Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden_Interview with Joe.Y Wai [Part 2]
| August 18th, 2008
Continued from Part 1…
Y-Yworkshop
J-Joe Y. Wai
Y:What is the design inspiration?
J:There are so many pavilions involved and they were all suggested by Suzhou Artisans and like all Classical garden design, it not a matter of inventing something new. The creative part of it is to understand your purpose of having the garden and to select the right kind of components, such as the water pavilion, any kind of zigzag bridge, any kind of walls and leak windows and ponds. It is just the decision on these things and how to connect them that really is the main key to a garden design. Because of the size of the project, which is not big, and also the idea of wanting to put it on its appropriate section of the block, the Suzhou artisans looked at the Wangshiyuan as a main inspiration, it seemed to have a main central pond and a Water Pavilion and a Scholar’s Study, combining with a small rock mountain and a main pavilion which leaves as a reception hall. It is separated from the large part of the garden by a double sided corridor, which is also from one garden in Suzhou. In choosing the Water Pavilion they thought they would have exactly the same one as in Zhuozhengyuan. So you have three very famous Suzhou garden playing as the inspiration the basis of Dr Sun Yat-Sen classical garden. So what we have initially was a real piece of Classical Chinese garden in what is amount to be a pioneer Chinatown which is part of the North American city as supposed to be part of a Chinese city. So that would be the unique context that is.
Y: Does the garden made by Suzhou’s artisans meet the local building code and fire code?
J:After several years of fund raising and exchanging drawings, part of the challenge is that the Suzhou artisans produces drawings and we made some adjustments to it in accordance to the Canadian requirements, so to speak, not so much the zoning requirement as much as the light orientation as well as move some of the wall to get the maximum reflection or light coming from the white washed walls, More importantly, it was the building regulations. The Canadian National Building Code asks for a number of things and we were looking at materials such as wood, stucco as the main ingredients. The wood being used was the Chinese Fir which is equivalent to Eastern Canadian Pine in strength which is also about 70-75% of the strength of the local Douglas Fir. So there was some part of it needs to be reinforced in terms of the columns of the corridor. What we have together decided is to add spikes inside the joints . As we know in Classical Chinese architecture, you don’t see nails it is all notched. There were a number of spike being hidden inside in connecting the beams to the columns. In terms of the walls themselves, the traditional pavilion usually you built with the columns first it is like the structure, the clear structure, you fill in the space, your wall, between the columns with rocks and bricks and you stucco on the other side. That wouldn’t do locally particularly because we have a very high requirement for the earthquake prevention, so we have to do that with reinforced concrete. So it was interesting to see how we tried to pour concrete when the wood structure was already up. Wood structure is beautiful, hand crafted, wood columns and wood beams that curved, so the whole structure like a bracket is already set up. We poured concrete between the columns. In the beginning we tried to pour concrete , it is shift and tilted the whole thing to one side. So we decided ,for example, to only poured the maximum one meter deep of concrete each time. So you finished that it set and you set the plumb line you do it again until you go to the top. A number of details of how to protect the columns, now the columns themselves are not the structure any more it is the concrete reinforce concrete walls that holding up the pavilions. The authentic use of the two columns of the four columns in the main pavilions we are fortunate to get the remained nan wood from western China that has been an endangered species since the end of the 18 century. Left over from an order in council by the Chinese government when they were doing the New York Museum. We do get the authentic structural columns which they were used for the Chinese pavilions through the years, thousands of years. A number of other things too, because of our climate, we were used radiant floor heating.Lots of the electrical wiring, facilitated hanging lights on the ceiling of the rafters is done through the beams . It is all hidden. So you can hang the Chinese lantern from the center of the pavilion. Radiant heating and Hidden wiring that will not be traditional.
So these are combining of western or local techniques to achieve a certain level of finish, I would not say improvement necessarily but certainly that fits the local requirements. Nobody can see it. Because all of the components of the Chinese garden, in this case, is still done by hands. Each piece of the clay floor tile is done by human factory in Suzhou. All the pieces of beams and columns were carved in Suzhou shipping over all the things to Canada and assembled on site. The granite was already cut and carved the way it is. It is just a matter of adjusting it when it is on site. The glazing in the windows is local. All the screens which are made in China are different kinds of wood. The screen wood is gingko. Gingko is harder. The curve beams and rafters are in camphor, which is softer. So you got a lot of these things that have been authentically used in the Classical traditional Chinese garden setting. The land itself is of some variation down below in geotechnical terms. So there were a lot of ground beams and piling being done before so if there is any kind of movement it won’t hurt the pavilions. There is a considerable amount of cost and preparation that has been done underneath. Now 20 years later almost, yet none of the patios being laid outside have any undulation, they are just very flat. The construction here by the Chinese artisans took about 11 months. Before they came there was 2 or 3 months excavation of piling by the Canadian contractors. The Canadian workers did everything below the ground including the concrete foundation. The Chinese artisans took over on top. At the beginning, they were a little uneasy with each other, but it only took a month before they began to work well and cooperatively. The local contractor and worker teach the Chinese artisans how to use the forklifts because this group of Chinese artisans was still moving a lot of heavy things over their shoulders with their big bamboo stick. Later on they got together how to polish the clay tiles no longer by hands but by electrical buffer. In terms of the lacquering with organic paint and lacquer, it takes a long time and it was very organic. There was the tung oil and the paste which was poison, strong smell, the thing about this is that Vancouver climate have a lot of changes around the freezing mark. The more you had the freezing mark changes below and after it is above it, it gives better chance for the wood to crack as to a clod place it doesn’t change so much or a very hot place it doesn’t go below the freezing mark. When next year or two came, a lots of the columns in particular were cracking . And the experiment over the next 5 years is to how to fill it up and how to repaint it. Eventually after 5 or 6 years, we have had a lot of the plastic resin being put in the crack. The crack is about as wide as 3 quarter inches, some of them. Most of the time is about a quarter inch to half inch, you filled them up with resins and eventually it set again by western standards. Eventually they painted with western chemical paint as supposed to organic tung oil paint. It looks fine. Now we know how to seal these columns. These thought as we do the Expansion Project just finished recently, many years after the oriental garden, we even experimented with some steel columns . Now we discover these things can work very well. And you can shape it in almost anyway you want. Certainly the steel one in the expansion project, looks exactly the same unless you knock with your finger you can tell what is steel it is not wood. As time goes on there were a number of other materials changes the way we experiments it would in the expansion project, including the fiber glass, light steel for screen instead of wood. It doesn’t look as good but it is not that bad. The fiber glass has been used to replace some of the clay tiles , particularly the up turn tiles, it is light and it looks very much similar.
