Jinke Jimei River

Jinke Jimei Jiangpan rises at Fengjie, the ancient City of Poets where Kuimen gorge and Qutang Gorge have drawn Li Bai, Du Fu, Meng Jiao, Bai Juyi, Liu Yuxi and Wang Wei to leave verse across the landscape. Designed by ACA Landscape for Jinke Group, the project seeks to turn life itself into a poem, drawing on both river-city character and the lyrical heritage of Fengjie. On the first site visit, the designers found the plot backed by green mountains and facing the Yangtze with distant peaks beyond, so the main entry leads the mountains into the garden under the theme of seeking the mountain: stainless-steel mountain forms, paired with white walls, contrast solid and void and frame the lines of two green ranges facing a lone sail in the sun. Beyond, a maze of light unfolds as a clean-walled, airy stage; afternoon light hits branches and water, carving a scroll painting out of white wall surfaces. A meditative zen court holds a still pool reflecting the sky, ringed by black gravel with a lone pine on a small island, its dry-landscape composition evoking a living Chinese ink painting in which incense, tea and guqin music quiet the mind. Glass bricks introduce temperature and shadow into the hard concrete and stone, admitting light without revealing view. Along the arrival sequence, hitching-post stone carvings recall the gateway ritual of old aristocratic homes, while a wall, a stone and a pine form an inkstone table where mirror water is the ink and pine branches the brush. The return garden closes the sequence around a covered corridor that encourages neighborly conversation, with crape myrtle shadows on white curtains and children walking in spring rain. Every material choice, solid-void pairing and spatial gesture is tuned to the Eastern poetic ideal of living more slowly, more elegantly and more simply.