What Constitutes Good Lingbi Rocks?
WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD LINGBI ROCKS?
Perspectives from Late-Ming Suzhou Literati
by Xiao (Anne) Liu
2023 Spring
Figure 1. Lingbi Rock, rock and jade, Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE), Lingbi County, Anhui Province, China, Suzhou Museum. Photo by author.
The erose Lingbi Rock 靈璧石 in Figure 1 embodies natural forces and exquisite craftsmanship. As if it were just mined out, the rock takes on an irregular shape resembling a piece of capricious thick cloud. A closer examination reveals traces of manual chiseling and sculpting. On the top of the rock rests a smooth jade ring, with two pieces of metal (probably iron) in the shape and pattern of a bat. A thin flower-shaped metal connects the rock with the pendants.[1] Named after its provenance—the Lingbi County in Anhui 安徽 Province, China—this Lingbi Rock created during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE) was among many others that gained late Ming Suzhou 蘇州 literati’s favor. However, Lingbi rocks have received little scholarly attention. This paper investigates the production of Lingbi rocks and late Ming Suzhou literati’s evaluation of them, focusing on the Lingbi Rock preserved in the Suzhou Museum (Figure 1) and the discussion of rocks in Ji Cheng’s 計成 (1582–c. 1642) Yuan ye園冶 [The Craft of Gardens]. In my article, rocks refer to the solid mineral materials which were formed in nature and later underwent potential modifications by artisans. Jade does not fall into the category of rocks in my discussion. I will first elucidate the production, features, and use of Lingbi rocks in the Ming dynasty, after which I will analyze late Ming Suzhou literati’s taste for desirable rocks. I argue that Suzhou literati in the late Ming believed that good Lingbi rocks should embody the harmony between natural and artificial elements. Because the rocks were usually displayed in indoor settings, changes made by people were perhaps necessary to match them with the artificial surroundings.
In his The Craft of Gardens, Ji Cheng, a renowned literatus and garden designer in Suzhou, devotes a whole entry in Chapter Three to introducing rocks from Lingbi County:
There is a place called Stone Chime Hill in Lingbi County, Suzhou, where there are rocks underground. These have been quarried for so many years that there is now a large pit there several fathoms deep. These rocks in their natural state are completely covered with red mud, and the local people usually scrape them all over with an iron blade. This has to be done three times, and once the natural colour of the stone comes through, they use a wire or bamboo brush together with powdered porcelain to brush it clean and glossy. When these stones are struck they make a ringing, bell-like sound. The underside of the rock usually remains caked with earth which cannot be completely cleaned off. While the rocks are in the ground they develop particular forms according to their original shape: they may look like natural objects, or pointed or rounded mountain peaks, stretching up into the sky, with remarkable twisted shapes. These may be shaped and carved with adze and chisel to bring out their beauty. Some may look perfect from one or two sides, or even from three sides. Those that come out of the earth naturally perfect on all four sides hardly add up to one or two out of several hundred. If you find one that is good on all four sides, pick out its most attractive points to embellish by carving, and flatten its base; you can set it on a table or use it to build up a miniature landscape. There is a type of stone which is flat and plain-looking or has ‘cloud-vapour’ markings: this can be hung up in a room to act as a musical chime. These are what are referred to in the Book of History as the ‘floating chimes from the banks of the Si River.’[2]
Quarried out of the ground, the rocks are covered with red mud before the locals scrape and brush them to bring out their natural stone color. Although the rocks take on various shapes formed underground, Ji Cheng believes that manual chiseling and carving are necessary to manifest their beauty. Rocks with a flat base can be placed on the table, while those resembling clouds and vapor can be hung in a room to serve as a musical chime. The values of rocks from Lingbi lie in the ringing and bell-like sound they make when struck, their natural perfect looks from their sides, and appropriate craftsmanship. As an influential handbook on garden design for literati in the late Ming, the treatment and criteria for desirable Lingbi rocks in The Craft of Gardens reflect the taste that literati in the Jiangnan 江南 region were pursuing at that time.[3] Therefore, a lot of high-quality Lingbi rocks ended up in Suzhou literati’s household, such as the one in Suzhou Museum (Figure 1).
