Research On Temple Gardens In Northeast Of Chongqing

Temple garden is one of the three classical gardens in China, which is both the place of ancient religious sacrifice and important public recreation.Wherever in the aspect of architecture or humanity art, temple garden is of great representativeness. Temple garden, adopting artistic landscape construction method, processes the environment and creates worship, touring and living spaces with diversified layouts, deep and quiet paths and picturesque landscape.Especially, it is particularly outstanding that the mountain temple garden utilizes and processes natural environment.Northeastern regions of Chongqing locate in the boundary of four provinces, that is Chognqing, Hubei, Shaanxi and Sichuan, covering 11 district or counties of Wanzhou, Liangping, Chengkou, Fengdu, Dianjiang, Zhongxian, Kaixian, Yunyang, Fengjie, Wushan and Wuxi, which is the northeast “gateway” of Chongqing. Their cultural system is composed of two major parts. One is Jiangcheng and mountain culture which embody the cultural universality of Ba and Yu culture. Another one is farming culture, Bachu culture, Wugui culture, immigrant culture and wharf culture with regional culture characteristics. The landform of northeast Chongqing is mainly mountain land. The Yangtze River transverses all areas from west to east, with its branches of Daning River, Meixi River and Dragon River vertically and horizontally spreading, possessing natural geographical characteristics of huge mountains and great waters. The profound historical culture and bold and vigorous natural environment in the area provide unique advantages to temples’ building gardens, becoming an indispensable part of Ba-yu’s temple garden.Since the 1990 s, Chongqing has gone through an era of “big development”, while temple gardens in northeast Chongqing suffered from impacts and damage to varying degrees during the development process. On the one hand, the transfer of rural populations made some temple gardens hiding in remote mountains become tumbledown due to the lack of management; on the other hand, improper tourism development behaviors in parts of the temple gardens located in favorable geographical positions also lead to the missing of religious culture and artistic conception.The investigation and research on temple gardens in northeast Chongqing, firstly, can supplement research references of temple garden in that area, making contributions to the improvement of the research system of Ba-yu temple gardens; secondly, can offer references and guiding suggestions to the repairmen, reconstruction and tourism development of corresponding temple gardens; thirdly, can make a contribution to the inheritance of regional culture of northeast Chongqing.Core contents researched in this thesis include:(1) Probing into the origin of Ba-yuBuddhism and Taoism; taking the development history of Buddhism and Taoism in northeast Chongqing as clues, sorting out the development history of temple gardens in northeast Chongqing and dividing it into: initial stage — the Han and Jin Dynasties and the Northern and Southern Dynasties; slow development stage—the Sui and Tang Dynasties and the Five Dynasties; flourishing stage—the Song and Yuan Dynasties; mature stage—the Ming and Qing Dynasties; declining stage—modern and contemporary era; arranging and counting up cultural relics in existing temples in northeast Chongqing.(2) In the view of natural landscape environment, according to the combination form of temple gardens and land forms, summarizing the types of site selection of temple gardens in northeast Chongqing, dividing temple gardens in northeast Chongqing into flat ground type and mountain type which can be further divided into mountain foot, mountainside, mountain top, cliff and comprehensive type and analyzing the main factors influencing the site selection. According to the distribution features of temple buildings in the natural environment, there are three courtyard layout types of temple gardens in northeast Chongqing, that is, well courtyard layout, tandem type layout and platform type layout. Depending on the different combination modes of temples and garden buildings, the temple gardens can be divided into three types consisted of temple garden, temple affiliated garden and natural wooded mountain.(3) From the view of inner of temple gardens, analyzing the landscape constitutive elements inside temple gardens in northeast Chongqing, which include temple buildings such as mountain gates, bell towers and drum towers, worship halls and so on; small garden ornaments such as pavilions, corridors, bridges and stone lions, etc.; waterscape and plant furnishing.(4) Horizontal analysis: discussing the major landscape construction methods of temple gardens in northeast Chongqing from three aspects of the coordination between temple gardens and nature, the organization of landscape space sequence and the creation of the artistic conception of garden.(5) Longitudinal comparison: analyzing the similarities and differences between temple gardens in northeast Chongqing and those in others places in Bayu, summarizing the enlightenment to the design of mountainous landscape and the protection and development of temple gardens.