The fiber glass modeling is quite amazing, based on the experience with the Sun Yat-Sun Gardens. Five years after completion in 1984, the roof began to leak because of the traditional way of doing it. Tn China you have many labors and Chinese artisans to fix it very quickly. But here because of the rain and snow it finally became to soak through the plywood down below, it goes right through the ceiling. Now we experimented with a membrane underneath and hot-tar which is torched on to the roof before the laying of the tiles. At this time it seemed to be working now. But it deviated from the authentic classical Chinese garden construction. I think we have been experimented with this and it would last 20 years or more. Nothing being perfect but techlogically we can come close to the authentic look and we still look ways to improve it. It would be even come closer to it. It is close enough for many purposes. I think we need to aim high as professionals and I am still looking for the correctness of each component of the classical gardens with contemporary materials and techniques.
Y:What does the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden bring to China Town?
J:When the garden was conceived and finished, we were hoping for a new age of the China town after the freeway talk subsided. We have plans for a new Chinese Culture Center. There were a lot of issues of how difficult it is to build in the Historical Area. The garden was also finished in conjunction with the world EXPO86. But after EXPO was finished in 1986, the whole area adjacent to China Town was going through a deteriorated period which is still existed today. In many ways the Garden had been a bright spot, it holds part of that area together because you got an average of 80,000 people visiting per year. But it is not enough to turn the whole China Town around at this point. I think there are other things needed. Since then we have tried to put many things together: the expansion of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden, the expansion of Chinese Culture center , The millennium gate ,the Commemoration of the first look of Chinatown , the Chinatown Parkade …and many other things. Now we are still working on housing projects, the right kind of housing project that can be tied to the original Chinatown. The Dr. Sun Yat-Sun Garden is a big part of stopping China Town from really going under. But there are other factors involved which are more complicated things about the city of Vancouver.
Y:What should be remained in the future development of China Town?
J:I think the main thing right now is housing. Different kinds of housing, because it has been declared Historical, it stopped the area from growing easily. By that I mean you can’t tear down buildings so easily to rebuild. It takes 20 years now to gradually see that certain area in certain part you can develop more then the city would allow for last 20 or 30 years. You need housing because people who live there would give you more a 24 hour life on the street. Right now 20 years later, it is diminishing you can see it shut down after 5 o’clock. Before 20 or 30 years ago, the streets were filled with restaurants and lots of night life. It is not there right now. It has not been there for a long time. You need to have more people living there, different kinds of people. Not just the low income, not only the elderly, even more young people perhaps different kinds of the activities would come back to the streets. We are also facing the major issue of being one or two blocks away from the drug center of Canada. That is really affecting Chinatown more than anything else. That is the key.
We have to look at the larger picture. For the longest time Chinatown was more like a ghetto for the Chinese Community. By that they can not really get out of it. The other part of Vancouver is not open to them. This was the first 70 years of Vancouver history, Vancouver is only 120 years old. After World War 2, when the Chinese were allowed to be citizens, things began to change. I think after the freeway debate in 1960s’ there was a change in the attitude from the rest of the Vancouver. They began to see Chinatown as part of the city that they would go to and they had gone to as supposed to just for the Chinese only. By that time many people who living in Chinatown, for the first time was able and willing to leave that area. Just around that period you have HongKong immigration, big wave, 1970′s and again early 1980′s when the news of the hand over back to China was happening. Lots of HongKong people came. It changed the whole dynamics and they started Richmond a new Chinatown, a new HongKong town, and also people from Taiwan, now from P.R.C. In 1973, there were 60-70,000 Chinese origin in the Greater Vancouver, now there 360,000. It is about 6 times. China Town now become a capital city of these places, it has history so it remains a place not only for Chinese but for the non-Chinese. They see it as being a China Town. Particularly now with the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden being built and all the other things being restored, people will feel it.