoking mountain ranges
and other wild panoramas. Carefully chosen rocks are collected and
displayed as sculptures, in such a way as to reveal the inherent artistic
powers of nature and time.
No less important than this process of selection is the direct insertion of manmade constructions. Where romantics sought to conceal the artificiality of
their gardens, Chinese gardens celebrate the mutual involvement of nature
and culture, with bridges crossing streams, pagodas emerging from bamboo
thickets and calligraphy decorating ornamental stones. The human element is
integral to the garden, which is made for its visitors and organized in terms of
the paths that traverse it.
Throughout the world, the human impact on nature has been so prolonged
and penetrating that historians, archaeologists and ecologists have long
abandoned any belief in "virgin wilderness". Before urbanization, even before
settled agriculture, the hunting patterns of the earth's dominant predator had
long since changed entire eco-systems beyond recognition. The question is
not whether nature is to remain "untouched", but only whether it is to be well
cared-for.
In the grand sweep of history it is the romantic "myth of nature" that will seem
like a fleeting illusion. Westerner's perplexed by the artificiality of Hangzhou's
dredged, diked and manipulated Xihu need only recall their own foundational
myths. According to the Biblical book of Genesis, when humans first
appeared on earth they did not find themselves lost in untended wilderness,
but rather at home in an already cultivated environment designed for their
appreciation - the Garden of Eden.
Copyright by Shanghai Star.