Study on the Transformation Strategy of Chinese Classical Gardens in Urban Public Space: Take Anning Nanyuan as an Example

Currently, urban parks are booming, but many public gardens are out of touch with modern city life. It is necessary to find out the functional positioning of public gardens and carry out the transformation to conform to the development of urban life, so that it can play a unique value in the urban space where all kinds of modern landscapes are emerging. This paper takes Anning Nanyuan and its adjacent Baihua Park as examples to compare and analyze the characteristics of the internal crowd activities of the two, explore the similarities and differences between public classical gardens and modern parks as urban landscape spatial identities, and provide references for the scientific development of public classical gardens in the future.


Introduction to Nanyuan
Nanyuan Garden, located in Anning City, Kunming City, Yunnan Province. It is a rare classical garden designed and constructed with traditional Chinese gardening techniques on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Nanyuan, as the proud work of Mr. Chen Congzhou, a famous Chinese classical garden artist, is the concrete embodiment of his garden theory. The buildings in the garden are made of phoebe from beams, columns, components, plaques to furniture, etc，which is the first one In October 2003, Beijing Jindun Publishing House published a book entitled "Appreciation of Famous Chinese Gardens", which included 81 famous Chinese gardens. Among them, the only one selected from Yunnan Province is Anning Nanyuan, which shows the uniqueness of Nanyuan as a classical garden in Yunnan Province. Its main features and advantages are: 2.1. Enlightenment of Suzhou gardening techniques to Nanyuan "According to local conditions, taking local materials is the essence of gardening." Based on the traditional view of garden building, Nanyuan Garden is an indigenous reproduction of Suzhou private gardens in Yunnan, which represents the diversity and integration of Yunnan culture.
Phoebe is the first choice for ancient royal gardens, and belongs to the national secondary key protected wild plants. The phoebe in Nanyuan is sourced from Liuku, the prefecture of Nujiang Prefecture in Yunnan Province. In addition, the stone in the park comes from the border of Mingqinhe Township and Jinning County in Anning County, and the quality is no less than Taihu Stone which is commonly used in garden landscaping.

Famous artists and couplets in Nanyuan
In order to improve the cultural connotation and taste of Nanyuan, all plaques and couplets in the park are inscribed by Mr. Chen Congzhou himself, his colleagues and friends. There are "Nanting gloriette", "Chunsuxuan pavilion", "Chunrunting gloriette", "Yixinju pavilion", "Chunhuaqiuyue pavilion" and "Xiaoshanliushui pavilion", as well as "Anning pavilion" and "Chunying pavilion" written by Mr. Chen Congzhou and the "Nanyuan Xiaoji" hanging in the chunyinglang gallery, etc. The ink marks left by these famous artists in Nanyuan are the rare treasures of Chinese calligraphy.

Investigation and Analysis
This survey adopted the method of on-site distribution of questionnaires. A total of 60 copies were distributed and 56 copies were recovered with the recovery rate of 93.3%.

Age structure of users.
Combined with the age distribution of crowd in Nanyuan ( Figure 1) and Baihua Park (Figure 2), we found that the overall difference in age structure between the Nanyuan and Baihua Park users is relatively small, and they are mainly elderly groups.

User's understanding of Nanyuan.
According to the results of the questionnaire, 67.8% of the interviewees said they did not know who the designer of Nanyuan was, while 19.6% of the interviewees knew the designer Mr. Chen Congzhou but did not know his background ( Figure 5). 60.7% of the interviewees have a certain interest in Chinese classical garden culture but lack of basic understanding. After in-depth interviews, we found that the reason for this phenomenon is that people lack the way to understand Chinese classical garden culture ( Figure 6). Figure 7 reflects the most popular characteristics of Nanyuan. 64.29% of the interviewees believe that the interior space of Nanyuan has unique classical garden connotations, and 30.36% of the people believe that its classical cultural characteristics have good educational value. In addition, regular cultural exhibitions are also one of the reasons why the       Compared with Nanyuan Garden (Figure 8), 55.36% of the interviewees believed that Baihua Park's parking, catering and other infrastructure facilities are more complete. At the same time, Baihua Park has a series of advantages such as a larger area, a longer opening time, a larger number of people, and a more open urban space, so that the crowd can use the space conveniently.

Current problems of Nanyuan.
Through the questionnaire survey, the interviewees believe that the shortcomings of Nanyuan are specifically manifested in the following aspects ( Figure 9): the connection to the city is too week, the opening time is limited, the parking is inconvenient, the entrance is concealed, the publicity is not enough, and the infrastructure are not perfect, etc. The above problems affect the attractiveness of Nanyuan to the crowd.

Analysis on the influencing factors of lack of vitality in Nanyuan
3.2.1. "Aging" of the active crowd. Through the questionnaire surveys and field investigations, it can be found that although the active population in Nanyuan and Baihua Park are mainly elderly people, the types of people who are active in Nanyuan lack diversity. This phenomenon is mainly due to the following reasons:  The development of new urban districts has led to changes in the age structure of people in different urban regions. The current residents around Nanyuan and Baihua Park are mainly elderly people.  There are big differences in the leisure lifestyle and activity behaviors of people of different ages, which extend to different needs for space. Compared with the popular entertainment spot among young people such as movie theaters and bars, Nanyuan and Baihua Park are more favored by the elderly due to their comfortable natural environment.    The attributes of traditional culture are week in Nanyuan. The managers of Nanyuan lack the awareness of active publicity, leading to young people not understanding and disregarding its traditional culture, and thus losing interest in Nanyuan. However, in the process of research, the author discovered that a small number of young people would conduct photography and exhibition activities in Nanyuan. This phenomenon shows that Nanyuan still has the potential to attract different age groups.

