ABSTRACT
In the words of Chen Congzhou 陳從周 (1918–2000), the late doyen of modern Chinese garden historians, the completion of the Astor Chinese Garden Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1981, a garden modelled on one small corner of the Garden of the Master of the Nets (Wangshi Yuan 網師園) in Suzhou, ‘inaugurated the project of the export of the classical Chinese garden and served to promote the ever deepening trend towards the intermingling of the garden cultures of China and the rest of the world’. Since then, and in keeping with the burgeoning power of the Chinese economy globally, ‘Chinese’ gardens have proliferated throughout the world. On the basis of recent engagements with the design and functions of a number of Chinese gardens, both built and planned, and both in New Zealand and elsewhere, my paper will discuss aspects of the role of such gardens in the context of both the ‘return of the past’ in the People’s Republic of China in recent decades and the projection overseas of a renewed sense of cultural confidence and global importance.
