THE CHINA SOCIETY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

THE CHINA SOCIETY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
南加州中國會

November 2020 Bulletin

President’s Messsage

Dear Friends and members of China Society,

Our next meeting will be co-sponsored with the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, a personal guided Zoom tour of the Huntington Library’s Chinese garden expansion by curator Phillip Bloom, Monday, November 23, 2020 @ 7:00 p.m.

After being the guests of Zoom programs by Carol Soucek King’ Salon featuring Nan Rae in September and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California’s October program on the archeology studies of Chinese railroad workers we are having are own Zoom program in November. Please note that we have changed the time and date of the program to 7:00 P.M. on Monday, November 23rd. I hope that all of you have Zoom access by now. If not, please do so before our next meeting. Our regular meeting place, the Golden Dragon Restaurant is now open for take out and also has a very limited outdoor dining area on Broadway in front of the restaurant. They don’t have the space or quiet for our regular meeting yet. We will be relying on Zoom for our next few programs.

Our last regular meeting last March seems so very long ago. Katie Chiu gave us a program on the Chinese architectural elements of the Chinese garden at the Huntington. Michelle Bailey gave us an update on the new addition of the Liu Fang Yuan that was just about to open. Then the pandemic hit.


The new expansion of the garden opened on October 9th. With the addition, the Garden is 15 acres, almost three times larger than the original garden making it the largest Chinese garden outside of China. Naturally, I wanted to see the new garden, but I didn’t want to see it without some information on what I was seeing. I went online and searched. I was disappointed. There were news releases, but they did not tell much. There were videos, but the videos had more pictures of the original garden than the new addition and even included pictures of the Japanese garden with no dialog as to what one was seeing. I asked our own Yvonne Chang who is a docent at the Garden. She told me there are no docents on duty yet and no guided tours at this time. I went to Huntington’s website and found out about their excellent Zoom lectures including Phillip Bloom’s The Pleasures of the Chinese Garden and Jim Folsom’s Past, Present, and Future of Asian Gardens. Both are available on Huntington’s archived lecture webpage (www.huntington.org/videos-recorded-programs).

Then it dawned on me. One of the best ways to see an exhibit is to have the curator of the exhibit give you a tour. So I asked Phillip Bloom, the curator of the Liu Fang Yuan Chinese Garden to give me—and all of you through Zoom—a personal guided tour. I hope all of you and any friends you invite will join in. For our program I have asked Phillip Bloom, the curator of the Chinese garden at the Huntington to give us a personal tour of the recent expansion of the garden.

Please go to Eventbrite to RSVP for the November program. Attendees will receive an email with the Zoom address for accessing the virtual meeting the day before the event.