Sitting by the Yangtze River and the Poyang Lake,Mount Lushan is Magnificent,peaculiar,precipitous,and beautiful.Here we can find the clear traces of the development of China’s history of aesthetics and the important position it holds in China’s hisrory of landscape aesthetics.Mount Lushan is also a typical representative of the integration of Chinese and Western aesthetics.All these add to the unique and rich aesthetic value of Mount Lushan.
1)The landscape of Mount Lushan embodies the loftiest extent of China’s classic aesthetics
The highest extent of China’s classic aesthetics was to plunged deeo into the most beautiful
Nature,to allow the spirit to go wherever it wishes to,and to detach from the ego.
Standing at a place where China’s longest river,ithe Yangtze River,and its biggest freshwater lake,the Poyang Lake meet,Mount Lushan melts itself with the river and the lake to form a whole mass.With its immensity and sublimity,it frist of all provides us with an aesthetic treat of greatness and vastness.
Mount Lushan boats a natural beauty of immense spaces and multiple layers with its river,lake,precipitous peaks,tranquil valleys,grotesque rocks,rare pines,ancient trees,and mountain-top ponds and pools.Located on a vast plain cut through by a long river and a big lake,Mount Lushan is majestic,lofty,and ancient when looked at from afar.Looking ahead at the too of the mountain,one would see a boundless view in which the sky and the water seem to meet each other.”Nothing stands to block the eye”,just as is described by the Chinese characters engraved into a cliff rock at the top of the Five-Old-Man Peak.Integrating its beauty of extraordinary vastness and its beauty of Loftiness and combining its beauty of tranquility and softness,Mount Lushan stands out prominently among all other famous mountains in China.
Mount Lushan also boasts the natural beauty of time shown in the form of changing colours;the seasons,the tides,the moonlights,and the dimness.
Mount Lushan has a moving beauties;the waterfalls are beautiful,the sea of clouds is beautiful,the waterfall clouds are beautiful,the smoky rains are beautiful,the flowing snowflakes are beautiful,the rime is beautiful,and the migratory birds and rare animals are beautiful.
Mount Lushan is richly endowed by nature so far as its geographical conditions are concerned.With a concentration of various kinds of typical nature scenes,it boasts a boundless scenery characterized by magnificence,grotesqueness,precipitousness,and gracefulness.It is carrier of the aesthetic ideal of the Chinese nation.For this reason,Mount Lushan has since ancient times been commonly accepted as a“divine mountain”for people to cultivate their moral characters and achieve artistic liberalization of their spirit and a mountain“inhabited by immortals”.This explains,perhaps,why almost all renowned literay figures in Chinese history would come to visit it.
2)Mount Lushan has the clear traces of the development of landscape aesthetics in china
a)The gradual separation of landscape aesthetics in China from materfical benefits and gains and gradual realization of the special character in the aesthetic relationship between subjects and objectives were competed during the Wei.Jin,a southern and Northern dynasties.But it was Zong Bing,China’s frist theorist of landscape painting,who explicity put forward in theory that appreciation of natural beauty was for the pure puepose of satisfying spiritual pleasure and liberty.
Zong Bing worked and lived in Mount Lushan for 15 years.As a gigantic combination of beauty composed of various scenic spots which look either masculine,gentle,uniquely stylish,or harmonious,Mount Lushan inspires and encourage all.Intoxicated with the magnificent and colour scenery of Mount Lushan for long years,Zong Bing concluded that to appreciate natural beauty was just to“please the mind by keeping it on various interesting objects”.Zong Bing’s theory is of pioneering significance in China’s history of landscape aesthetics.
b)The poems by Li Bai to extol Mount Lushan remarkably reflect the profound change that took place in the aesthetic thinking during the Tang Dynasty:a shift from concentration of objective image to imagination inspired by objectives.The line of“Its torrent dashes one thousand feet from high,I wonder if it’s milky way falling from the sky“in his”Cataract of Lushan Seen From Afar”provide an example here.Instead of telling a practical experience of a non-personified scene of natural beauty and a personified scene of natural beauty,the author recreates,through the imagination of sightseer,a“third scene”of natural beauty.This is an epoch-making contribution in China’s history of landscape aesthetics.
c)By the song and Yuan dynasties,Mount Lushan had become a famous scenic spot embodying the loftiest aesthetic ideals of“charm,delight,and artistic conception”.
