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The Classical Gardens of Shanghai

Shelly Bryant author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Hong Kong University Press

Published:29th Jul '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Classical Gardens of Shanghai cover

In The Classical Gardens of Shanghai, Shelly Bryant looks at five of Shanghai's remaining classical gardens through their origins, changing fortunes, restorations, and links to a wider Chinese aesthetic. Shanghai's classical gardens are as much text as space; they exist in art, poetry, and literature as much as in stone, rock, and earth. But these gardens have not remained static entities. Rather, they have been remodeled constantly since their inception. This book reflects this process within the constancy of traditional Chinese horticulture and reveals Shanghai's remaining classical gardens as places representing wealth and social status, social and dynastic shifts, through falling family fortunes and political revolutions to search for a recovery of China's ancient culture in the modern day.

Like a classical Chinese garden, this admirable and beautifully balanced book conjures up wider landscapes from within a small compass. It can be savored on many levels: poetic and aesthetic no less than scholarly and intellectual. It is the next best thing to being guided through such gardens by Shelly Bryant herself. -- Lynn Pan, author of When True Love Came to China and Shanghai Style

ISBN: 9789888208814

Dimensions: 176mm x 129mm x 10mm

Weight: 160g

156 pages