Following the widespread media images of tanks at Tiananmen and missiles in the Taiwan Strait, there are probably few people willing to believe that for Europeans the word "China" once symbolized a peaceful and trouble-free earthly paradise.

How was the image of a Chinese paradise established and how did it disappear into the mists of time? One way to find out is to look at the "Chinese rooms" scattered throughout Europe's palaces.

Few people who have strolled through some of the great palaces of Europe will have missed out on this experience: You pass through one glittering, resplendent room after another, extravagantly decorated down to the last square inch, when suddenly. . . .

Walls covered with intertwined peonies and chrysanthemums. A classical beauty, with raised eyebrows and genteel curved shoulders. A room full of glistening blue-patterned porcelain. Now look closely at the lacquer chest next to the wall, the grandfather clock, and the harpsichord: Are they not decorated with Chinese landscapes, flower-and-bird depictions, pagodas, and mandarins? How is it that in Europe, half a world away, one can find traces of a long-past classical China?

A real fairy-land

"I was surprised suddenly to see a real fairy-land," wrote Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden to her mother in Prussia on receiving her 34th birthday present from the king in 1753. She continued: "His Majesty had ordered a Chinese pavilion to be built, the most beautiful ever to be seen. The bodyguard was dressed in Chinese clothes, and two of his aides-de-camp as Mandarins of military rank. My eldest son was waiting at the entrance of the pavilion dressed as a Chinese prince, and was attended by gentlemen-in-waiting attired as Mandarins of civil rank. The Crown Prince read a poem addressed to me and handed me the keys to the pavilion . . . . " As these strange keys led her into the "real fairy-land," she passed through room after room adorned with porcelain, lacquer and tapestry. Then, "When everything had been admired, His Majesty commanded a Chinese ballet."

What, it may be asked, is a "Chinese ballet"? What is the attire of a "Chinese prince"? and what did the most beautiful "Chinese pavilion" in the world look like?

"The answer is really quite simple," says Dr. Oliver Impey, Deputy Director of the Oriental Department of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum. Although this palace has not survived, he explains, it would have been just like other "Chinese" architecture of the time. It was all part of what was called "chinoiserie," which was nothing more than the appearance of China in the imagination of Europeans.

According to this point of view, craftsmen who had been inspired by the fashionable travel diaries and imports of the time came to combine all kinds of oriental styles with the products of their own imagination to create an appearance that things from China "ought to have." In other words "China" came to be a mysterious illusion constructed by the Europeans themselves.

A most fashionable birthday present

The description given by the Queen of Sweden some 250 years ago is indeed difficult to imagine for Chinese in the late 20th century, and even for Europeans. But for an 18th-century European lady in Prussia, although such a birthday present for her daughter could be considered fashionable, it was not particularly novel. After all, products from China such as silk had been arriving in Europe for over a thousand years. Europe had been drinking Chinese tea for a hundred years, the Germans had learned how to make true porcelain, and lacquer furniture had become all the rage for the English lady. Following the publication of Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director in 1754, designs from Chinese lattice and trellis-work were to be found in every corner, from the backs of chairs to church altars.

As for the "Chinese ballet," while what springs to mind these days is Cultural Revolution model operas like Red Detachment of Women, in 1754 Les ftes chinoises bowled over Parisians against a backdrop by Bouchet. Meanwhile the Italian poet Matestaseo was adapting a Yuan drama as L'eroe cinese, a lyrical opera for the stage, while Voltaire undertook a French version in his Chinese-wallpapered study. Fifty years later Europeans would be seeing performances against a Chinese background simultaneously in Paris and London.

A dragon boat welcome

In eighteenth-century Europe, "China" was even more so the model for European court life. The porcelain-obsessed Augustus the Strong of Saxony once designed a palace in which every room brimmed with porcelain. Existing prints give us some idea of the gay scene of pendants and parasols when he was welcomed by a Chinese dragon boat to Venice in 1716. According to the records, the boat was full of singers, dancers and musicians in Chinese costume!