In fact, Ji Cheng’s descriptions may help us better understand the Lingbi Rock in Figure 1, on which the museum only offers limited information. At first glance, the rock appears to be a natural product given its irregular contour and rugged surface. On a closer look, however, traces of chiseling and polishing are visible: the curves of the rock’s lateral contours are smooth, especially the upper left part and the right half of the rock, forming a contrast with its coarser frontal side. This coexistence between natural and artificial elements corresponds well to Ji Cheng’s idea that “while the rocks are in the ground they develop particular forms according to their original shape…… These may be shaped and carved with adze and chisel to bring out their beauty.”[4] In other words, both the natural shape and manual modifications make the Lingbi rocks attractive to literati. Moreover, the shape of our Lingbi Rock in Suzhou Museum matches what Ji Cheng portrays as “pointed or rounded mountain peaks, stretching up into the sky, with remarkable twisted shapes.”[5] The jade ring on the top of the rock suggests that it was possibly designed to be hung up in a room, echoing the second function of the Lingbi rocks in Ji’s narrative.
This Lingbi Rock (Figure 1) exemplifies the balance between natural and artificial components. In addition to the chiseling on its original twisted shape, the pendants on its top—the jade ring, bat-shaped metal, and flower-formed connector—are clearly artificial products made of natural materials, which embody symbolic meanings. As a precious stone that was only affordable to the upper class, jade usually signified power and status in imperial China. During the Ming and Qing period, jade was also commonly used for royalty’s and literati’s utensils. Bat represents good fortunes and blessings, serving as a ubiquitous motif in objects of everyday use and classical Chinese gardens.[6] Apart from jade and metal, processed wood also goes with the rock, often functioning as its base. For instance, Figure 3 shows a bumpy Lingbi rock resting on a piece of glossy wood. Similarly, the rock takes on a jagged shape, with dimples of varying sizes on its surface. In contrast, the wood base is extremely smooth and finely polished, as if regulating the irregular rock. Nevertheless, there is little discord between the two parts. The reconciliation between the uneven rock and symmetrical pendants thus creates a sense of harmony.
More generally, Lingbi rocks offer us a glimpse into late Ming Suzhou literati’s ideals of human-nature dynamics, with regard to the use of natural objects (in this case, rocks) for household decorations. To them, appropriate man-made embellishments would adorn the naturalness of rocks. On the one hand, literati cherish the rocks whose appearances are perfect by nature. Rocks of this type are scarce and valuable. As Ji Cheng suggests, “those that come out of the earth naturally perfect on all four sides hardly add up to one or two out of several hundred.”[7] On the other hand, craftsmanship adds glamour to the natural beauty. The necessity of human intervention in refining Lingbi rocks might result from their function as a symbol of elegant taste within literati’s household, which means that the rocks were supposed to match the architecture and other indoor settings. In contrast, rocks displayed outdoors, such as Lake Tai rocks 太湖石, are valuable for their naturalness only:
Those Lake Tai rocks which come from under water are valuable, where long years of buffeting by the waves have pierced them through and turned them into caverns and hollows, reticulated on every side. Those from the mountains are called ‘dry rocks’ and have a dull, unlustrous surface. They can be faked up into the waterpierced rocks and have an elegant appearance only after a number of years when the traces of the chisel have completely disappeared. The artificial mountains which are so valued in Suzhou are all made of these rocks. There are also smaller rocks which have been long submerged in the lake and which are dredged up by fishermen in their nets. These are rather like lingbi or ying rocks, but they have an inferior tone and do not ring clearly when struck.[8]
Wen Zhenheng 文震亨 (1585–1645 CE), the author of the text, was also a literatus in the late Ming Suzhou, who was known for his Zhangwu zhi長物志 [Treaties on Superfluous Things]. He holds that the value of Lake Tai rocks lies in the “caverns and hollows” created by the buffeting of waves, while rocks that had undergone manual chiseling would obtain an elegant appearance only when “the traces of the chisel have completely disappeared.”[9] Unlike Lingbi rocks, Lake Tai rocks are usually larger in scale and placed in literati’s gardens (Figure 4). The differences in treating Lingbi rocks and Lake Tai rocks might have resulted from the authors’ standpoints, as Wen focuses more on the literati taste while Ji views the selection of rocks from a garden-designer’s perspective. It is also possible that in order to fit different types of rocks into indoor and outdoor environments, Suzhou literati embrace artificial components in Lingbi rocks, while discouraging people from making changes to Lake Tai rocks.
