Revamped garden blooms in California

Visitors impressed

Liu Fang Yuan has been a hit with visitors since it opened in February 2008. Despite the pandemic, a steady stream of arrivals wearing face masks meandered through the mosaic pathway at the garden on a recent weekday morning.

Stevi Carroll, a retired teacher from Pasadena, who was photographing water lilies, said: "I have been thrilled to see how the Chinese garden has opened up. It is so beautiful, and as the seasons change, the flowers change. It's just magnificent."

Carroll has been a frequent visitor to the Huntington Library since moving to the area in 2004. She enjoys attending exhibitions it organizes to explore the cultural and spiritual meanings of the Chinese garden.

"When I first came here, there was just this park that was open. They had an exhibit in one of the galleries of scrolls that sort of explained that there was a path 'over there', it was zigzaggy and was made that way so that a person would have a different view depending on where he or she stood or sat," she said.

Carroll added that when she strolled around Liu Fang Yuan with her daughter on Sundays before the pandemic struck, artisans were working meticulously on the site.

"We watched a new building being constructed, and when it finally opened, I was so excited. I walked around it and love the way you can see things through the windows. The rocks are framed so beautifully," she said.

Joe Martinez, a 38-year-old television writer from Santa Clarita, California, said the Chinese garden evoked memories of a trip he took to Beijing in 2010.

"I was impressed, because I've been to Beijing, and it reminded me so much of that city. The amount of detail they have here is really impressive," he said.

Mike Mitchell, 41, a freelance media worker who grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, Los Angeles County, said he was greatly impressed the first time he visited the garden.

"I never imagined that I could walk in there and see such a sight in a neighborhood of San Marino. It's like going to another place entirely," he said.

Taylor Dwyer, a 26-year-old librarian, who had visited the garden several times, brought her mother along for a day out. They stopped to read the Chinese characters etched on a large rock in the courtyard.

"We love the different areas of the garden, but I was saying to my mom a few minutes ago that just walking in here feels like I'm in a storybook. It's just so beautiful, you feel as if you're being transported to a different place," Dwyer said.

When the pandemic ends, Bloom, the curator, hopes the garden's indoor programs will return, including an exhibition on calligraphy, in late spring or early summer next year.

He said the garden provides an enjoyable experience for people to gain an appreciation of Chinese culture.

"I think that in the future it will always be important for different cultures to try to understand each other, and to basically recognize that we are all human beings. We all appreciate plants, we all appreciate artworks. We might have a different sense of what makes a good painting or what makes a good garden, but fundamentally, these are all things that all humans do," Bloom said.

"With the Chinese garden, one of our goals is really to foster that sense of cross-cultural empathy. We have tended to focus a little bit more on the historical form of gardening, or the historical form of art, but I think it's a very good entry point to an appreciation of Chinese culture in general."