Then there is a monarch such as Frederick the Great of Prussia. Not only could he design a Chinese tea house for his palace at Sans Souci, he also engaged in a discussion (via correspondence) with Voltaire on Chinese political philosophy which was made possible by more than two centuries of research carried out by Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries in China. In this light it becomes somewhat less surprising that European monarchs such as Louis XV and Louis XVI of France as well as Joseph II of Austria should copy the ritual of ploughing the first furrows in spring as carried out by the Chinese emperor.

In such an environment, for the King of Sweden to make a Chinese palace the birthday present for his beloved wife is in fact nothing more than fitting for the age. In fact, some idea of the cultural exchange that was taking place by the mid-18th century can be gained from the fact that the Chinese emperor, Qianlong, even built his own European-style palace at his Summer Palace in the mid-18th century. The Chinese emperor's method of realizing his fantasies was perhaps somewhat more scientific than that of his European counterparts in that he actually employed Jesuits to design and build his own "Chinese Versailles."

Although the Chinese of those days did not care too much for the idea that Jesus should be set up as a god, they did see that the Occident was a real place that had a knack with calendars and mechanics and liked to make a fuss about doing business. Could it really be that China for the Europeans, who risked the long sea voyage to get there and had been using Chinese goods for centuries, had become nothing more than a fantastic, mysterious paradise?

Paradise in the East

According to the Bible version of the Creation, God created a garden of delights to the east of Eden, and Medieval cosmology held that paradise was in the East. It was against this background that the 14th-century Travels of Marco Polo conveyed the vision of China as a rich and prosperous paradise. When Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and developed trade with the East in the 16th century, they brought back silk, tea, porcelain and lacquer that were exquisite beyond imagination. Poets could not restrain themselves from exclaiming that these were fruits from the garden of paradise.

Yet if it is said that Marco Polo brought back the legend of the eastern paradise and the Portuguese brought back its fruits, then it is John Nieuhoff who must get the credit for actually drawing its image.

In 1655 Nieuhoff followed the Dutch East India Company mission from Canton to the court in Peking to ask for an expansion of trade. Although the delegation left somewhat crestfallen after the court told them that, out of consideration for the barbarians, they would only need to pay tribute every eight years, what Nieuhoff recorded along the way became the most important source of information about China for Europe in the seventeenth century.

Nieuhoff wrote about tea, porcelain and lacquer that "shines like a mirror." He described this latter material as beautiful and durable, and was impressed that if you "spill any grease or other liquor upon the table it is easily rubbed off with a little fair water, without loss or damage of color." The bird and flower embroidery of the Chinese was incomparable, and Nieuhoff constantly talks of being unable to express the surprise the delegation felt at the beauty of what they saw. The tiles of the emperor's palace in Peking shone "like gold" under the sun. The Bao En Temple in Nanking was particularly impressive, being constructed from a number of attractive buildings in the center of which was a porcelain pagoda of nine storeys, roofed with yellow and red tiles with hints of green. At its eaves were bells which rang continuously in the breeze.

Love in the Trianon de Porcelaine

When Nieuhoff's travelogue was published in 1665, it was quickly translated into other European languages and came out in many different editions. If the earthly paradise was really in the East, under the pen of Nieuhoff China was obviously the pleasure garden that came closest to it. The first to take this image of China to create his own such place was Europe's greatest monarch of the age, Louis XIV.

In the winter of 1670 Louis created in the gardens of Versailles the Trianon de Porcelaine for his favorite concubine. What did it look like? It was not nine stories high, but was created out of five single-story houses with balustrades made out of Chinese porcelain jars and with blue and white tiles for the roof. Naturally, it had "Chinese style" furniture, and Chinese embroidery for hangings. Some people said the combination of the buildings was modeled on the imperial palace in Peking. The tiles, however, were really made from Dutch and French faience. This European earthenware imitation of Chinese porcelain was of a fragile quality that could not withstand too many winters before, like mortal love, decay set in and the tiles disappeared into the depths of the gardens of Versailles.

