Zheng Yuanxun's 'A Personal Record of My Garden of Reflections'

摘要

'Ming gardens were social spaces, celebrated in some ways not so much for themselves as for the social gatherings which took place there', argues Craig Chinas. In the spring of the thirteenth year of the reign of the Chongzhen emperor (1640) of the Ming dynasty (1368—1644), some three years after Zheng Yuanxun finished an account of the garden that he had built for himself just south of the city of Yangzhou, entitled 'Yingyuan ziji'影園自記 [A Personal Record of My Garden of Reflections] and translated below, and some five years after the completion of the garden itself, he hosted there one of late imperial China's most celebrated social gatherings, a party occasioned by the flowering of a single unusual yellow tree peony. In time-honoured manner,the assembled luminaries sought to immortalise the moment (and, by association, the garden, its master, and his guests) by composing poems to the topic 'The Yellow Peony of the Garden of Reflections'. A collection of more than ioo of the poems either written on that day or later solicited from scholars throughout the district was then sent off to be judged by Qian Qianyi 钱 谦 益 (1582—1664),7 the pre-eminent if later somewhat problematic literary figure of the day, before being published under the title: Yingyuan yaohuaji影園 瑤 華集 [The Jasper Flower Collection from the Garden of Reflections].