Garden brings ancient China to Portland

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Bats are everywhere in this garden, if you take the time to find them.

They hover with stone wings unfurled over arching gateways and peer out from terra cotta tiles, carved wings tucked under like so many tiny curlicues. They lie disguised in the delicate latticework of a whitewashed window, and masquerade as spade-shaped picture hooks, with bronzed bodies and pointed heads.

The bats -- a symbol of good fortune in traditional Chinese culture -- are one of many hidden treasures that greet alert visitors to Portland's Classical Chinese Garden, an oasis of ancient tradition transplanted into the bustle of a modern city.

"Every single time I come here I find something new. There's that sense of discovery," says Maria Duryea, a garden tour guide. "This garden shares its secrets, but it's not vulgar about it. It requires that you develop a certain sense of intimacy."

The Garden of the Awakening Orchids -- or "Lan Su Yuan" in Chinese -- has been a story of sharing from the start.

Contrast city, tranquility

It was built in Portland's tiny Chinatown two years ago to commemorate a 15-year-old sister city relationship with Suzhou, a city of 6 million along China's central coast known for its beautiful gardens built by retired civil servants as early as 900 A.D.

Portland's garden stands on a city block that once held a parking lot. It is surrounded on all sides by the hum of the city, with buses and commuter rails rumbling past, but inside the only sound is the bubbling of water.

From a hillock within its walls, visitors can make out the tops of the city's tallest buildings, so-called "borrowed views" designed to highlight the contrast between city and tranquil garden.

Traditional Suzhou gardens strive to re-create nature in the smallest of spaces -- often a courtyard attached to the family's living quarters -- by blending water, plants and rocks with the manmade beauty of poetry, bridges and pavilions.

A maze of hidden courtyards, secret turnoffs and twisting mosaic pathways enlarge the space, while open-air windows between walls leak glimpses of what lies beyond.

Portland's garden, which opened in September 2000, is the largest and most complete Suzhou garden in North America, said Jin Chen, the garden's coordinator and Suzhou garden design expert.

In its first year, Portland's garden attracted 258,000 visitors -- nearly three times its designers' expectations -- and volunteers logged 10,000 hours giving tours.

"It's phenomenal how wide interest has been," says Gloria Lee, executive director. "It's more than just plants and dirt: It's the buildings and the architecture. People are just so intrigued by that."

From the smallest plant to ceiling-high carvings of flowering plum and bamboo, nothing in the garden is without meaning. Even the garden's name, "Lan Su Yuan," has the double meaning of Portland-Suzhou Garden and Garden of the Awakening Orchids.

Place for reflection

The garden begins its riddles even before visitors pass through the thick double doors into the first narrow courtyard.

A large white rock stands to the left of the entrance, its fragile surface eaten away by carefully orchestrated erosion in the waters of Lake Tai near Suzhou. Pocked with holes and creases, it looks more like a cloud than limestone. It is labeled "Crescent Cloud" in Chinese -- just in case visitors missed the visual suggestion.

Passing the door, the garden unfolds itself slowly, opening from a narrow courtyard hemmed with a wall and towering trees to a jade-colored lake spanned by arching bridges and overhung with sweeping pavilions. In summer, the lake is dotted with lotus flowers, symbols of scholarly learning, and the bamboo -- a sign of resilience and flexibility -- casts shadows against the white walls.

Deep inside the maze of courtyards, another Lake Tai rock labeled "Entering the Clouds" reminds visitors of its whimsical counterpart at the entrance.

"I think it's amazing how you can take a really small space and make it so peaceful, a place of reflection," says Nancy Kelley, a recent visitor. "You could stand for 10 minutes and wonder about the story of that stone."

But visitors need not understand the significance of every plant and carving to get something from the garden.

"The people who go on tours always leave amazed at how much there is to learn," says Lee, the garden's director. "I tell the tour guides that if every visitor leaves understanding the symbolism of five different things in the garden, I'll be happy."

Garden designers shipped 500 tons of rock from China -- from the massive Lake Tai limestones to quarter-sized paving stones -- and wrestled with how to make traditional Suzhou-style architecture comply with modern-day American building codes. They scoured regional nurseries and local neighborhoods for the 500 plant species now in the garden -- all of which are native to China.

The garden is developing educational packets for teachers and specialty tours for groups.