The Invention of the Chinese Garden: From Western Perception to the Construction of a Global Identity

The article proposes a discussion on the process that engendered, in the West, the invention of a compositional formula that represented “the Chinese Garden”, from the nineteenth century onward. Without focusing on the widely known influence of chinoiserie in the construction of a Western idea of the exotic, it will discuss nineteenth-century Western travellers’ accounts of the gardens of China. Supporting the simplified visual image proposed by the willow pattern, verbal accounts contributed to the creation of a stereotyped idea of Chinese gardens based on the repetition of a few iconic elements. The article also discusses how, this popular Western image of an ideal “Chinese garden” has inspired, in more recent years, the design of Chinese-style gardens built outside China.