A Chinese banquet

The brief splendor of the Trianon did not represent the end of the pursuit of paradise. Equipped with a new mistress, Louis and his court continued to be followed by all of Europe. Silk hangings, porcelain and all kinds of treasures from the East India Company filled the emperor's stores. The imperial factories churned out tapestries featuring Chinese astronomers, the Chinese emperor and Chinese rural scenes. The pagodas, deities, dragon boats, exotic birds, gnarled rocks and landscapes of Nieuhoff's journal appeared on the lacquer furniture, pottery and hanging decorations that they produced.

Louis robed himself in silk cloth, used porcelain implements, rode in a Chinese palanquin, danced in Chinese costume and attended shows performed against a Chinese background. In 1700 he even arranged a one-week "Chinese-style" running feast! The coup de th*tre came when thirteen musicians in Chinese costume carried the "Chinese emperor" onto the scene in a palanquin. The banqueting hall was full of pagods (grotesque caricatures of Chinese idols). Three such statues stood on the buffet, while a dozen officials in similar attire waited at the tables. When the host entered that evening, at least twenty living and sculpted pagods bowed their heads in welcome. Of course, the cutlery and napkins were all Chinese porcelain and embroidery.

Building paradise

The extraordinary China fever of the court of Louis XIV certainly created a real paradise of unbounded delights. Unfortunately, not much has been preserved of its splendor. Some idea of what it was like, however, can be gained from the leading candidates among later creations of the Chinese paradise which can still be found among the palaces of Germany.

In the late 17th century, when the China fever was spreading from the French court, the Holy Roman Empire was still recovering from the throes of the Thirty Years War. By the first half of the 18th century, though, the German princes had begun to look to the court of Louis XIV and to build Chinese paradises in their own territories.

Probably the most stunning of the Chinese rooms to be found in German palaces is the porcelain room at Charlottenberg, near Berlin. In this glittering chamber a whirlpool of curled golden leaves climbs from the corners to the ceiling, and it is crammed with every kind of blue and white porcelain, enhanced in its splendor by a large mirror over the fire. On the upper edge of this mirror sits a Chinese pagod with several Kuanyin figures, and its corners are occupied by winged green dragons. If this is not sufficiently dazzling, at the base of the wall can be found pictures of court ladies against a golden background.

The Chinese lacquer room at the Ludwigsburg palace, on the other hand, has walls of red, black and gold lacquer on which the court artist has painted flowers, birds, old trees, dragon flies and white cranes. These work with suspended porcelain vases to create a vision of paradise that is somewhat more leisurely than that at Charlottenberg.

Another Chinese room worth mentioning is the Pagodenberg at the summer palace of Nymphen-burg, built by the King of Bavaria. This delightful construction can be said to be directly linked with the court of Louis because it was after the king returned from exile at Versailles that he personally drew the plans. Although the shape of a pagoda is not discernible from outside the octagonal building, the small rooms in its two storeys take China as their main theme. While the Delftware that adorns the entrance area and stairways reminds one of the Trianon, on the lacquered paneling of the Chinese Drawing Room and the Boudoir upstairs can be seen elegant Chinese ladies amongst blossoms, peonies, magnolia and bamboo, raising the spirits and making one want to linger.

In pursuit of what dream?

Concentrated in time and space, these Chinese rooms still fascinate people two hundred years later. What did the princes of those days really want to say when they personally designed them? Could craftsmen realize such a Chinese environment with only an illusion of paradise to guide them?