Su Shi with his unque aesthetic standard wrote the lines;
Rideges in horizontal view become peaks in vertical view,
And heights differentiate seen afar and at close quarters
You’re not capable to realize the true beauty of Lushan
Only because you yourself are in this Mountain.
Extremely philosophic and profound in conception,these lines have passed down as a household recital from generation to generation.
Using clouds and mists,nature has created an ever changing scene in Mount Lushan.As a result,Mount Lushan has become known far and wide for its beauty of dimness.For thousands of years,the line“You’re not capable to realize the true beauty of Lushan”has become the most delightful and most comprehensive comment of the beauty of dimness of Mount Lushan.
d)The various artistic works of Mount Lushan from the Ming Dynasty tell of a trend to inherit the aesthetic thinking of old generations and look for new aesthetic forms.
The travels notes on Mount Lushan written by Yuan Hongdao,a man of letters of the Ming Dynasty,tell of his delight at the beauty of Mount Lushan in the eye of a child and reflect his idealistic aesthetic concept of returning to nuture.
The 120 pictures of Five-hundred Buddhist Saints“enshrined and worshipped at the Qixian Temple in Mount Lushan during the Qing Dynasty was the earliest representation of the five hundred Buddhist saints in huge painting.
3)Mount Lushan is a typical case of intensification of natural beauty though artistic beauty
The artistic works and architectural art of“Mount lushan created in various dynasties have furthered the intension of and added artistic appeal to the natural beauty of the mountain.
Mount Lushan has been highly cherished by painters of all ages.Famous Chinese painters such as Gu Kaizhi OF the Jin Dynasty,Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty,Jing Hao of the Five Dynasties,Li Gongmian and Yu Jian of the Song Dynasty,Shen Zhou,Tang Yin,Zhou Chen,Wang siren,and Huang Puzhi of the Ming Dynasty,Shi Tao,Dai Benxiao and Xu Chonglong of the Qing Dynasty,
And Xu Beihong and Huang Qiuyuan of modern times all createdimmortal painting for Mount Lushan.The extraordinary aesthetic standards embodied in the master pieces of these painters have greatly helped people to gain a deeper understanding of the natural beauty of Mount Lushan.
Integrating culture,poetry,calligyaphy,and engraving into a whole,the cliff cavings and tablet engravings in Mount Lushan fully represent the lofty temperament of the Chinese nation in their appreciation of natural beauty.Melted into and juxtaposed with famous peaks,famous waterfalls,famous fountains and spring,clouds and mists,ancient trees,grotesque trees,strange rocks and various other scenes,these cliff carvings and tablet engravings also create a special aesthetic appeal peculiar to Mount Lushan.
Engraving such as“where comes the peak?Standing here in a sorrowful rain,I see Hanyang lies far away”on the HangyangPeak,”Five feet from the Heaven”on the Five-Old-Man Peak,and“the shy sits among themountains”along the Fangxian Path are all vivid depictions of the magnificent and majectic beauty of Mount Lushan.
There are various kinds of combinations of different scenics in Mount Lushan.In space,these scenes stand in sharp contract against each other.Looking upward from the Three Gorges Gully,the combination of the Five-Old-Man Peak,the Hanpo Ridge and the Jiuqi Peak blot out the sky and land live waves,with the gully looks like the bottom of a rou of waves.Engraved here are“mountain waves”“,billows from a far”,and“all waters converge here”.There produce a strong aesthetic effect.
