Visit a Chinese Garden
Many cities around the world have beautiful Chinese gardens that you can go visit to see what the gardens of Ming Dynasty China might have been like. This is a list of some of these gardens:
- Chinese Garden of Friendship, Sydney, Australia
- Chinesischer Garten, Berlin, Germany
- Montreal Chinese Garden
- Chinese Scholar's Garden, New York City
- Dunedin Chinese Garden, New Zealand
- Portland Chinese Garden, Portland, Oregon
- Huntington Chinese Garden, San Francisco
- Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver, B.C.
If you go, look carefully at the garden. What is different from the usual parks where you live? What is the same? See if you can find out how the garden is laid out in accordance with Taoist ideas about yin and yang.
Another project: write a story about the Forbidden City
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(a project)
Ming Dynasty History
Ming Dynasty Art
Main Chinese Architecture page
Main China page
To find out more about ancient Chinese architecture, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
The British Museum Book of Chinese Art, by Jessica Rawson and others (1996). Rawson is a curator at the British Museum, and she uses the collection of the British Museum to illustrate this book. Library Journal calls it "easily the best introductory overview of Chinese art to appear in years".
Art in China (Oxford History of Art Series), by Craig Clunas (1997). Not specifically for kids, but a good introduction to the spirit of Chinese art. Warning: this one is not arranged in chronological order. Instead, it has chapters on sculpture, calligraphy, and so on.
