A Chinese garden, named Liu Fang Yuan or Flowing Fragrance, was
formally opened to the public Saturday after many years of
work.
The garden, located on the grounds of the Huntington Library in
Los Angeles, brings one of the largest classical Chinese gardens
outside China to Southern California.
"The garden is a magnificent window that the people of
California now have into the Chinese culture, which doesn't exist
anywhere else," Huntington board chairman Stewart R. Smith said at
an invitation-only event for hundreds of dignitaries, donors and
supporters.
The garden's 18.3-million-dollar first phase was powered by a
landmark partnership between the Huntington and the region's
fast-growing and increasingly influential Chinese American
community.
The Huntington Library, long seen as a staid and largely Euro
centric institution, recognized that ethnic Chinese were rapidly
changing the neighborhood -- and the world -- and sought the ethnic
community's help in bringing a 20-year garden vision to fruition,
according to Suzy Moser, the library's assistant vice president for
advancement.
"The garden is a way the Huntington can throw open its doors to
an increasingly Chinese neighborhood and an increasingly Chinese
world," she said.
The placid garden links botany with poetry and a scattered
ethnic community with the elegant grandeur of its ancient
civilization.
Reflecting both East and West, the garden's first phase includes
a 1.5-acre lake, seven pavilions, five hand-carved stone bridges
and a canyon waterfall set against a scenic backdrop of the San
Gabriel mountains.
The garden contains more than 70 plant types, including
indigenous California live oaks and pines, and native Chinese trees
and plants, including weeping willows and several flowering
trees.
(Xinhua News Agency February 18, 2008)
