Comparative Study On Flower Culture Of Vernacular Dwellings And Literati Garden In The Ming And Qing Dynasties

Flower culture is the extraordinarily crucial part in the outstanding traditional culture of China. Letter and image symbols related to flowers are excessively abundant in literature, painting, construction, gardens and other arts in the past dynasties. However, scholars'study on flower culture in the Ming and Qing dynasties of China is quite rare, both at home and abroad. It is especially a weak point on the study on flower culture of literati garden and vernacular dwellings appraisal and sculpture. Systematic study on the forming style, cultural connotation and development law of flower culture in gardens and architectures has significantly theoretic and practical value, not only for promoting the excellent traditional Chinese culture, but also for enhancing the design of modern plant landscape and improving culture connotation of arts of architecture carving.Plant planting, appraisal and architecture carving of vernacular dwellings and literati garden in the Ming and Qing dynasties in east China and north China area were chosen as research object, and on-the-spot investigation, statistical analysis and researching ancient inquires were adopted as research methods. More than 200 plant spots in 30 landscape gardens in south yangzi river were investigated, such as gardens in Suzhou, Yangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuxi, and Hangzhou. And More than 50 vernacular dwellings in the Ming and Qing dynasties were also inspected in the areas such as Lingshi, Yuci, Qixian County, Taigu, Pingyao in Shanxi province, Shexian County, Qianxian County, Huizhou in Anhui province and Wuyuan in Jiangxi province. Vegetation species and applied frequency in 297 Literati garden recorded in garden historical records were calculated and analyzed. And the time, region, species, title mode, culture connotation of the 1187 plant spots among the list are focused. In addition, more than 1200 flower-bird paintings and theme of flowers in more than 3800 artistic handicrafts were thoroughly studied. On this basis, manifestation rules of flower culture in different layers of literati garden and vernacular dwellings architecture in the Ming and Qing dynasties were particularly expounded.Cultural deposits during the Ming and Qing dynasties were surveyed in the cultural background of the various fields such as history of gardens, architecture, literature, ideology, painting, artistic handicrafts, folks, and the thought of scholars and so on. Firstly, this essay started from plant planting, appraisal and architecture carving of vernacular dwellings and literati garden, researching on the performance rule of flower culture both in material level and artistic level, and then analyzing the impact factors of image expression in spiritual aspect of flower culture and its historical levels. On this basis, the characteristics of development in the fields such as politics, philosophy, religion, ethics and aesthetic in the entire society layers during the Ming and Qing dynasties were saw through.The results of the study indicate that:1. There were few species of plants recorded in most of the garden historical records of literati garden in the south regions of Yangtze River of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and the Species were resembled with each other. Plants with the highest application frequency in literati garden were mainly bamboo, plum, pine, lotus, peach, willow, laurel, phoenix tree and peony. Flower's material culture in literati garden was affected significantly by its culture of art and spirit, which became the main factor leading to the reduction of diversity of plants in literati garden in the south regions of Yangtze River of China during the Ming and Qing dynasties.2. The themes of the flower in architecture carvings during the Ming and Qing dynasties were quite abundant and widely exploited in many respects. The regional differences of themes of plants among vernacular dwellings architectures and literati garden were not significant, however, the class differences were opposite. Following are the main performances:on the one hand, flower pattern sorts applied in architecture carvings of vernacular dwellings outnumbered that in the architectures of literati garden. On the other hand, although plum, lotus, peony, peach, bamboo, pine, chrysanthemum, orchid were most frequently applied in the architecture carvings of vernacular dwellings and literati garden, generally they were applied as a combination with other patterns in vernacular dwellings, but appeared independently in literati garden.3. Started from the pre-Qin period to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the attractions number in the flower appraisal and the adapted flower species in attractions title were increasing gradually and diversifying in trend. However, in the aspects of flowers properties performed from the attractions title, the differences were not significant between the Song and Yuan dynasties and the Ming and Qing dynasties, presenting the development trend of stylization. By horizontal comparison, pine, bamboo, plum were highly frequently used in both literati garden and vernacular dwellings appraisal, in addition, lotus and willow were also used on a large scale in the attractions appraisal of literati garden, and orchid, osmanthus, ash were widely used in couplet and plaques of vernacular dwellings.4. The spiritual level of flower culture were mainly showed in such aspects as hermit thought, pursuing virtue, auspicious thoughts, religious thoughts, agriculture-based thoughts and so on. The spiritual connotations expressed by the flowers in the literati garden and vernacular dwellings were distinctive, but they influenced and permeated with each other:although flower culture in literati garden mainly showed virtue thoughts and hermit thoughts, continuing the tradition of Tang and Song dynasties, auspicious thoughts of folks were also infiltrated in many cases. Meantime, there were many cases in vernacular dwellings architectures reflecting the hermit thoughts and pursuing virtues.5. Literary allusions, paintings and artistic handicrafts in past dynasties had important impact on flower culture in the Ming and Qing dynasties.6. Looking through the flower culture of literati garden and vernacular dwellings, it is obvious that there existed fierce conflict about born and accession thought in the political consciousness fields between scholar class and grass roots during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In ideology domain, it not only embodied the traditional natural concept of unity of nature and humanity, the religion concept of unity of three religions and ethics concept of unity of elegance and vulgar, but also reflected the collaborative effect of the Moralities of Song dynasties, the idealism of Ming dynasty and simplicity of Qing dynasty on the social cultural life.