Luòyáng míngyuán jì 洛陽名園記
Records of the Famous Gardens of Luòyáng by 李格非 (Lǐ Géfēi, fl. Yuányòu–Shàoshèng era) — zhuàn 撰
About the work
A 1-juan late-Northern-Sòng (Yuányòu through Shàoshèng era) monograph on the famous gardens of Luòyáng — the principal documentary monograph on the gardens of the Northern-Sòng “second capital” Luòyáng. The work records 19 gardens, beginning with the FùBì zháiyuán of Premier Fù Bì 富弼. Lǐ Géfēi’s own postscript articulates the political-historical thesis: “the order or chaos of the empire is presaged in the rise or fall of Luòyáng; the rise or fall of Luòyáng is presaged in the rise or fall of its gardens.” This is not mere praise of garden-aesthetics but a meditation on the historical fortunes of the Northern Sòng — which would suffer the Jìngkāng catastrophe (Jurchen Jīn conquest of Kāifēng, 1127) within a generation of the work’s composition.
Tiyao
We respectfully note: this is the work of Lǐ Géfēi 李格非 of the Sòng. Géfēi, zì Wénshū 文叔, of Jǐnán. At the end of the Yuányòu era he was Guózǐ bóshì (Erudite of the National University); at the beginning of the Shàoshèng era he advanced to Lǐbù láng (Director of the Bureau of Rites), supervising legal and judicial affairs in the Jīngdōng circuit; on account of party-faction registers he was relieved of office.
This book records the gardens-and-reserves of the central Luò region, beginning with Fù Bì 富弼 and successively totaling nineteen places. Géfēi’s own postscript says: “The order or chaos of the empire is presaged in the rise or fall of Luòyáng; the rise or fall of Luòyáng is presaged in the rise or fall of its gardens-and-reserves.” This is to retrace the worthy assistants and famous officials of the time, the merit-business and flourishing-and-magnificence — those who were able to enjoy this delight; not merely a vain boast of platforms-and-pavilions, ponds-and-cottages.
The Shūlù jiětí and the Jùnzhāi dúshūzhì both record it as Lǐ Géfēi’s composition. Only the Jīndài bìshū attributes it to Lǐ Zhì of Huázhōu 華州李廌. Examining Shào Bó’s Wénjiàn hòulù juan 17, which fully records this book without omitting a character, the title clearly bears Géfēi’s name; people of the same period should not have erred. So Máo Jìn’s mistitling is settled.
Wáng Shìzhēn’s Jūyì lù records that the present book has a Shào-xìng-era preface by Zhāng Yǎn 張琰 (Déhé), beginning “the Shāndōng Lǐ Wénshū” — etc. The present version also lacks this. Most likely later people, finding the title-name and preface incongruent, cut out the preface text.
Abstract
The Luòyáng míngyuán jì is the most concentrated and elegant of Northern-Sòng-era topographical-cum-political monographs. Its author Lǐ Géfēi (the fl. date is securely Yuányòu through Shàoshèng era, ca. 1086–1100; CBDB id 7039) was the father of the great SòngJīn poetess Lǐ Qīngzhào 李清照 (1084 – ca. 1155). The work was composed in connection with his appointment to the Lǐbù láng and the Jīng-dōng-circuit Judicial Inspector position in the Shàoshèng era (1094–1098); his subsequent dismissal under the dǎngrén bēi (Faction-Names Stele) of 1102–1105 placed him in the Yuányòu reform-tradition party.
The work’s 19 gardens span the social spectrum of late-Northern-Sòng Luòyáng: from Fù Bì’s premiership-residence garden (the opening entry) through the gardens of senior officials (including Sīmǎ Guāng’s Dúlèyuán 獨樂園 — the inspiration for the Sīmǎ Guāng’s Garden of Solitary Delight genre of subsequent Chinese garden-writing) to scholarly retreats. The political coda — that the rise and fall of gardens presages the rise and fall of the empire — proved tragically prescient with the Jurchen sack of Kāifēng in 1127, but Lǐ Géfēi himself survived to ca. 1110, missing the catastrophe by a generation.
The Sìkù tíyào provides authoritative confirmation of the Lǐ Géfēi attribution against the Jīndài bìshū’s misattribution to Lǐ Zhì 李廌 of Huázhōu, citing Shào Bó’s Wénjiàn hòulù (j. 17) full preservation of the text under Lǐ Géfēi’s name. The text is preserved in the Wényuāngé Sìkù quánshū (vol. 587.4).
Translations and research
The principal English engagement is Stephen H. West, “The Interpretation of a Dream: The Sources, Influence and Evaluation of the Mengliang lu,” Toung Pao 71 (1985); his “Spring Festival in Late Imperial China,” in Religion and Society in T’ang and Sung China (Hawaii, 1993). For Lǐ Géfēi’s biographical context (and his daughter Lǐ Qīng-zhào) see Beata Grant, Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns (Wisdom, 2003); Ronald Egan, The Burden of Female Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China (Harvard, 2014). For the Northern-Sòng gardening discourse see Chang Tsong-zung 張頌仁, Garden as Symbol (Hong Kong, 2000). Standard Chinese critical edition: Wáng Yún-wǔ 王雲五, Cóngshū jí-chéng chūbiān edition (Shānghǎi shāngwù, 1936).
Other points of interest
The work’s political-historical thesis — gardens as harbingers of dynastic fortune — became one of the most influential post-Sòng meditations on the relation between aesthetic civilization and political stability. The Dúlèyuán entry on Sīmǎ Guāng’s garden is the principal documentary source for that famously austere retreat-garden, the model for subsequent Chinese scholar-gardens.