A landscape design institute in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu
Province, is to send a delegation of experts to help build the
largest overseas Chinese garden next month in the United
States.
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 carry out
decoration and sculpturing.
The group from Suzhou, a city known for its beautiful gardens,
were 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.
"The craftsmen all obtained their cultural exchange visas
earlier this month and are preparing to begin their journey," said
Lu.
In order to use the most authentic Suzhou craftsmanship for the
garden, the materials needed, including 650-ton lake stones and
thousands of pieces of wood and stone sculptures, were 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 to provide an authentic flavor.
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 to reflect
the different periods of the year: peach trees for spring, lotus
for summer, osmanthus for autumn and plum blossoms for winter.
"At its completion, 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 programme, but they reversed their
decision in January after appeals from the Huntington side.
"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, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens,
was quoted by AFP as saying.
(China Daily February 14, 2006)