"Those lacquer panels could very probably be the result of craftsmen copying from Chinese prints," points out Oliver Impey, explaining that the Chinese style in the age of Louis XIV mainly used richly colored imported items to enhance the atmosphere of grandeur pursued by the Baroque style. Sparkling porcelain, shining lacquer and the resplendent colors of embroidery would be combined with the wooden furniture and tapestries that were the main items of decoration in the 17th century, to produce an effect that is hard for people to imagine today. In a court that relied on candles for illumination, light would be refracted from the porcelain and lacquer to produce rays of light as though from mirrors with an "extremely beautiful" effect. But Impey also reminds us that lacquer's practical ability of preserving wood is one of the reasons why so much lacquerware has lasted down to today. Moreover, as a member of the staff at Charlottenberg adds, the fact that porcelain was valued on a par with precious stones is indicated by the fact that porcelain rooms were accompanied by amber rooms and silver rooms.

The search for Utopia

Perhaps the quality of Chinese export crafts could satisfy the Baroque search for splendor and imperial ethos. After the death of Louis XIV in 1715, however, the Rococo style's intoxication with lithe elegance took the image of the Chinese paradise to new extremes.

The court painters Watteau and Boucher joined the sumptuous feast. The former combined Chinese ceremony and piety with the grandeur of the court to create mysterious images of worshippers. The latter substituted Parisian picnickers bathed in sunlight with Chinese fishermen and courtesans. Their pictures and tapestries again became blueprints for the whole of Europe, with the French court continuing to take the lead. As chinoiserie styles were impressed on every kind of ornamental material, ever more splendid and seductive Chinese rooms resulted.

"That was an age that believed in Utopia," stresses Julius Bryant, director of museums at English Heritage. The Chinese style in the European decorative arts coincided with the traditional classical style and even the later neo-classical forms. The Europeans at that time always wanted to look to ancient Greece and Rome in the search for order and to create confidence about the future. The creation of the image of a Chinese paradise sprang from the same yearning.

Eighteenth-century Europe was shaken by upheavals, while "China" was synonymous with civilization, stability, splendor and pleasure. The rationalist thinkers of the European Enlightenment suspected that the politics of the Greek city-states had led to incessant wars and great devastation and they were moved by Confucianism's secular and non-superstitious moral teachings. The German philosopher Leibnitz was well-versed in Chinese philosophical works, while Voltaire came to think that while European royalty and businessmen knew how to search for riches in the East, the philosophers had found a new morality. He recommended that the right approach to take to China should be to "admire and blush, but above all, imitate."

A bit more elaboration

Edward Gibbon, the historian of ancient Rome, is also said to have exclaimed that if the Romans had not imported silk cloth from China but the printing technology for disseminating history and poetry instead, Rome might not have declined. In fact, the vigorous Europeans of the 18th century not only imported the exquisite material cultural products of China, they did also at last borrow copper plate printing, enabling the Chinese style to be spread ever wider.

Of course, the ones who practiced Voltaire's idea of imitating China most were members of royalty and business circles who were more inclined towards materialism. The French court led the fashion and the craftsmen of Europe busily reproduced porcelain, developed japanning and created the strange variety of "chinoiserie." The faces of China gradually became more blurred as the Chinese style was increasingly colored by European fantasy. The links with the learning brought back by the Jesuits, or the Taoism, Confucianism, enlightened despotism and physiocrat economics that were of such concern to the philosophers, could not be maintained.

In England, a Protestant country where the court was weak and unostentatious and mercantilism was strong, this trend became most evident. It was here that the decorative effect of the Chinese style was most thorough. A book entitled Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, published in London in 1688, stressed as its purpose, "What can be more surprising than to have our chambers overlaid with varnish more glossy and reflecting than polished marble!" The man of taste trying to keep up with the latest fashion had to be careful not to forget to add to his order for imitation Chinese wallpaper the demand for "more birds flying here and there."

Variations on pagoda and bells

At Claydon House, once the residence of Florence Nightingale, there is a Chinese room created in 1760 which is described as "without doubt the most extraordinary in the whole house." When one has got used to the sea-sickness brought on by room after room of rococo decoration, and one steps into the Chinese room, it seems to be filled with a kind of humming noise from the bells that hang from overbearing porcelain pagodas. Only on closer inspection does one discover that these wooden bells do not actually move.

