China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Chinese Garden poised to be showpiece in Los Angeles
Los Angeles in 2020 will have the distinction of hosting one of the largest classical-style Chinese gardens in the world.
The Huntington Library, Art Collection, and Botanical Gardens has broken ground for a major expansion of its Chinese Garden. The final phase of construction will expand the attraction from 3.5 acres to 12 acres and it will include several pavilions, an art gallery and a café.
A ceremony on Tuesday at “The Garden of Flowing Fragrance”, or Liu Fang Yuan, attracted guests and donors from a cross-section of society, including Chinese Consul General in Los Angeles Zhang Ping, US Congresswoman Judy Chu, San Marino Vice-Mayor Steven Huang and library interim President Steve Hindle.
Zhang said the Chinese Garden is a masterpiece of ChinaUS collaboration, based on the spirit of mutual learning and sharing.
“The success of the firstphase construction has already made the garden an icon of China-US cultural exchange, and (it) plays a significant role in promoting friendship and understanding between our two people,” Zhang said.
“I believe with the completion of the second-phase construction, the garden will present the Chinese garden arts and culture more in its entirety to the American people, providing a bigger platform for the people-to-people exchange between China and the US,” he said.
US Congresswoman Judy Chu said she is proud of the support and generous donations from the community that helped bring the project to fruition.
“It’s now the pride of the San Gabriel Valley, if not all of Southern California,” Chu said. “For us in the San Gabriel Valley, with our huge AsianAmerican population, this is a way of showing the beauty of our culture and of creating even greater community relations, as people can experience what the Chinese culture is all about.”
The $53 million garden project, the first phase of which opened to the public in 2008, is funded entirely by individual, corporate and foundation gifts.
The original construction included eight tile-roofed pavilions situated around a 1-acre lake. In 2014, the garden added two new pavilions and a rock grotto.
Jim Folsom, who is the Marge and Sherm Telleen director of the Botanical Gardens, said the idea for the Chinese Garden originated as a nod to the history of Chinese horticulture.
“If you live in any parts of North America, many plants that you consider your everyday go-to garden plants are not only from China, they were cultivated in China 800 years ago,” he said.
But eventually museum leaders decided to celebrate the entire Chinese culture and to create a project that truly reflects the culture of the Asian-American community in Southern California.
“It’s the culture that has created all of these incredible things, and it is the culture that adopted plants as the core aspect of aesthetics, and the core aspect of lives,” Folsom said.
The Chinese Garden is an international partnership between Chinese and American architects, contractors and craftspersons.
In order to preserve the authenticity of the Suzhou garden style, experts from the renowned garden city of China will visit the site for several months to work on details of the garden by hand, as they did in previous phases.
Phillip E. Bloom, the curator of the Chinese Garden, noted that about 30 to 50 percent of the visitors to the garden are Chinese or Chinese Americans.
“I think this is very important, because this garden is built for cultural exchange,” he said. “So I think if Americans, or Chinese Americans, could learn about the Chinese culture through this garden, then we’ve accomplished our goal.”
The final phase of construction will take 18 months, but the garden will remain open to visitors while undergoing construction, Bloom said. Work on the new features will be completed by February 2020.
Folsom said the goal is to encourage more people to learn about a “real Chinese garden” and Chinese culture.
“It truly wants to be something that is richly connected with the history of Asia, the history of China and with the future of the United States,” Folsom said of the garden. “It wants to do all of those things; it’s a big job.”