Guyi Garden in Nanxiang, Jiading of Shanghai

Like it or not, I was sure to see the Guyi Garden after all these years wishing to check this place out.

To me, this charm has gone mostly unnoticed at the near north from central city since few talked about it or even sensed its long existence. With the newly inaugurated metro now serving Nanxiang town and within several minutes of easy strolling, I finally made my move but in the rain on weekend.

It began to drizzle when I was on the way out to catch the Metro Line 2 and later changing to Line 7 north to the Nanxiang station in Jiading District. When exiting the metro station, it started to rain lightly. By the time arriving at the entrance of the Guyi Garden, it started to rain heavily.

This was supposed to be a garden dating back several hundreds years during Ming Dynasty. The site remains while legends were being scripted and history lives on.

Erected upright in a smaller pond, a large stone tablet with poetic lines on it depicts the origin of the town Nanxiang, literally ‘flying southwards’. Legend reveals that a crane had taken off and gone southward.

It is a rather big garden generously sprinkled with variable wide, open and enclosed, secluded niches to explore all over. Centrally located or in a reclusive areas, spacious green plateau or in gentle mount with gazebo or pergola, there are also large and small ponds, and shorter trees grown in between taller ones while these trees dominate over the lower shrubs below. This is how green the garden could be. At this time of summer, ponds were largely filled with water lilies and many other species of plant types.

Despite rain, there were already quite a number of visitors in the garden and those invariably streaming into the garden. Although visitors were found here and there, the garden maintained its unassuming solitary and solitude nature.

The entrance fee at Guyi Garden was an affordable RMB12. It is worth the visit for this amount and even during rainy days. With the rain, the garden seemed to more exude or extrude its intrinsic natural charm. The rain sprinkled and inspired much poetic mood onto the garden. The garden took on a very melodramatic ambience.

To explicate the title, in its hierarchical sense: Nanxiang is a township; Jiading is a district; and Shanghai is a city; hence, Guyi Garden is located in Nanxiang of Jiading District, Shanghai.

Jeremy

Shanghai upon the Sea

July 11, 2010

Fenestrations of Guyi Garden, Nanxiang

Fenestration is generally the window and door openings, an arch way or a structural entrance piece. Looking at the pictorial ensemble of fenestration, there are not less than some fifteen variable types of fenestration.

Some built together with intricate lattice work, many of these fenestrations found in the Guyi Garden derived directly from the everyday objects, symbols and images; inclusively vase, a fan, a gourd, a ruyi plaything, cumulus cloud, and geometrical shapes.

Fenestration serves as a physical or visual opening from an area to another; it is a view to another world beyond. It demarcates a context from here and there, a transitional setting. Fenestration can be ceremonial or casual, formal or informal, large or subliminal, central or secluded in location and position.

The variety of fenestration reflects an artistic or décor expression in appreciation of nature. Nature inherently tends towards irregular and curvilinear form. Due to its garden nature, the fenestration of Guyi Garden is a direct derivative of the organic environment.

Jeremy
Shanghai upon the Sea
July 11, 2010