Limitations of Nanyuan
 Restrictions of entrance space. The outer entrance is relatively closed, and poorly connected to the urban space. Compared with Nanyuan, Baihua Park has more open space attributes and larger regional boundaries, and has a weaker sense of boundary with urban space. People can directly enter the space from the entire boundary line of the park. This difference in the accessibility of urban interfaces will inevitably lead to differences in the behavior and psychology of citizens around Nanyuan, thereby affecting its spatial vitality.  Restrictions on opening hours. Nanyuan is an urban space with a scenic spot, and its opening hours are controlled by relevant government departments. This kind of regulation inevitably weakens its openness as a city's public space, and at the same time restricts the spontaneous activities such as chess, playing, etc. to a certain extent, which weakens people's interest in playing in it, thereby affecting the space vitality.  Personnel carrying capacity and infrastructure limitations. The nature of Nanyuan, which is, classical gardens, limits its personnel carrying capacity. At the same time, compared with Baihua Park's internal infrastructure, it is also less complete, which affects the attractiveness of Nanyuan to the crowd.

The position of Nanyuan's function is unclear.
Nanyuan's functional positioning in the minds of citizens is very vague. The public's impression of Nanyuan can be summarized in "clean and elegant", and the purpose of coming here are mostly "find a quiet place for a walk" or "just pass by". As a destination place, Nanyuan has not yet formed a clear and unique enough impression, which is also one of the reasons for its lack of vitality.

The lack of cultural atmosphere.
As an iconic cultural space in Anning City, Nanyuan should have a certain cultural influence within the region, but the reality is far from satisfactory. The spatial nature of Nanyuan is cultural, but the lack of cultural activities in the current stage has caused its cultural atmosphere to be inactive and present a negative state.

Create Nanyuan's unique cultural IP
The future development direction of Nanyuan should be combined with the promotion of traditional Chinese culture. Take the famous scenic spot "Red Wall With Bamboo's Shadow" in Chengdu Wuhou Temple as an example, it has now become an Internet-famous attraction which attract tourists from all over the country vying to take photos. It has greatly stimulated the development of Wuhou Temple and even the tourism industry in Chengdu. The Wuhou Temple is well integrated into today's city life. Through field research, it is found that some young people in Nanyuan wear traditional Han-style clothes to take photos, led by the current trend of Chinese classical cultural renaissance. It follows then that the Nanyuan Garden, which itself carries a profound garden culture, can strengthen its position as a carrier of traditional Chinese culture by organizing regular cultural activities to create a unique cultural IP for it. For example, a calligraphy competition held with the theme of couplet, a collection of photography works with the scenery of Nanyuan as the background, and a wood carving competition with the theme of Phoebe, etc. The above methods have played a positive role in the unique value of classical gardens in modern urban life, and at the same time are conducive to the

Open Nanyuan's exhibition space
As the only classical Chinese garden in Yunnan Province that has been selected in the "The Viewing Famous Chinese Garden", Nanyuan Garden should play a role in popularizing the culture of classical gardens and commemorating the designer Mr. Chen Congzhou. Although there are exhibitions such as Chen Congzhou's Centennial Birthday Commemoration Exhibition in the park, it is not open to the public now. Therefore, relevant departments can open up indoor exhibition halls while intensifying supervision. In addition, while showing traditional culture in Nanyuan, it can indirectly guide the tour path through the circulation of the exhibition space, so that visitors can experience the unique interest of classical garden space.

Increase the publicity of Nanyuan
Although the boundary and management of Nanyuan cannot be as flexible and open as urban parks, it can attract diverse groups of people by increasing its reputation, thereby enhancing its spatial vitality. For example, traditional cultural attractions such as the Palace Museum with profound history, Suzhou gardens as the representative of private gardens and Qingming Shanghe Garden with Song dynasty culture background, all have their official websites. Visitors can learn more about the attractions through the website. In the future, through the establishment of Nanyuan's official website and online visiting supported by VR real scenes and 3D images, people can "see the scene beforehand". The beautiful scenery of Nanyuan Garden and its unique cultural connotation will attract people to visit on the spot. In addition, offline audio guides can be provided to tourists, so that tourists can fully understand the cultural connotation of Nanyuan.

Strengthen the protection of Nanyuan cultural heritage
The current protection of Nanyuan is unreasonable. The internal exhibition "Spring and Autumn of Nanyuan" wrote: "The most important attraction in the whole park, 'the Spring Flower and Autumn Moon Hall', cannot be entered. The relevant departments were afraid that the building would be damaged, so they simply lock the door up. Some rockery areas are also closed because they are afraid of accidents when children climb them." Nanyuan cannot be fully managed and pursue public spaces vitality as urban parks do. But over-closed management for the sake of protection will hinder its integration with urban space.
In order to ensure that Nanyuan does not "repeat the same mistakes", it is necessary to strengthen its management while increasing its publicity and improving the capacity of tourists. At present, people can directly enter the Nanyuan. In the future, it should consider set up a real-name reservation for tourists to scan the QR code to enter the garden. In addition, online and offline reporting boards and suggestion boxes can be set up for tourists to jointly protect Nanyuan by strengthening public awareness of the cultural value of Nanyuan, and guiding them to conduct spontaneous and mutual supervision.

Conclusion
The current loneliness of Anning Nanyuan verifies that the current urban life does not pay enough attention to traditional culture. Since Baihua Park has been used as a daily activity place for citizens in the area, Nanyuan should assume the function of urban cultural life. Although in this process, a series of questions such as how to protect Nanyuan historical heritage will inevitably arise, but there is a saying "Although create a garden is not easy, maintain the garden is more difficult." Thinking about "how to properly integrate Nanyuan into the current urban space and give full play to its cultural value" is an important beginning for the city to attach importance to the cultural life of citizens and make scientific use of classical garden as a new urban public space.