Through scrutiny of the Lingbi Rock in Suzhou Museum (Figure 1) and Ji Cheng’s writing on rocks from Lingbi, this paper sheds light on the production and function of this type of rocks, as well as late Ming Suzhou literati’s attitudes toward them. Both the natural shape of the rock and artificial chiseling and pendants constitute a desirable Lingbi rock in most literati’s minds. Since Lingbi rocks mainly served as indoor decorations, artisans might need to process them to match them with the architecture. Due to the limitations of space, I primarily focus on two Lingbi rocks and Ji Cheng’s The Craft of Gardens. Nevertheless, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the Lingbi rocks and literati’s evaluation of them, exposure to more relevant material objects and other contemporaneous literati’s writings and paintings is necessary. Future research on this topic would also benefit from comparing Lingbi rocks with other types of rocks, in terms of materiality, production, usage, and reception. Finally, contextualizing the rocks in the broader socioeconomic background of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the trend of commodification and the fluidity of social class, would show how material culture reveals social changes on a more personal level.
Figure 3. Scholar’s Rock 靈璧賞石, Lingbi limestone with wood base, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), China, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984.495.3a, b.
Figure 4. Guanyunfeng 冠雲峰, Lake Tai rock, the Lingering Garden 留園, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China. Photo by author.
Notes:
[1] The museum displays the object only on one side, but it is possible that there is another flower-shaped connector on the other side of the rock.
[2] Ji Cheng, The Craft of Gardens, trans. Alison Hardie (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 114. Original Chinese text: 宿州灵璧县地名“磬山”，石产土中，采取岁久，穴深数丈。其质为赤泥渍满，土人多以铁刃遍刮，凡三次，既露石色，既以铁丝帚兼磁末刷治清润，扣之铿然有声，石底多有渍土不能尽者。石在土中，随其大小具体而生，或成物状，或成峰峦，巉岩透空，其状少有宛转之势；须藉斧凿，修治磨砻，以全其美。或一两面，或三面；若四面全者，即是从土中生起，凡数百之中无一二。有得四面者，择其奇巧处镌治，取其底平，可以顿置几案，亦可以掇小景。有一种扁朴或成云气者，悬之室中为磬，《书》所谓“泗滨浮磬”是也。See Ji Cheng 計成, Yuan ye 園冶 [The Craft of Gardens], edited by Liu Yanchun 劉艷春 (Nanjing: Jiangsu fenghuang wenyi chubanshe, 2015), 311-312.
[3] The Jiangnan region generally refers to the area to the south of the Yangtze River in coastal China, including nowadays the southern part of Jiangsu 江蘇 Province, the northern part of Zhejiang 浙江 Province, and Shanghai 上海. Suzhou is a representative city in the Jiangnan region.
[4] Ji, The Craft of Gardens, 114.
[5] Ibid.
[6] The Chinese characters for “bat” are 蝙蝠. The second character is pronounced as fu, which shares the same sound with the character 福, meaning blessings and good fortunes.
[7] Ji, The Craft of Gardens, 114.
[8] As quoted in Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Cambridge: Polity, 1991), 41. Original Chinese text: 太湖石在水中者為貴，歲久為波濤衝擊，皆成空石，面面玲瓏。在山上者名旱石，枯而不潤，贗作彈窩，若歷年歲久，斧痕已盡，亦為雅觀。吳中所尚假山，皆用此石。又有小石久沉湖中，漁人網得之，與靈璧、英石亦頗相類，第聲不清響。See Wen Zhenheng 文震亨, Zhangwu zhi jiaozhu 長物志校注 [Annotation of Superfluous Things], edited by Chen Zhi 陳植 and Yang Chaobo 楊超伯 (Jiangsu kexue jishu chubanshe, 1984), 112-113.
[9] Ibid.
Bibliography:
Clunas, Craig. Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China. Cambridge: Polity, 1991.
Ji, Cheng. The Craft of Gardens. Translated by Alison Hardie. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988.
Ji, Cheng 計成. Yuan ye 園冶 [The Craft of Gardens]. Edited by Liu Yanchun 劉艷春. Nanjing: Jiangsu fenghuang wenyi chubanshe, 2015.
Wen, Zhenheng 文震亨. Zhang wu zhi jiaozhu 長物志校注 [Annotation of Superfluous Things]. Edited by Chen Zhi 陳植 and Yang Chaobo 楊超伯. Jiangsu kexue jishu chubanshe, 1984.
