Modern means of transportation, telecommunication and mass media have shorten the geografical distance of the world. The international community of years to be has grown to be no more than a globle village in which peoples of all nations experience inevitable cultural exchanges and clashes while seeking common development in a harmonious and respectful relationship.
I am with the view that in this modern world, the culture of any nation cannot develop in isolation and I believe that different cultures should learn from each other's strength to upset their own weaknesses. Of course, the culture of a nation must uphold its own distinctive national characteristics in its excessive exchanges with other cultures. Cultural exchange, I think, is by no means a process of losing one’s own culture to a foreign culture but a process of richening each other's national cultures.
Chinese garden can be divided into two categories: the imperial and the private. The former is seen most frequently in northern china while more of the later can be found in the south, especiallly in Suzhou, Wuxi and Nanjing.
Small and delicate, cleverly laid out and pleasing to the eye, the streams, bridges, rockeries and pavillions of private Chinese garden reveal a natural beauty of their own. Most of the bridges in this garden are stone, including straight, winding and arched bridges. The Straight briges consist of just one stone slab without any decoration and it is usually level with the riverbank or with the river to make the visitors feel that they are surrounded by the water. The winding bridge has low balustrades. The Jiuqu Zigzag Bridge on west lake is one of them. The arched bridge can be divided into the singlearch and the multiarch varieties. Streams in this gardens do not cover a large area, but setting them well with bridges and islands to yield a uniform effect.
Rocks and rockeries are special features of southern Chinese gardens. Stones of grotesque forms are often attractive with underlaid lines and water holes. Some large stones form sceneries of their own while smaller ones are put together to form artificial hills to add to the fantastic attractiveness of the garden. Corridors form another feature of the chinese garden. There are water corridors built along the waterside, flower corridors setted among flowers, willow corridors among groves of willow and bamboo corridors among groves of bamboo. For the vositors, these corridors are good travel guides leading to the various views of the big garden.
The corridors are decorated by windows of every shape: spuare, round , hexagonal and octagonal. Many of the windows are decorated with very beautiful patterns and designs. Visitors can have excellent view of the garden through the colorful windows. The doors of the garden, like the windows, are also carved in different shapes to bring more vigorness and elegance to the surroundings.
Walls of these gardens are usually painted in white. Hidding among the flowers, trees and hills, white walls stand in a sharp contrast to the grey tiles and brown windows. Stolling about these gardens with the treeshadows swaying on the white wall and willowreflections dancing in the ponds, tourists may then find themselves truely enjoy this peace and relaxation in this paradise from the turmoil of the world.