The Xu Zhimo Garden at King’s College, Cambridge
A garden of poetry and friendship by the River Cam
On the tenth of August 2018, King’s College Cambridge unveiled a memorial garden in it’s grounds to commemorate the celebrated Chinese poet Xu Zhimo. The opening took place during the fourth annual Cambridge Zhimo Poetry and Art Festival. Numerous poets from both China and England read their own works which followed the theme of ‘Birds and Gardens’. The opening was conducted by Tony Hsu, who is the son of Xu Zhimo. Xu had, for eighteen months in the early 1920s, been an associate member of Kings. Here he became acquainted with members of the Bloomsbury Group. Many of which became close friends and mentors to Xu in the years which followed. Cambridge greatly inspired Xu Zhimo’s works as a writer; his poem ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’, is known by heart by many Chinese school children.
The garden, which took three years to finish, was the result of the vision of Senior Horticulturalist Steven Coghill. It will be the first Chinese garden created inside any of the Cambridge College grounds. It is located behind a memorial stone, installed in July 2008 in memory of Xu Zhimo. Carved into the stones white marble are the first and final two lines of ‘Second Farewell to Cambridge’. The garden itself is inspired by Taoist and Buddhist principles and features the traditional yin yang pattern. The new plants are predominantly chinese, native to the region of Haining, Xu’s home. They are integrated with the british species which surround the garden.
During the opening King's Fellow and Founder of the Cambridge Rivers Project, Alan MacFarlane, announced:
“The garden celebrates the shared culture of East and West. It is a fusion between philosophies and cultures, which contains special calligraphy by famous Chinese, including Mo Yan [author and winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature] illustrating the poem.”
As part of the opening, Xu Zhimo's grandson Dr Tony Hsu was presented with a limited edition pen designed by Onoto in commemoration of Xu's time at King's. The pens are available to purchase via the Shop at King’s and Onoto’s website. For each pen sold, Onoto will make a donation to support international graduate students at King’s.
King’s College, Cambridge
King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city.
King's was founded in 1441 by King Henry VI soon after founding its sister institution, Eton College. Initially, King's accepted only students from Eton College. However, the king's plans for King's College were disrupted by the Wars of the Roses and the resultant scarcity of funds, and then his eventual deposition. Little progress was made on the project until 1508, when King Henry VII began to take an interest in the college, probably as a political move to legitimise his new position. The building of the college's chapel began in 1446, and was finished in 1544 during the reign of Henry VIII.
King's College Chapel is regarded as one of the finest examples of late English Gothic architecture. It has the world's largest fan vault, while its stained-glass windows and wooden chancel screen are considered some of the finest from their era. The building is seen as emblematic of Cambridge.[5] It houses the Choir of King's College, Cambridge. Every year on Christmas Eve, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (a service originally devised for Truro Cathedral by Edward White Benson in 1880, adapted by the college dean Eric Milner-White in 1918) is broadcast from the chapel to millions of listeners worldwide.
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