China gardens have a history of more than 3,000 years since they appeared in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties. It is one of the countries with the earliest origin of garden art in the world, and occupies an extremely important position in the history of garden art in the world, with a high artistic level and unique national style. Garden is an art that people create landscapes with their own hands for the convenience of sightseeing and entertainment.
According to the records of ancient books, gardening in China should begin in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, that is, "Xi". Shang Zhouwang's "Drinking good wine and having fun is good for dogs and horses, filling palaces and terraces with sand dunes (note: Guangzong area, Xingtai, Hebei), where many wild animals (birds) are placed ...". Zhou Wenwang has a Lingta, "Fang Qili", in which lush vegetation, birds and animals multiply. The original "trap" was to enclose places with beautiful natural scenery and raise animals for the emperor to hunt, so it was also called sightseeing. The emperor and the princes are embarrassed, but there are differences in scope and standardization. " The emperor is a hundred miles, and the princes are forty. "The han dynasty called yuan. On the basis of the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty developed an early tour of the Forbidden City, which mainly focused on gardens. In addition to arranging gardens for the emperor to rest, celebrations were held to handle court affairs. The famous gardens in this period include Weiyang Palace of Emperor Gaozu, Sixian Garden of Emperor Wen of Han Dynasty, Shanglin Garden of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, Dongyuan Garden of Liang Xiaowang (also known as Liangyuan Garden, Tuyuan Garden and Suiyuan Garden) and Paradise of Xuan Di.
The Ming and Qing Dynasties were the peak of China's classical garden creation. The establishment of royal gardens was the most active in Kanggan period of Qing Dynasty. At that time, social stability and economic prosperity provided favorable conditions for the construction of large-scale freehand natural gardens. Yuanmingyuan, Summer Resort, Changchun Garden, Canglang Pavilion, Xiu Yuan, Humble Administrator's Garden and Jichang Garden were all excellent works at that time. At the same time, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, a theoretical work of garden art creation, Yuanye, was produced. Their creative ideas still follow the creative source of Tang and Song Dynasties, and the creative techniques from aesthetics to garden artistic conception are "seeing the big from the small", "sumeru mustard seed" and "heaven and earth in the pot". The view of nature, freehand brushwork and artistic conception have become the dominant position of creation, and the architecture in the garden has played the most important role and become the main landscaping means. Gardens have gradually developed from sightseeing to being able to travel and live. Large-scale gardens not only imitate natural landscapes, but also imitate places of interest in one garden, forming a style of taking gardens with gardens and big gardens with small gardens.