The Scotland China Association are hosting a talk by Alison Hardie’s on "The practical side of paradise: Garden craftsmen of the Ming and Qing".

Alison Hardie is an Honorary Research Fellow of Leeds University, having retired in 2015 as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies. She holds degrees in Classics from the University of Oxford and in Chinese from the University of Edinburgh, and a doctorate from the University of Sussex. She has translated Ji Cheng’s 17th-century garden manual, The Craft of Gardens (1988, reprinted 2012), revised the 3rd edition of Maggie Keswick’s The Chinese Garden: History, Art and Architecture (2003), and edited The Dumbarton Oaks Anthology of Chinese Garden Literature (2020). She has just published a monograph on Ji Cheng’s patron Ruan Dacheng and is currently completing a short, illustrated book on the social history of Chinese gardens.

If you would like to attend, please contact Dale Finlayson at membership@scotchina.org for the Zoom link.