Ming Dynasty Nanjing Private Gardens

This paper primarily studies the history and the meanings of the privite gardens of Nanjing in Ming Dynasty.It offers an account of how gardens were deployed and their meanings created and changed during a specific period in Nanjing.By the late Ming,the boom of Nanjing and the important position in politics had made Nanjing emerge a distinct genre,which also influenced the construction of the pirvate gardens.The paper also traces the shift in meaning of gardens from sites as scholar's refuges to sites referring to the more category of"entertainment".In the other hand,the private gardens also played an important role in the social reciprocity,more people wanted to make use of their gardens as a way of regotiating and acclaiming their status and power par conspicuous consumption.The private gardens of Nanjing had clearly become fields of contested meanings,but they were actually aesthetic spaces of the literati.There were many essayists,poets and painters who had elegant taste of art in Nanjing,which also emerged as the determinant of the meaning of the gardens.These artists never forgot proclaiming their taste to a wide audiences in their gardens.