The designer of this room was obviously an audacious aesthete. He has not hesitated to locate so-called Chinese elements such as the porcelain pagoda, bells, window shutters and screens in a rococo spiral shell. He has even upset things to such an extent that he has taken a pavilion from its rightful place between a lake and the leafy shade of a willow to stick it in the confined space of the room and create a weird kind of exoticism.

The last high tide of chinoiserie came in the small English seaside town of Brighton. Though not a main center for chinoiserie, this was the site for the Royal Pavilion completed in 1820. Compared to any similar palace on the European mainland, the Pavilion could hardly be considered extravagant. Under the clamor of English democracy, however, George IV was sufficiently criticized for it to go down in history as a notorious squanderer. The choice of Europe's "first gentleman" was actually to fill a Muslim-style building of "numerous onion heads" with a shockingly decorated grotto of the Chinese dream-land in which to pamper his mistress.

The architect of the Pavilion used as his blueprint drawings brought back from China by William Alexander, the artist who followed the Macartney mission to Peking. The large red palace lights in the corridors, the bamboo furniture and nodding guard figurines, the banqueting hall's flying dragon and dancing phoenix, the genre mural and flower-and-bird wallpaper of the saloon, and the porcelain pagoda and lotus flower lights of the music room make every room a scene of strange dreams. George's successor, William IV, felt that this was not really the done thing, and when his wife had successive nightmares he eventually insisted on cutting down the great dragon chandelier in the banqueting hall. The paradisiacal image of the Chinese room had finally become synonymous with absurd extravagance. There soon followed the Opium Wars and the Anglo-French invasion of China. Nineteenth-century Europeans not only announced that the Chinese paradise was a misunderstanding, they personally razed Qianlong's European palace to the ground. Who could rebuild paradise from a pile of rubble?

The sin of stagnation

It is interesting to ponder that the Chinese room in Europe started with the sketches brought back by the Dutch mission to Peking, and finished with the pictures brought back by the British mission. The images in the Brighton Pavilion reveal both the impression of the former and the appearance of the latter. In the hundred years in between, it seems as though there really was little change in Chinese attire, architecture, boats and gods.

From Nieuhoff to Alexander, from the Trianon to Brighton Pavilion, China had passed through the reigns of the emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. This was a time when the cosmopolitan Qing dynasty had indeed presided over the world's richest economy in an age of stability and imperial patronage of the arts. Could it be that it was the special nature of this unchanging empire that made it the envy of the fragmented and war-torn Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries, at any rate certainly for the court of Louis XIV, and that this was one of the foundation stones of the belief in a Chinese paradise? After a time, however, with Europe and especially England passing through the impact of the industrial revolution and the victory of mercantilism, to be "unchanging" came to be a counterrevolution-ary crime that deserved to be punished.

When the first International Exhibition opened in London's Hyde Park in 1851, the press introduced the Chinese pavilion as follows: "[We] need envy nothing that they have, unless it be the abundance of some natural productions, especially silk . . . . Chinese are so stationary that they may be considered the most ancient workmen on the earth. Among the articles which they displayed were some which were produced at a period nearly as remote as that of the deluge, and which, in truth, did not appear to be very dissimilar to those which they manufacture at the present day." If China was not a paradise, then what was she? When Macartney returned to England he described her as "an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War . . . she may drift sometime as a wreck and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the bottom." Or was she, as in the view held by 19th-century travelers, a beautiful landscape populated by a backward, semi-civilized race? It remains difficult to understand how such a China should have managed to blind the innocent Europeans for over two centuries into believing that she was actually an earthly paradise. That would really seem to be going too far.

Paradise lost

The challenge of this "closed" and "unchanging" place with the whiff of decay about it seems to have bestowed the right to add decorations to military displays and museums and for successive generations of China experts to wield the magic wand for imposing order. But why do China's own exiled intellectuals also sigh about the "barbaric wilderness"? China, why do you use tanks against your students and missiles against your compatriots?

