ABSTRACT
Much of the discussion revolves around knowledge of the Yuanming yuan, the Qing imperial “Garden of Perfect Brightness,” but it also includes European accounts of other Chinese gardens and translations of Chinese texts on gardens that were available in the eighteenth century. These define an image of the Chinese garden as an artful simulacrum of nature in contrast to the earlier European ideal of formal gardens—epitomized in the French royal gardens of Versailles—as artificial, lavish, and especially wasteful constructions. The Yuanming yuan, sometimes referred to as the “Former Summer Palace,” while the name is more accurately translated as the “Garden of Perfect Brightness,” was the largest of the garden-palaces of the Qing emperors located in an area just northwest of Beijing that was long known for garden retreats. The subject of Chinese gardens appears in the Mémoires concernant les Chinois in the second volume, published in 1777, and important translations and texts on the subject are contained in later volumes.