Ancient Chinese were not only good at cathing the beauty of Mount Lushan as an entirety,but also took great attention of its beauty in part and detail.For instance,on a rock shrouded by clouds and mists would be engraved the words“thin cloud”,on a rock flown over by a film of clear water would be engraved the words“pillow stream”,and on a querr rock with a creek blowing nearby
would be engraved the words“a windy fountain in a cloud valley”.All these are precise demonstration close experience and ricj imagination of human being about nature.
In their selection of sits for construction in Mount Lushan,our ancients showed their boldness to make full use of the grandeur and serenity of nature and gream imagination in conceiving the harmony between structures and nature.
The East Grove Temple,the West Grove Temple,and the Haihui Temple were built at the foot of the mountain.Backing on or facing the great mountain or perilous peaks,they seemed to get strength from the immensity of the mountain.The Big heavenly Pool,the Imperial Tablet Pavilion,and the small Heavenly Pool were built atop mountain peaks.Rising high up into the sky like a gigantic mountain,they also gave foreign missionaries a feeling of approaching fairlyland.The Qixian Temple,the Cijing Pavillion and the Huanglong Temple were located in deep valleys.Sitting among layers of mountains,they helped create a poetic painting.
The temples,pavilions,bridges,pagodas,towers,platforms,and archways built in Mount Lushan during various dynasties all add to its boundless beauty with their individual shape.
4)Mount Lushan is a graceful fusion of Chinese and foreign aesthetics
The Western aesthetic concepts embodied in the villa zone at Kuling developed in modern times and in the planning of the zone itself have,together with their integration with traditional Chinese aesthetics,changed the unitariness of following one and a single line in the cultural development of Mount Lushan and added some peculiar appeal to its aesthetic stock.
Standing in the modern villa zone at Donggu of Mount Lushan are more than 600 villas built by proprietors from 20 countries including the United States,,Britain,Germany,Sweden,Italy,France
Portugal,Finland,Canada,Japan,Australia,Norway,Austria,Switzerland,Czech,Denmark,Ireland,Russia,Holland,and China.Preserved in Mount Lushan till today is the“Plan Estate of Kuling,1905”complied by British and US experts in 1905.According to this plan,the area of a villa should account for about 15 percent of a countyard in usual cases.Becuse of their small size,these villas stay hidden among green trees instead of standing out presumptuously.This is an embodimeng of the feeling of“seclusion”by Edward Selby Jr.a British missionary.He cme to Mount Lushan in 1866 for the frist time.This plan had absorbed the modern concept of gardening of British and particulary,the romantic idea od F.L.olmsted.the most potstanding landscape architect of the United States into integrate rural life with urban culture.Under the plan,a belt park,the Lindsay Park,was built along both sides of the middle section of the Changchonghe River.
At the same time when Russians,Americans and Britains were building villas here,the Xigu,Ganlan,Nuri and Taiyi zones with mainly villas were completed one after another.Although most of these villas have Western styles,their gardens are in most cases arranged with methods of traditional Chinese culture.As a result,the foreign and Chinese villas have melted themselves with Chinese classic architectures,gardens,and cliff carvings and engravings to create a scenery with a most open character among famous mountains in china.By the 1930s,Mounnt Lushan already became a prototype of china’s frist national park..
Chinese classic architectures are characterized by their wooden structures.The modern villas built in Mount Lushan,however,are mostly stone structured.This is a transplant of the traditional architectural culture of Europe.Standing harmoniously in the atmosphere of Chinese culture,these stone-laid villas in Western style tell of the“individuality of Mount Lushan”,as has been noted by a famous German architect.
Guo Xi,a painter and art theofist of the Northern Song Dynasty,held that the closer the relationship between nature and human beings,the greater the value of their beauty.If a mountain or a river became“inhatibel”Guo argued,this mountain or river would took a part in human life.The emergence of the Guling Villa Zone 900 years later can be said to be realization of this aesthetic idea.This is an interesting integration between China’s classic aesthetics and the modern aesthetics of the West.
The natural and cultural heritages of Mount Lushan are both of extremely high scientific and aesthetic value.They stand aloft in minds of people as splendid treasures of the world.