Wandering in one of the Chinese rooms of Europe's palaces, with peony blossoms on the walls, pensive Chinese ladies for company and glimmering blue and white porcelain on the commode, spring blossoms can be seen outside the windows while green willows rustle like little bells. This is the chamber that attracts the tourists most and, just as in the essay by the 4th-century poet Tao Yuan-ming, while their clothes betray their foreigness, all appear to be at ease. Ask the pagod who has been grinning on the mantelpiece for more than two hundred years if he knows what dynasty this is, and if there really is a paradise.

p.6(left) The Chinese room of Germany's Pagodenberg. What story do the flower ladies of Europe's palaces want to tell us?

p.7(right) This Chinese palace built in Sweden in 1760 might help us to imagine what Queen Louisa Ulrika's birthday present looked like.

p.8The Pagodenberg was designed by a German prince who had spent a period of exile at Versailles. Perhaps the blue and white tiles of the entrance hall echo the style of the Trianon de Porcelaine?

p.9Frederick the Great, who used to exchange letters on Chinese political philosophy with Voltaire, was criticized for not making the Chinese tea house he designed "Chinese" enough.

p.10(above) The lacquer commode was an ornamental requisite that any European royal household just could not do without.

(right) Everything Louis XIV did and used was full of Chinese style. This is his lacquer-paneled palanquin.

p.11The literary figure of the solitary fisherman becomes something of a bon vivant under Boucher's brush.

p.12(above) A porcelain salesroom? The Chinese room of Germany's Charlottenberg. Its original Kangxi porcelain was lost in World War Two.

p.13(right and far right) Really a garden of paradise with blooming peonies and everlasting spring? The Chinese room at Claydon Park, England.

p.14A Chinese porcelain pagoda, specially made for export, in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Do you hear its golden bells tinkling out a Chinese melody in the European wind?

p.16(left) Lotus flowers drifting in the sky. The chinoiserie of England's Royal Pavilion at Brighton frequently brought on headaches for the guests of George IV.

p.17(above) The roaring dragon chandelier has been put back in the banqueting hall of England's Royal Pavilion. The wall paintings show the influence of William Alexander's paintings of China.

p.18(above and top right) Trophies and medals from the Anglo-French invasion of China are still displayed in local military museums in England. (photo by Vincent Chang)

p.19What period are we in now? Can this smirking European pagod tell us where to find paradise?

（right） This Chinese palace built in Sweden in 1760 might help us to imagine what Queen Louisa Ulrika's birthday present looked like.

The Pagodenberg was designed by a German prince who had spent a period of exile at Versailles. Perhaps the blue and white tiles of the entrance hall echo the style of the Trianon de Porcelaine?

Frederick the Great, who used to exchange letters on Chinese political philosophy with Voltaire, was criticized for not making the Chinese teahouse he designed "Chinese" enough.

（above） The lacquer commode was an ornamental requisite that any European royal household just could not do without.

（right） Everything Louis XIV did and used was full of Chinese style. This is his lacquer paneled palanquin.

The literary figure of the solitary fisherman becomes something of a bonvivant under Boucher's brush.

（above） A porcelain salesroom? The Chinese room of Germany's Charlottenberg. Its original Kangxi porcelain was lost in World War Two.

（right and far right） Really a garden of paradise with blooming peonies and everlasting spring? The Chinese room at Claydon Park, England.

A Chinese porcelain pagoda, specially made for export, in London's Victoria and Albert Museum. Do you hear its golden bells tinkling out a Chinese melody in the European wind?

（left） Lotus flowers drifting in the sky. The chinoiserie of England's Royal Pavilion at Brighton frequently brought on headaches for the guests of George IV.

（above） The roaring dragon chandelier has been put back in the banqueting hall of England's Royal Pavilion. The wall paintings show the influence of William Alexander's paintings of China.

（above and top right） Trophies and medals from the Anglo-French invasion of China are still displayed in local military museums in England. （photo by Vincent Chang）

What period are we in now? Can this smirking European pagod tell us where to find paradise?