Emperor Huizong’s (r. 1100-1126): Short-lived Earthly Paradise

Zhao Ji (1082-1135), better known as Emperor Huizong (r. 1100-1126) of the Southern Song Dynasty (960-1127) gained a reputation as supreme perfectionist as artist, art collector and connoisseur, a ruler devoted to the faith of Daoism, squandering a fortune on building palaces and halls and on landscape gardening. A famous example of his costly ‘folie de grandeur’ is the Sacred Northeast Mountain Peak Genyue, a gigantic rock garden in the northeast part of the Old City of the capital Kaifeng. The garden is described in sources such as the Huayanggong jishi (Description of the Florescent Solitary Palace) by the Buddhist monk Zu Xiu from 1127 and Zhang Hao’s (ca. 1180-1250) Genyue ji (Record of the Northeast Marchmount). The project in search of auspicious blessing started in 1118, having originated in the emperor’s conviction that the Daoist Immortals would descend to this exquisite paradise situated in the centre of the world, his capital. In his conviction the landscape garden that exceeded nature’s beauty would prolong and glorify his rule for ten thousand years. The Genyue was completed in January 1123, and thus became part of Emperor Huizong’s Divine Empyrean Daoist ideology of statecraft. Contrary to all auspicious symbolism, the Song’s emblematic demonstrations of power, and the necessity to meet political expectations, Emperor Huizong proved incapable of finding a solution to the disastrous situation at the northern frontier with Jin troupes moving onto his capital. Completed in 1123 the Genyue Marchmount was destroyed in the cold winter of 1126/1127 by the inhabitants of Kaifeng in their desperate struggle for survival in their besieged town