A landscape design institute in Suzhou,
Jiangsu Province, is to send a delegation of craftsmen to the
US next month to help cultivate the largest overseas Chinese
garden.
The project at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and
Botanical Gardens, east of Los Angeles, got under way in early
2004.
US workers are responsible for the concrete part of the
traditional garden, while Chinese craftsmen will do the decorating
and sculpting.
The group from Suzhou, a city known for its beautiful gardens,
was invited by project leaders to help finish the first phase of
the 12-acre garden, including the decoration of a man-made lake and
its surrounding areas, according to Lu Hongren, a general engineer
at Suzhou Landscape Architecture and Design Institute.
For authenticity's sake, even the materials needed have to be
carefully chosen. The craftsmen will use 650-ton lake stones and
thousands of pieces of wood and stone sculptures chiseled in Suzhou
and sent to the US in 52 containers last month.
The craftsmen plan to spend 10 weeks assembling the pieces
around the man-made lake at the site, Lu said.
According to Xie Aihua, chief designer with the institute, all
the scenes in the Chinese garden will be given idyllic Chinese
names for full effect.
The site will encompass four gardens named after the four
seasons, and five special collection gardens, which will all be
linked by pavilions and winding pathways.
Each of the four seasonal gardens will have plants that reflect
the different periods of the year: peach trees for spring, lotus
for summer, osmanthus for autumn, and plum blossoms for winter.
"When it's completed, the Huntington Chinese Garden will be the
largest classical Chinese garden outside of China," according to
June Li, curator of the garden.
US immigration officials initially denied visas to the Suzhou
designers last September because they did not consider the project
an important cultural exchange program, but they reversed their
decision in January after appeals from Huntington.
"We would have had to halt the project if we couldn't get the
skilled Suzhou workers here, because we didn't want to sacrifice
the structures' authentic craftsmanship," Steven Koblik, president
of the Huntington Library, was quoted by AFP as saying.
"The craftsmen all obtained their cultural exchange visas
earlier this month and are preparing to begin their journey," Lu
said.
(China Daily February 14, 2006)