Where understanding blooms
Liu Fang Yuan garden, laid out around a library in California, helps to bridge cultural differences
Los Angeles native Randall Bartlett sat under the arched rooftop of a traditional Chinese scholar’s studio. Intricate golden dragons embroidered on his black shirt glistened in the sun as he flipped over the pages of a book.
Nearby, an elderly couple paused to read calligraphy chiseled onto a cloud-shaped rock. Across a pebbled mosaic pathway, a group in their 20s gathered around a shimmering lake framed by willow trees to take photos of turtles hiding amid water lilies.
The setting was the revamped Liu Fang Yuan garden, also known as the Garden of Flowing Fragrance — a 6-hectare space at the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in an affluent suburb nearly 18 kilometers northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
“I didn’t have this when I grew up, so when I found it, it was just spectacular. Instead of being inside the Huntington Library and seeing a painting or a photograph of it, this (garden) is living and breathing,” Bartlett said.
Long intrigued by Asian culture, Bartlett drives 60 km from his home in Santa Clarita, California, to the Huntington Library several times a month. The collections-based educational and research institution is located in San Marino, Los Angeles County.
The Liu Fang Yuan garden is Bartlett’s favorite spot, where he regularly meditates and reads. For him, the garden brings Chinese philosophies he had learned.
“I have never had the opportunity to travel to Asia. There are only a few gardens in the United States I’ve seen that represent some of the things I may be able to enjoy were I to go to China and see some of the beautiful architecture and gardens they have there,” said Bartlett, who owns a vast collection of Chinese literature.
Built by US and Chinese artisans, Liu Fang Yuan transcends international boundaries and bridges cultural gaps between the two countries and connects the Chinese diaspora with its ancestors and rich culture. It reopened to the public — after being postponed nearly five months due to the pandemic — in October with 4.6 hectares of new landscape.
Several pavilions and courtyards, a replica of a Ming Dynasty (13681644) scholar’s studio, a restaurant, a complex of walled courtyards displaying miniature landscapes known as penjing, and a pavilion at the garden’s peak were added. Its total area covers just over 6 hectares, making it one of the world’s largest classical style Chinese gardens. When it first opened in 2008, it had eight pavilions and occupied more than 1.4 hectares.
Phillip E. Bloom, curator of the Chinese Garden and director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at the Huntington, said: “It’s been 16 years of construction. Around 2000, we had a master plan made for the garden, but the idea for the venue goes back to the 1980s.”
Creating a collection of Chinese plants, particularly those found in gardens in the US that were originally cultivated from China, was its initial aim, Bloom said.
“When I was a kid, we had peonies in our yard, and I probably just assumed that peonies were from the US or Europe, but of course they are Chinese.”
After research, the director realized that plants alone did not sufficiently demonstrate a Chinese garden’s essence — a combination of pavilions, courtyards, water, rockeries, calligraphy and plants. Thus, Bloom engaged Chinese Americans in the area to learn more.
Eventually, it was decided to model the 16th- and 17th-century scholarly retreats in Suzhou, a city near Shanghai, partly because of the prominence of classical gardens there, but also because parallels were found between those and Huntington’s.
Bloom said that Henry Huntington, a US railroad magnate and founder of the library, used his fortune to create gardens and collect rare books and artworks.
“Many Suzhou gardens were created by literati or scholars who were highly educated, but a lot were also created by merchants who tried to emulate a scholarly lifestyle,” he added.
To preserve authenticity, the Huntington Library sought out the Suzhou Institute of Landscape Architecture Design and the Suzhou Garden Development Co, triggering collaboration between US and Chinese architects, contractors and designers.
The first construction phase took place between 2004 and 2008, followed by a second from 2012 to 2014 and finally from 2018 to this year. At all stages, artisans from Suzhou were flown in to work on the venue by hand. Chinese and US artisans often exchanged ideas and conversation.
“The Americans spoke either English or Spanish, while the Chinese artisans spoke Putonghua (Mandarin) or Suzhouhua (the Suzhou dialect). To communicate, they relied a lot on sign language, so that was kind of an interesting thing to see,” Bloom said, adding that witnessing local communities’ interactions with the garden has been very meaningful.
“There are some people who come every morning to walk in the garden. There are people who bring their children or grandchildren every weekend, and then we have a lot of guides and volunteers who come to all sorts of different lectures about Chinese culture or to concerts that we hold periodically. It’s had a pretty big community impact.”
For Mei-Lee Ney, a Shanghai-born immigrant and a major donor to the garden, it is a place where she can share her heritage with her community.
“I just thought it was a wonderful thing to do, to bring the Suzhou garden — to bring a part of China — to the United States, and it was wonderful that it was coming to my hometown,” said Ney, president of an investment advisory company in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, who migrated to the US at age 2.
Although still an infant when her family left Shanghai, she has fond memories of traveling to China along with her mother. She has been working on her mother’s memoirs for many years, and the garden evokes tales of her grandparents and her mother’s childhood.
“I just feel that I have such a deep connection to China through my mother. The Chinese garden really reminds me of her and keeps me connected to her memories and also to where I was born,” Ney said.
She rallied together with many Chinese American donors in the area to raise millions of dollars to bring their rich heritage to Southern California.
The garden cost $54.6 million — contributed by individuals, corporations and foundations, particularly from Chinese and Chinese Americans.
The garden’s donor walls represent a broad range of the Chinese diaspora, transcending regional and political differences — families from the Chinese mainland, entrepreneurs from Hong Kong and Taiwan, Chinese American families who have been in the US for more than 150 years and migrants who relocated there 10 years ago.
“I think this might be the most successful and probably one of the first efforts where the Chinese communities really came out and were generous, philanthropic and donated to something that meant a great deal to them, as well as benefiting the community that they live in,” Ney said.
Liu Fang Yuan has been a hit since opening in February 2008. Despite COVID-19, a steady stream of arrivals wearing face masks have meandered through its mosaic pathway.
Stevi Carroll, a retired teacher from Pasadena, who was photographing water lilies, said: “I have been thrilled to see how the Chinese garden has opened up. It is so beautiful, and as the seasons change, the flowers change. It’s just magnificent.”
When Carroll strolled around Liu Fang Yuan with her daughter on Sundays before the pandemic struck, artisans were working meticulously on the site.
“We watched a new building being constructed, and when it finally opened, I was so excited. I walked around it and love the way you can see things through the windows. The rocks are framed so beautifully,” she said.
Joe Martinez, a 38-year-old television writer from Santa Clarita, said the garden evoked memories of his 2010 trip to Beijing.
“I was impressed, because I’ve been to Beijing, and it reminded me so much of that city. The amount of detail they have here is really impressive,” he said.
Mike Mitchell, 41, a freelance media worker who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, said he was greatly impressed the first time he visited.
“I never imagined that I could walk in there and see such a sight in a neighborhood of San Marino. It’s like going to another place entirely,” he said.
Taylor Dwyer, a 26-year-old librarian, who had visited the garden several times, brought her mother along for a day out. “We love the different areas of the garden, but I was saying to my mom a few minutes ago that just walking in here feels like I’m in a storybook. It’s just so beautiful, you feel as if you’re being transported to a different place,” Dwyer said.
When the pandemic ends, curator Bloom hopes the garden’s indoor programs will return, including an exhibition on calligraphy, in late spring or early summer 2021
He said the garden provides an enjoyable experience.
“I think that in the future it will always be important for different cultures to try to understand each other, and to basically recognize that we are all human beings.
“With the Chinese garden, one of our goals is really to foster that sense of cross-cultural empathy.”